Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel
The exhibition was organized in cooperation with the Albertina Museum, Vienna.
Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel is a once-in-a-lifetime exhibition featuring rarely seen drawings from the Albertina Museum in Vienna, one of Europe’s oldest and finest collections. The Northern Renaissance transformed daily life in the 1500s in the Netherlands (an area today encompassing Belgium, the Netherlands, and Luxembourg), brought about by the Protestant Reformation, wide-scale urbanization, and the start of the Eighty Years’ War. Partially as a result of these changes, art patronage in the Netherlands shifted from that of the church and nobility to the rising middle class. Central to the blossoming of the arts was the skyrocketing wealth centered in the region’s merchant cities—in particular, Antwerp, which was the primary depot for luxury goods in the North and for overland and seafaring trade as far as Asia.
With their various functions and relationships to other media and projects, drawings provide fascinating insight into the Netherlandish city as a place of artistic collaboration and patronage. Artists made drawings to prepare for large commissions, to transfer designs to other media, and to plan civic events; many works in the exhibition were created in conjunction with the Netherlands’ flourishing industries in stained glass, tapestries, and printmaking. Drawings were also increasingly made as autonomous works of art. A selection of more than 90 drawings explores an array of refined techniques, including lavishly colored drawings and luxury objects drawn with ink on parchment, with subjects ranging from hell scenes to mythological dramas. Two stars of the exhibition are Hieronymus Bosch’s The Tree Man, one of the most idiosyncratic drawings of the era, and Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Desidia (Sloth), an essay on contemporary civic morality. Among several designs for majestic stained glass windows is a rare cartoon (full-scale drawing) measuring almost five feet tall by Antwerp artist Jan de Beer. Other notable works—seldom seen outside Europe—include portrait drawings in colored chalks by Hendrick Goltzius and a technically sophisticated pen drawing that imitates engraving by his stepson, Jacob Matham.
The Albertina Museum is among the world’s most superb repositories of Northern Renaissance drawings. Combined with choice examples from the Cleveland Museum of Art’s holdings, the exhibition introduces audiences to the highly engaging works of this era while exploring issues that remain relevant today, such as communal identity and expression, religious conflict and freedom, and the ethics and excesses of wealth.
The exhibition will be accompanied by a major catalogue including catalogue entries and several essays by leading scholars.
Generous support is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation. Additional support is provided by Randall J. and Virginia N. Barbato.
All exhibitions at the Cleveland Museum of Art are underwritten by the CMA Fund for Exhibitions. Principal annual support is provided by Michael Frank in memory of Patricia Snyder. Major annual support is provided by the Womens Council of the Cleveland Museum of Art. Generous annual support is provided by an anonymous supporter, Dick Blum (deceased) and Harriet Warm, Cynthia and Dale Brogan, Dr. Ben and Julia Brouhard, Mr. and Mrs. Walter R. Chapman Jr., Richard and Dian Disantis, the Jeffery Wallace Ellis Trust in memory of Lloyd H. Ellis Jr., Leigh and Andy Fabens, the Sam J. Frankino Foundation, Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn, Carl T. Jagatich, Eva and Rudolf Linnebach, Bill and Joyce Litzler, Carl and Lu Anne Morrison, Henry Ott-Hansen, Mr. and Mrs. Michael F. Resch, Margaret and Loyal Wilson, and Claudia C. Woods and David A. Osage.
The exhibition catalogue for Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel was produced with the generous support of the Tavolozza Foundation.
Generous support of the exhibition symposium is provided by the Robert Lehman Foundation.
This exhibition is supported by an indemnity from the Federal Council on the Arts and the Humanities.