Great discoveries sometimes innervate the art world, causing great excitement among scholars and art lovers. Early October news arrived about the discovery of a drawing that can be linked to the Van Eyck studio. The famous painter Jan van Eyck (1370/1400- 1441) conducted this workshop together with his brother Hubert. The drawing was subject of a survey in preparation for the exhibition: The road to Van Eyck, now in Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam. It shows a very detailed composition of the Crucifixion of Jesus. Curator Friso Lammertse was very excited when he saw the drawing after a colleague mentioned it. The tracking down of the 25 cm drawing was a complicated task itself, but eventually turned it out to be successful.
Very striking is the liveliness of the scene and the consistent handling of the stylus that was used for making silver and golden lines. This same technique was also used in another drawing that can be attributed to the Van Eyck studio. Thorough examination gave clarity about its origin. This resulted in the attribution to the Van Eyck’s, dating the drawing around 1400 and making it 600 hundred years old. Early Netherlandish drawing still remains a relatively unknown field with very few examples. A discovery of this caliber is exceptionally rare. The outcome was presented in the Symposium: Colloquium Van Eyck Studies that was held in Brussels a month before the news was officially announced. The subject: the study of underdrawing and technology in painting. This drawing shows resemblance with a panel in the Metropolitan Museum in New York depicting The Crucifixion and the Last Judgment. The van Eyck drawing is part of a private collection and was bought at a sale in the Fraeylemaborg in Groningen in the 1960’s.
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