Rocznik Muzeum Narodowego w Warszawie (3(39).2014)

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Attribution and Technological Research on Old Master Paintings and Drawings

the drawing process, departing from the available - perhaps commissioned - model. Could
this artist be Rubens?
The matter which still raises controversy is the amount of detail in the drawing, not found
in most of Rubens’s compositional designs for paintings. Understandably, this has been the
principal (if not the only) reason for regarding the Warsaw drawing as a copy. The vast majority
of Rubens’s drawings serving as first concept sketches for paintings are indeed very laconic.
They have even been given their own name within his diverse oeuvre: crabbelingen, “scrib-
bles.” The nature of these sketches may be explained by their role in the multi-stage process
of creating a painting in the artist’s studio (from the initial sketch, through a more detailed oil
sketch and anatomical drawings depicting individual figures from the group or fragments of
their bodies, to the finished painting) - they were the first, spontaneous and quick drawings.
As such, they were not suitable to be given to assistants who were to execute the painting,
or - all the more so - to be presented to the patron. Rubens himself admitted it: “Please be
advised that the final work will be very different from these drawings, which are lightly and
quickly put on paper to give merely an idea, but later we will make the sketches and also the
painting with all possible care and diligence.”66 In order to give an example of this type of
sketch, let us recall the one from Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, depicting a historical scene
once interpreted as the condemnation of Joan of Arc (fig. 12).67 The Warsaw drawing cannot
be counted among the crabbelingen, neither is it a “neat” compositional drawing68 (executed
based on a more concise sketch in order to be presented to the commissioner), as proved by
the alterations of the position of the legs and other small corrections. This is an example of a
work, in which - to borrow the words of Anne-Marie Logan used elsewhere - the artist was
thinking with his pen, looking for the best compositional solutions.69 Changes introduced in
the course of creating the drawing indicate an original work and not a copy. In my opinion,
here again we have a justification for attributing the Warsaw sheet to Rubens. However, the
circumstances of preparing the sketch also have to be taken into account.
Already in her volume of Corpus Rubenianum, Elizabeth McGrath noted the interest in
Joan of Arc c. 1620 in the circle of Rubens.70 In her opinion, the fact that the artist should have
created a “historically accurate image,” which in so many respects depends on the Orléans
statue, could be associated with the initiative undertaken by Charles du Lys (c. 1560 - before
1632), who in 1613 published the first group of proposed inscriptions that were to appear on
the monument.71 Subsequent verses were obtained with the assistance of Nicolas-Claude

66 Peter Paul Rubens, King David Playing the Harp, c. 1612, pen and brown ink and brown wash, 18.1 x 15 cm,
inv. no. 20.221, Cabinet du Dessins, Musée du Louvre (inscription below composition). See Anne-Marie Logan in
collaboration with Michiel C. Plomp, Peter Paul Rubens. The Drawings, exh. cat., The Metropolitan Museum of Art,
2005 (New York-New Haven, 2005), p. 7.
67 Peter Paul Rubens, Historical Scene (The Condemnation of Joan of Arc!'), pen and brown ink, 19.2 x 26.2 cm,
inv. no. KdZ 5397, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin Preussischer Kulturbesitz (Kupferstichkabinett), Berlin. See Hans
Mielke, Matthias Winner, Peter Paul Rubens. Kritischer Katalog der Zeichnungen. Originale, Umkreis, Kopien (Berlin,
1977), PP- 62-64, cat- no-I^> fig- I^v- Cf- McGrath, op. cit., vol. 2, p. 321.
68 Logan, Plomp, op. cit., pp. 7-9.
69 Ibid., p. 136.
70 McGrath, op. cit., vol. 2, pp. 320-21.
71 Charles du Lys, Recueil de plusieurs inscriptions pour les statues du roy Charles VII et de la Pucelle d'Orléans
qui sont eslevées... sur le pont de la ville d’Orléans, dès l’an iqy8, et de diverses poésiesfaictes à la louange de la mesme
Pucelle (Paris, 1613).