Rubens at Somerset House

After a strange tranquillize in studies and celebrations of the work of Rubens, a welcome revival is now in progres with a positive flood of exhibitions. The 1990s may have belonged chiefly to Rembrandt and Van Dyck on the other hand now attention is refocusing upon the eldest of the seventeenth century's Netherlandish geniuses.

freshly opened at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is an exhibition devot to Rubens's Life of Achilles. For this series, Rubens chose eight episodes in the life of the hero, which he had woven as tapestries. Reunited are the preparatory oil sketches (the Museum holds seven, and these have freshly been cleaned), six of the modelli and an assemblage of the tapestries. The exhibition is cleverly staged and accompanied through an exemplary, scholarly catalogue, whose series of essays by the agency of Friso Lammertse, Fiona Healy and stay Delmarcel, followed by detailed catalogue entries, constitutes a fine updating of the 1975 Corpus Rubenianum contortion dedicated to the cycle. A carping criticism would dwelling in on the heavy, Dutch-style frames circular the beautiful, delicately wrought sketches.

At the National Gallery a series of works is accumulating around the rediscovered Massacre of the Innocents, whose possessor has generously agreed to place it upon loan. Now other public spirited loans have made unheralded appearances, greatest in quantity recently the modello from Cincinnati for the Gallery's Samson and Delilah. As pretty soon displayed, it is in the same step of proximity to the finished work as it was--we may presume--when Rubens was executing his early masterpiece. This is a thrilling juxtaposition, as notwithstanding never achieved since the Gallery acquired the great picture above two decades ago.

As the exhibition present the appearances to have developed spontaneously, there is no catalogue, on the contrary information can be gleaned from clear on the other hand brief labels and from an offprint of David Jaffe's and Amanda Bradley's new article on the Massacre of the Innocents in APOLLO. (1) Its display in a corner of the latitude beneath an apparently unrelated Rubens drawing after the antique, lent through the British Museum, adds to the intoxicating impression of unsettling improvisation.

A comparable faculty of perception of ad hoc-ery, but now tinged with incoherence, emanates from 'Peter Paul Rubens: A Touch of Brilliance', the title of a august exhibition of works by Rubens in the Hermitage plays at Somerset House. The scale of the plays is admirably suited to the display of works upon a small scale, and the exhibition provides an unprecedent and invaluable opportunity for a shut up study of the exhibits, many of which are of prime quality.

The first idea for the exhibition was to assemble the preparatory work for the Whitehall ceiling to commemorate the quarter-centenary of James I'S union of the diadems as the Hermitage owns a modello for the treatment of the theme in the ceiling. However, the drift of the exhibition was greatly enlarged with the advent of Professor James Cuno, who is also the Director of the Courtauld Institute. Now relying upon the incredibly rich holdings chiefly of the Hermitage and the Courtauld itself, an exhibition has been devised circular several of the themes which preoccupied the artist, thus also allowing for an overview of his stylistic exhibition The selected themes are: the Assumption of the Virgin, the coming down from the Cross, the Conversion of St Paul, the Jesuit house of god ceiling decorations, the life of Marie de Medicis, the Whitehall ceiling (Fig. 1) and the decorations for the triumphal access of the Cardinal-Infant.

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

To these groupings are added more [i]or[/i] less notable outsiders, like the powerful Ecce homo from St Petersburg (apparently because it was doubted through Judson in his recent Corpus Rubenianum volume) and the National Gallery's Miraculous Draught of Fishes (three further works which--like it--were made as preparatory designs for engravings are also included, on the other hand are not treated as a group)

by means of the very nature of things, no grouping could be clean But in several instances, they could have been significantly amplified without any great difficulty by means of replacing other less relevant works. For instance, the Victoria and Albert Museum possesss two drawings for the Marie de Medicis circle of time the British Museum owns woodcut by dint of Jegher after designs for the Jesuit house of worship and Jegher's print after Hercules overcoming Discord upon the Whitehall ceiling is upon view on the other side of somersault House.

A hangover from the first plan is the inclusion of sum of two units copies of lost modelli for the Whitehall ceiling here obscurely displayed and normally shown in the Hermitage deposit. They are reproduc in colour in the accompanying volume in which Natalya Gritsay usefully draws attention to them, granting she is not the first--as she claims--to do thus in recent years. (2) She also stoutly secure from dangers the authenticity of the Hermitage Apotheosis sketch; however, she avoids the point to be solved [i]or[/i] settled raised by the fact that it is single approximately the same size as the missing modello known to have been sent by dint of Rubens to Charles I, and her argument does not stand over against the crucial problem of the poor handling.