Demystifying Drawings #15
The Italian Drawings of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, with Rosie Razall
Workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli (c. 1420-1497), Studies after plaster casts of feet, page from the Gozzoli Album, c. 1450-60. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection), inv. no. I 562 5 verso
Fra Bartolommeo (1472-1517), Studies of a Young Man Leaning on a Pedestal, and Five Heads, c. 1515. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection), inv. no. I 563 M 3
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam houses one of the world’s finest collections of Italian Renaissance drawings. Between 2018 and 2023 these drawings were systematically researched and catalogued with the support of the Getty Paper Project, culminating in a flurry of activity in 2024.
In May 2024, the 15th- and 16th-century Italian drawings were published in a free, open-access online collection catalogue. In October 2024, a loan exhibition of 120 drawings from the collection, titled Naissance et Renaissance du Dessin Italien, opened to acclaim at the Fondation Custodia in Paris. The exhibition is accompanied by a physical catalogue, Italian Renaissance Drawings from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, and continues until January 12, 2025. To top it all off, in late November 2024, another exhibition, Secrets of Italian Drawings, opened at Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, continuing until March 23, 2025. Because, clearly, one exhibition wasn’t enough!
Rosie Razall, Curator of Drawings at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam, joins the editor to discuss the outcomes of the research project, the historic links between Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen and the Fondation Custodia, and the drawing she’d most like to take home with her
Drawings dating to the first half of the 15th century are vanishingly rare, and this area is one of the strongest features of the collection at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. How do these drawings come to be in the collection?
The core of the Boijmans drawings collection came about thanks to the efforts of the German-born banker and collector Franz Koenigs. He moved to Haarlem for business in the early 1920s and spent the next decade assembling a collection of astonishing quality. It included almost 400 drawings by Fra Bartolommeo from the collection of Niccolò Gabburri, then still housed in two of his albums. Other strengths are the early Venetian drawings; the only drawing attributed to Giorgione; and a wealth of drawings from the Tintoretto workshop. At the time that Koenigs was building his collection, Italian art of the fifteenth century and earlier was receiving renewed attention from scholars such as Bernard Berenson and Roberto Longhi. Ger Luijten once described Koenigs’ interest, shared also by fellow collector Frits Lugt, as part of a prevailing taste for ‘the earlier the better’. He bought, for example, 13 drawings by Pisanello, sheets by Gentile Bellini and Vittore Carpaccio, a drawing attributed to Donatello, and an album of studies from the workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli. An enthusiasm for ‘rediscovering’ drawings from the 14th and 15th centuries nevertheless led to some overoptimistic attributions. For example, Koenigs had a drawing that he, and Charles Loeser before him, believed was the only surviving sheet by Piero della Francesca. That drawing didn’t make it into the Paris exhibition, but other early sheets acquired by Koenigs were given attributions for the first time during the cataloguing project. A previously anonymous drawing now attributed to Niccolò di Pietro Gerini is the first work you see in the exhibition.
The project to catalogue the Italian drawings brought together an impressive roster of experts, and the list of contributors to the online collection catalogue reads like a ‘supergroup’ of today’s leading drawings scholars. What surprises and discoveries emerged from these collaborative research efforts?
The catalogue was a true collaborative effort, not only from those who wrote text entries for the online or exhibition catalogues, but also those who attended our ‘expert meetings’ to offer their opinions, or who responded with thoughts or advice over email. I’m convinced that this is the way to conduct such a catalogue, so that as many ideas and research leads come to the table as possible before publication. Sometimes we found there were two completely contrasting ideas about an attribution, but mostly when it concerned a difficult drawing it was reassuring to find that everyone else was as stumped as we were.
We made a number of exciting discoveries during the cataloguing process, several of which are included in the exhibition. As well as the Gerini attribution, we have a newly reattributed study of an angel for an Annunciation by Pontormo, a drawing by Parri Spinelli that has escaped scholarship so far, a muscular nude attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi, a new sheet by Lazzaro Bastiani, and a mysterious study of a pilgrim, which we still haven’t been able to attribute but wanted to include so that people can see it and decide for themselves. Other drawings are not reattributed but are published for the first time, such as a drawing by Giulio Romano, or have not been published in many years.
