Bruegel to Rubens: Great Flemish Drawings review

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.