German and Netherlandish drawings 1350-1500

The project aims at compiling German, Bohemian, Netherlandish and French. Late Gothic drawings covering the period form 1350 up to 1500, i.e. the beginnings of the Renaissance, the great majority of which is still untreated. The materials in question comprise more than 2,000 German, ca. 700 Netherlandish and about 300 French and Bohemian drawings. Such drawings are often misjudged both in collections as well as in the art market and literature, so that it seems necessary to treat them within one project. In this way, it will be possible to separate French and Bohemian materials from German and Dutch ones on more convincing grounds, and to distinguish more distinctly between Austria and other German regions of artistic production. It is planned to establish a worldwide record of these drawings within a multivolumed work, subdivided according to regions (similar to the Corpus of Italian drawings 1350-1500 by B. Degenhart and A. Schmitt, 12 vls., Berlin 1968- 1990). The corpus envisaged is supposed to contain illustrations of the entire number of works plus a catalogue of the drawings with scientific investigations considering artistic individuality. Chapters serving as introductions into the various sections should outline regional artistic peculiarities, developments, influences, etc. as concisely and at the same time as clearly as possible. For the sake of comprehensibility, explanatory chapters are supposed to be included for marginal fields of drawing, such as book illustration, architectural drawings, sinopias or infrared reflectography, as far as required.

The results of the project so far confirm that the chosen method of compiling and cataloguing the German drawings according to their local origin but the Netherlandish drawings following the style of the leading artists of early netherlandish 15th century painting is the most adequate way to cope with the material. The exhibition "Early Nehterlandish Drawings, from Jan van Eyck to Hieronymus Bosch" in Antwerp (Rubenshuis, April-June 2004) offered the chance to present method and achievements of the project so far. The show included fifty of the most important Netherlandish drawings of the 15th century. The exhibition and its catalogue presented the artistic individuality of the main masters and their effect on pupils and followers in the way the project is planned. Dr. Erwin Pokorny collaborated in an exhibition hold Dresden 2005 and contributed to the catalogue with his research about the Master of Absalom, a prolific draftsman from the circle of Hieronymus Bosch. Papers by the Corpus-team about the localisation and dating of important drawings were published in scholarly periodicals (see list of publications by the Corpus-team). The examination, documentation and scholarly research on early Netherlandish drawings has now progressed so far that the editing of the first volume (including Hieronymus Bosch and his circle) could start. The early German drawings - which number of aproximately 2500 works - are even less documented than the Netherlandish drawings. But up to now the systematic and comprehensive documantation of the German drawings from public and private collections all over the world has already resulted in some important new insights. Comprehensive analysis and comparison of the in their majority anonymous works of art allows to arrange and group them according to their distinguishing marks of regional style. The research on the German drawings will be easier than on the Netherlandish ones. Though, the amount of German drawings is by far higher and the team is small. The claim and the aim to accomplish a reference book is still maintained. The Corpus-volumes will serve not only collegues in graphic collections, but also collectors, art dealers and auctioneers. Specialists on painting and sculpture will profit as well as students or interested laymen. The volumes will fill a gap of arthistorical documentation and intend to make the history and development of German and Netherlandish drawing accessible to specialists just as well as to the interested public.