Study Heads
Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard, Part XX, 2
By (author) Nico Van Hout
This book is devoted to a remarkable aspect of Rubens’s painted production. It investigates and catalogues not only works that Ludwig Burchard (1886-1960) gathered into the category of ‘Study Heads’, but also head studies by artists closely connected to Rubens’s workshop which were demonstrably used in his paintings. The existence of a stock of study heads or tronies allowed Rubens and his collaborators to exploit the same figures in many different contexts and create satisfying variety among the numerous characters involved in mythological, biblical or historical scenes. In Rubens’s work, study heads constitute an exceptional type of painting in that they were created not as autonomous works of art, but as a means to an end, an indispensable part of his artistic practice. Yet, even in this marginal category of work, Rubens achieves maximum artistic expression with an economy of means, as for example in the iconic Four Studies of the Head of an African Man in the Brussels Museum. The originals of the study heads remained together until the sale of Rubens’s possessions at his death in 1640. Over the centuries, many of Rubens’s tronies have undergone transformation. Panels featuring several heads were cut up quite early on to be sold as separate pictures on the art market, and some tronies were converted by later artists into specific characters or even genre scenes by adding extra planks of wood and giving the heads distinctive clothes and attributes. This book aims to reconstruct as far as possible the original appearance of Rubens’s tronies, aided by the evidence of copies and technical research on the works themselves.
- By (author) Nico Van Hout
Other Titles in this Series
Portraits of Unidentified and Newly Identified Sitters Painted in Antwerp
Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard XIX.3
Volume 19.3
Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard
Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists: Italian Masters. Titian and North Italian Art
Corpus Rubenianum Ludwig Burchard
Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists: Italian Masters. Artists Working in Central Italy and France
Corpus Rubenianum Part IV
The Holy Trinity, The Life of the Virgin, Madonnas, and The Holy Family: The Holy Trinity and The Life of the Virgin
Volume 4.1
Copies and Adaptations from Renaissance and Later Artists
German and Netherlandish Artists
Volume 26.1
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