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Figure 1
Jan van EYCK · Portrait of Cardinal Albergati · silverpoint on grayish-white prepared paper, 212 X 180 mm.
Dresden, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen

acterization pointing to developments in the later art of Flanders. Both drawings are closely related to the art of manuscript illumination and may have been prepared in a workshop like the one shown in the scene of a scribe writing ( Plate 3 ), dating from the late fifteenth century.

Jan van Eyck's magnificent delineation of his Italian patron, Cardinal Albergati, is perhaps the most important portrait drawing of all time--never before was there such mastery of the silverpoint technique or such a vivacious and at the same time, eternal evocation of the sitter ( Figure 1 ). Perhaps drawn in a single session, it is covered with color notations for the artist's use in preparing the painting now in Vienna. As is the case with many portrait studies, the artist's initial sketch is a more personal statement than the meticulously finished oil painting for which it was made.

The same concern for conveying a sense of the play of light and of subtle gradations can be seen in two beautiful drawings by Rogier van der Weyden, the Virgin and Child ( Plate 4 ) and St. Mary Magdalene ( Plate 5 ). These, together with portrait drawings from the followers of Dirk Bouts ( Plate 7 ) and Petrus Christus ( Plate 6 ) continue the luminous explorations begun by Eyckian art. In contrast are the drawings in pen and ink of Mary and St. John ( Plate 9 ) and Men Shoveling Chairs ( Plate 8 ). Both have a deliberately sculptural quality, as though they were drawn from or toward works in wood or stone. Less concerned with careful modulation than with directed motion and emotion, these ink studies have much of the brute force of the later art of Bosch and Bruegel.

Hugo van der Goes' The Meeting of Jacob and Rachel ( Plate 11 ) shared the new breadth of pictorial reference which was the Renaissance. More elaborate than most drawings before the middle of the century, it combined toned paper with pen, ink and wash, heightened with white--providing references to color and texture, light and shade, in a study that defines the plastic quali-

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Publication Information: Book Title: Drawings of the Masters: Flemish & Dutch Drawings from the 15th to the 18th Century. Contributors: Colin T. Eisler - author. Publisher: Shorewood Publishers. Place of Publication: New York. Publication Year: 1963. Page Number: 12.
    
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