2021 The Rubenianum Quarterly 1 From limbo to Venice, then to London and the Rubenshuis Towards new premises A highlight of the 2019 Word is out: in March, plans for a new building for exhibition at the Palazzo the Rubens House and the Rubenianum, designed by Ducale in Venice (‘From Titian Robbrecht & Daem architecten and located at Hopland 13, to Rubens. Masterpieces from were presented to the world. The building will serve as Flemish Collections’), this visitor entrance to the entire site, and accommodate visitor ravishing Portrait of a Lady facilities such as a bookshop, a café and an experience Holding a Chain is arguably centre. The present absence of such facilities had led to an one of the most exciting initial funding by Visit Flanders, which, in turn, incited the Rubens discoveries of the City of Antwerp to address all infrastructural needs on site. past decade and perhaps the These include several structural challenges that the finest portrait by the artist Rubenianum has faced for decades, such as the need for remaining in private hands. climate-controlled storage for the expanding research The picture is datable to collections. The new building will have state-of-the-art the beginning of Rubens’s storage rooms on four levels, as well as two library career, and was probably floors with study places, in a light and energy-efficient painted either during his architecture. The public reading room on the second floor will be accessible to all visitors via an eye-catching spiral short trip from Mantua to staircase, and will bring the Rubenianum collections Spain (between April 1603 within (visual and physical) reach of all, after their and January 1604), or not somewhat hidden life behind the garden wall. For the long afterwards in Genoa, first time, more books and documentation boxes will be Rubens, Portrait of a Lady Holding a Chain, c. 1603–06. where he resided from available in open shelves, with some space to showcase Canvas, 81.3 × 66 cm. The Klesch Collection December 1605 until mid- collection pieces. Study places will have a majestic outlook 1606. The sketchy handling, on Rubens’s garden, which will receive a more historically especially in the lady’s dress, and the ground layers left uncovered along the underpinned baroque layout. The library on the third floor edges of the painted surface suggest that it was left unfinished. will offer more openshelf collections and quiet workspaces This unidentified lady, seen in three-quarter view, is among Rubens’s for staff, visiting and affiliated researchers. most assertive sitters. Infused with character and charisma, she emerges Robbrecht & Daem architecten approached the design from the dark background, commanding our attention with her wide-eyed, with a delicate respect and understanding of Rubens. searching gaze. Her palpable presence is further enhanced by her glowing face The building, located on the spot where Rubens once – one can almost sense the blood pulsing beneath her skin – and prominent owned a property that housed his own impressive features. Although she seems sufficiently reserved to be an aristocrat,she is collection of books, is conceived as a monumental bookcase neither engaging nor aloof – her likeness lacks the hauteur characteristic of with ceiling-high shelves on each floor. Completion of the aristocratic portraits. Rather, she projects herself as an independent character, building is planned for 2024. The seventeenth-century meeting the viewer as an equal. The sitter, whoever she was, evidently Kolveniershof will continue to be a place for learning, fascinated Rubens who, at the time, was still very much a young and emerging accommodating conferences, public lectures and artist. The intensity with which he evokes the woman’s personality testifies to educational workshops. his intelligence as a portraitist. For me as a director, the opportunity to contribute to The fact that her style of dress – particularly the sleeve and the throne-like these exciting plans is a unique one, and this also applies ruff rising to a point above and behind her head – is consistent with Spanish to the parallel merger process of the Rubenianum fashions of the early 1600s suggests the possibility that Rubens painted this and the Rubens House, which brings thrilling mutual portrait during his diplomatic mission to Spain for Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke opportunities. Our institution is tremendously grateful of Mantua, between April 1603 and January 1604. In letters written from for Visit Flanders’ financial support, as well as for the Valladolid, the artist alludes to portraits of ladies of the court commissioned City of Antwerp’s large and lasting commitment to by Vincenzo for his gallery of beautiful women. Unfortunately, no such Antwerp-based Rubens research. In the new premises, our portraits survive, if indeed they ever existed. Alternatively, Rubens may have ambitions to preserve the legacy and shape the future of painted this portrait in Genoa, where he stayed from December 1605 until mid- the Corpus Rubenianum will thrive in equally durable 1606. It was in that important harbour city open to Spanish influence that he and innovative ways. revealed himself to be a brilliant and innovative portraitist. This beautiful portrait will be on long-term loan to the Rubenshuis from Véronique van de Kerckhof, 1 May. | Ben van Beneden Director of the Rubenianum Corpus Rubenianum Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, part XX/2 initial head, and one or more new planks Study Heads by Nico Van Hout attached so as to restore the core piece to more acceptable proportions. In most cases The latest volume of the Corpus for example in the iconic Four Studies of the sawn-off section with the other head Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard is devoted the Head of an African Man in the Royal (or heads) underwent the same treatment. to a remarkable aspect of Rubens’s Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium, Brussels. The original appearance of many of such painted production. It sets out to bring Many of the heads show charismatic multiple-head studies has been documented together, catalogue and discuss all the old men with unruly hair or beards, but in drawings. More or less reliable painted head studies (tronies in Middle their facial expressions tend to be neutral, compilations, drawn in Rubens’s workshop Dutch) that are known for certain to have for they were designed to be used in and elsewhere, reproduce various extant been used in a Rubens composition. It is different contexts. It was only in the examples as well as now-separated heads. essential to define the scope of the present finished painting that they might be given Auction catalogues of the eighteenth and volume more closely by drawing a sharper pronounced expressions. That is the reason nineteenth centuries usually record single distinction between Rubens’s head studies why Rubens’s head studies differ from the heads that are attributed to Rubens, but and his portraits. Portraits were (and still laughing or melancholic character heads they also mention a considerable number of are) painted to capture for all time the that Dutch painters such as Hals, Lievens multiple studies. The present volume XX/2 appearance and identity of a sitter, usually and Rembrandt began making from the aims to reconstruct as far as possible the someone powerful, rich and famous. In a middle of the 1620s onwards, and which original appearance of Rubens’s tronies, tronie the model’s identity is irrelevant. Or developed into a genre of their own right. aided by the evidence of copies and rather, it is, in fact, almost always unknown. Today most of the tronies by Rubens technical research on the works themselves. Rubens’s portraits conform to the formal and his assistants present a single head, The originals of the study heads conventions of his time. The initiative for but there are also several with two, three remained together until the sale of Rubens’s a head study came from the artist or his or four heads. These are the product of possessions at his death in 1640. It was only assistants. These studies are not about who one and the same posing session at which then that his head studies became desirable but about how; about the play of light and a head – or, more accurately, the shifting collectors’ items. Over the centuries, shadow on human skin, about the depiction lights and shadows and colour gradations many of Rubens’s tronies have undergone of a head when seen from an unusual angle, on a head – were painted from different transformation. Panels featuring several looking up or down, from below or in lost angles. There are reasons to believe that heads were cut up quite early on to be sold profile. The pose and lighting of the model Rubens originally painted more of these as separate pictures on the art market, and in the study are chosen according to their multiple-head studies. The saw marks on some tronies were converted by later artists function in the painting, although it is clear a considerable number of studies indicate into genre scenes by adding extra planks from some oil sketches that Rubens and his that they have been cut down. Indeed, of wood and giving the heads distinctive assistants took account of existing head the majority of Rubens’s tronies consist clothes and attributes. | studies even when they began designing of a truncated original core panel with an Nico Van Hout compositions. The genesis of Rubens’s head studies Peter Paul Rubens, was inextricably connected with the artist’s Head Study of a Man (detail), National rapid success as a history painter after Gallery of Art, Dublin his return from Italy, and with the major commissions that he garnered in the early phase of his career.