Around the years 1630s, the artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) asked his pupil Abraham Van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675) to travel to Paris and accomplish a set of drawn copies after frescos made a...Show moreAround the years 1630s, the artist Peter Paul Rubens (1577-1640) asked his pupil Abraham Van Diepenbeeck (1596-1675) to travel to Paris and accomplish a set of drawn copies after frescos made a century before by the Mannerist artist Francesco Primaticcio and his assistant Niccolò dell'Abbate in different Parisian châteaus. In the year 2020, a hitherto unpublished group of 17 drawings and counterproofs by Van Diepenbeeck from this commission arose in the collections of the Rubenianum in Antwerp. This thesis explores the enterprise, with special attention to this set of 17 drawings and counterproofs. Moreover, it analyses the use that Rubens made of these drawn copies, back in his Antwerp workshop, as fundamental sources of inspiration for his future artworks.Show less
The present thesis explores the idea of the painter-advisor at the seventeenth-century Spanish court by means of the case study of the sale of Rubens's art collection in 1640. Philip IV bought...Show moreThe present thesis explores the idea of the painter-advisor at the seventeenth-century Spanish court by means of the case study of the sale of Rubens's art collection in 1640. Philip IV bought around thirty paintings from the master's estate. In this operation, a group of painters developed important tasks of advising either on behalf of the Spanish king or Rubens. Here these tasks will be further analyzed in order to add evidence to the phenomenon of painter-advisors in Europe throughout the 17th century, as well as to their multifaceted careers that, more often that it is thought, not only included the production of paintings, but also other services based on their connoisseurship.Show less
