Bruegel to Rubens: a rare opportunity to see 'outstanding' art

Between them, Antwerp's Museum Plantin-Moretus and the Ashmolean in Oxford own some of the most "outstanding" holdings of 16th and 17th century Flemish drawings, said Jackie Wullschläger in the FT.

Including masterpieces by the likes of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Anthony van Dyck and Peter Paul Rubens, the museums' respective collections of these works stretch to the hundreds. The two institutions have pooled their resources to stage a joint display of the "crème de la crème" – many of which have never been shown in public. First presented in Antwerp, the show has now travelled to Oxford, and marks the first time the Ashmolean has dedicated an event to its Flemish works. Bringing together more than 100 drawings from both museums, plus some exquisite loans, the result is an exhibition in which "exuberance bursts from every sheet". It celebrates a moment when a "distinctive" Flemish cultural identity, "outward-bound, built on flourishing trade and scientific inquiry", was formed.

There's a lot of "sex and violence in this entertaining exhibition", said Alastair Sooke in The Telegraph. We see "a brutish torturer" extracting a martyr's teeth with pliers; "inebriated, lusty peasants" dancing "whirligig jigs"; a "group of half-naked and ecstatic women and girls" sacrificing an ass; and Neptune groping a virgin's breast. There are surprises at every turn, and many of the highlights come from the hand of anonymous or unfamiliar artists. One depicts a "glistening" earthworm "seemingly slithering across a paper sheet". Elsewhere, the little-known Jan Siberechts studies "an old gnarled oak, bulging with orifice-like lumps and surreal bumps". The wall texts, by contrast, are sober, focusing on artistic technique, compositional studies, vellum, blue laid paper and the like. It's all very educational, although arguably it "doesn't really capture the lively, curious spirit everywhere on display".

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There are so many highlights here that it hardly matters, said Laura Cumming in The Observer. Bruegel's contributions do not disappoint: a 1554 ink landscape gives us "hasy summer trees" and "a cow turning its head placidly" as if "interrupted chewing the cud". A later etching of one of his drawings provides the show's most "irreducibly weird" moment, depicting the temptations of St Anthony spilling forth from a giant head: "men emptying pots from the mouth, a heron pecking hungrily at one eye". 

Elsewhere, Johannes Fijt pictures a dog "bristling across a page of tinted watercolour as if in pursuit of a disappearing cat", while Rubens thrills with two dozen pictures, among them a portrait of the Earl of Arundel that records its subject "eyelash by tendril by whisker by hair". Most of these drawings are too "fragile" to be shown on permanent public display. Do not miss this rare opportunity to see them.

Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (ashmolean.org). Until 23 June

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