Volume 25, Number 3 · March 9, 1978
The Life-giving Touch
By Ernst Gombrich
P.P.Rubens: Paintings, Oilsketches, Drawings June 29-September 30, 1977
Catalogue of the Exhibition, Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts,
387, 173 items pp., 150 Belgian francs
P.P.Rubens
by Frans Baudouin, translated by Elsie Callander
Harry N. Abrams, 405, 181 black and white illustrations, 95 color plates pp., $60.00
Rubens
compiled and with an introduction by Keith Roberts
Phaidon (Oxford)/Dutton, 96, 108 illustrations pp., $7.95 (paper)
Rubens and Italy
by Michael Jaffé
Cornell University Press, 128, 346 black and white illustrations, 16 color plates pp., $55.00
Rubens, Drawings and Sketches in the British Museum, 1977 Publications Limited
by John Rowlands. Catalogue of an Exhibition at the Department of Prints and Drawings
Published for the Trustees of the British Museum by British Museum, £3
Arriving at the Antwerp railway station last September, during the fourth centenary of the birth of Rubens, the visitor was greeted by a large display with the words RUBENS'S HOME TOWN WELCOMES YOU. If he turned to a restaurant recommended by the tourist agency he was offered a 'Rubens Menu,' with 'Rubens steak' and a Flemish dish named 'Helena' for this occasion (after the master's second wife Hélène Fourment). Making one's way to the Royal Museum of Fine Arts where the Rubens exhibition occupied the ground floor, one found the entrance blocked by two sheer endless lines winding around the building, one reserved for organized tours and school parties, the other for individual visitors. Reaching the gates after an hour or so, and having paid one's fee, one discovered, of course, that the waiting was not yet over. Jostling crowds enlivened by boisterous schoolchildren had also formed in front of every individual painting, particularly in the first rooms.
Review, 4680 words
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