Two exhibitions, comprised exclusively of drawings from the collection, are being held simultaneously: one in Paris and the other in Rotterdam. How will the new findings be presented across the two exhibitions, and in what ways do the exhibitions differ?
Each exhibition has been conceived for its location and audience. The idea for an exhibition of the most important Italian drawings from the Boijmans collection as a fitting conclusion to the Getty Paper Project-funded catalogue, was initiated by my predecessor and co-author, Albert Elen, together with Ger Luijten. Curator Maud Guichané and I were able to continue with the plans under Hans Buijs and Stijn Alsteens. We made a selection of 120 highlights and planned an exhibition catalogue that would make use of the texts that had already been written for online. The motive for this was very simple: to showcase the strengths of the Rotterdam collection, which apart from the Fra Bartolommeo drawings and some other well-known sheets, is still full of surprises for drawings enthusiasts. In Paris we kept things approximately chronological, with drawings grouped together according to their regional geography. We felt this was the best way to gain an overview of a collection that is still to a certain extent unknown.
Marco Basaiti (c. 1470-1530), Rocky Landscape with Hills and a City on a Lake, c. 1505-10. Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs collection), inv. no. I 481 (PK)
I always thought it was a shame that because of our museum closure the exhibition wouldn’t be seen in Rotterdam (after Paris, a smaller selection of 70 works heads to the Morgan Library & Museum in New York in 2026). Depot Boijmans Van Beuningen, our publicly accessible storage building which opened next to the museum in 2021, was the perfect place to take a different approach. In the exhibition there, we take the visitor behind the scenes of what we have been up to over the last 6 years of the cataloguing project. Drawings are seen through the eyes of a researcher: how blue paper suggests an artist from Venice, whereas metalpoint on prepared paper is more likely to mean an artist from Florence; how to identify left- or right-handed hatching; how to interpret collector’s stamps, or different types of damage on the sheet; even how to identify a forgery. My colleagues Esmé van der Krieke, Fleurance van Wakeren and I had a lot of fun putting this together. We made sure to include great drawings by great artists – Fra Bartolommeo of course, and Tintoretto, Veronese, Pisanello – but we were also able to show drawings that are unlikely ever to be requested on loan, but are great examples of the points we were making about how to look at a drawing.
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen has been closed for renovation since May 2019. What makes the Fondation Custodia the most logical institution to partner with?
Fondation Custodia has a very special place in the drawings world: as a touchstone of intellectual rigour for the scholarly community as well as a place where the subtleties of the drawing medium are celebrated. This is seen in their beautifully crafted exhibition programme and all the elegant apparatus that goes along with it, from their vernissage invitations to their postcards. It was an honour to be able to show our drawings at an institution which already shares close links with the Boijmans. In 2014, the Fondation hosted a selection of highlights from the Boijmans’ Netherlandish drawings, Bosch to Bloemaert. The Italian drawings exhibition might loosely be considered a sequel to that show. Another important reason for us to collaborate again is that Lugt and Koenigs were friends and direct contemporaries, and were building their collections at the same time. There are many parallels (and diversions) in their respective drawings collections.
If you had to choose one drawing from the exhibitions to take home with you, what would it be and why?
For a drawing that engages my attention again and again, it has to be the pen and ink landscape by Marco Basaiti, which has a view of a city in the centre of the sheet and mountains behind. The foreground is occupied by a rocky landscape, which is reduced to rough outlines and hatching. It almost looks like two separate landscapes, until you notice the bridge connecting the rocks and trees with the isolated city. It’s a drawing where the mark-making and the subject are constantly jostling with each other for attention, in the most satisfying way. But there’s way too much light in my Rotterdam flat, much better for plants than Venetian landscape drawings!
What dates should readers mark for their diaries, and when will Museum Boijmans van Beuningen reopen to the public?
A few weeks ago we had the good news that the funding for the museum renovation has been secured from Rotterdam city council and other sources. This means we can move forward with the next phase of the renovation, and the museum is scheduled to reopen in 2030. In the intervening time - which always passes more quickly than you think! - my goal is to ensure that the entire drawings collection (19,000 objects) is online in time for the reopening. I am always in need of funding support for this endeavour. As well as working on the ongoing exhibition programme in the Depot, I want to buy some new drawings worthy of joining the existing collection. Rotterdam has been waiting a long time for its beloved museum to reopen so I want to make sure it does so with a fresh look on the drawings collection.
