This publication is only available in Dutch.

This lavishly illustrated catalogue is published in conjunction with the exhibition of the same name in Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, 15 October 2016 – 15 January 2017.

The museum has a unique collection of drawings by the Italian Renaissance artist Fra Bartolommeo (1473-1517). For the first time these virtuoso drawings will be reunited with their associated paintings in order to document and illustrate his creative process. The artist worked his ideas out in detail in drawn studies that often contain many corrections and variations, illustrating the dynamics of his creative process. While the drawings trace the artistic thinking of the evolving genius step by step, the paintings, by contrast, are imbued with the calm, monumental Classicist style that typified the early sixteenth century in Italy.

Fra Bartolommeo lived in one of the most turbulent periods in the history of Florence. As the artistic offspring of Giotto, Fra Angelico and Ghirlandaio, and contemporary of Bellini, Perugino, Leonardo, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, Fra Bartolommeo was at the heart of artistic and social developments. His virtuoso skill as a draughtsman and his connection with the painters’ workshop in the San Marco convent, where he was a brother, formed the basis for a stream of religious and prestigious commissions.

All the works in the exhibition feature in the catalogue edited by curator Albert Elen and Fra Bartolommeo specialist Chris Fischer. Four introductory essays explore Fra Bartolommeo’s life and work and his workshop practice, and examine the iconography of the paintings and the collection history of the drawings that ultimately found their way to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. The catalogue was designed by Tessa van der Waals.