Rare Rubens notebook sheet goes on display in artist’s home city of Antwerp

More than 400 years ago, the up and coming Flemish painter Peter Paul Rubens toured the streets of Rome, notebook in hand, sketching images from Renaissance works adorning the city’s churches and palazzos. Now a rare sheet, thought to be from his Roman sketchbook, has gone on display in his home city of Antwerp, shedding new light on the baroque master. Unveiled to the public for the first time is a unique double-sided sheet featuring a drawing on one side and a partial draft letter on the reverse. The curator of the Rubenshuis museum, An Van Camp, thinks it probably came from a sketchbook that Rubens used during his time in Rome, where he lived with his brother Philip near the Spanish Steps. On one side is a quick, spontaneous sketch in brown ink of three men in classical robes, thought to be apostles. At the top of the page are a few thick jagged lines, assumed to be Rubens testing his quill pen. The three figures are not known to appear in any Rubens work and it is not clear whether the artist imagined them or copied something he had seen in Rome. The reverse is an incomplete draft letter to an Italian painter, Cristoforo Roncalli, who had been commissioned by their mutual patron, Eleonora de’ Medici, the duchess of Mantua, to paint a work for her private chapel. Rubens was employed as a painter to the Mantua court between 1600 and 1608. The reverse side of the notebook sheet. Photograph: Rubenshuis (long-term loan from the King Baudouin Foundation). …