1978 Articles

L'année Rubens, manifestations et publications en 1977

Freedberg, David A.

The fervor with which the Rubens Year was celebrated may have surprised art historians and the public. Neither Titian in 1976, nor Michelangelo in 1975, nor even Rembrandt in 1969 were celebrated with such brilliance and devotion. The enthusiasm aroused by exhibitions, however unequal, constitutes a phenomenal site, will undoubtedly say, in the future, historians of taste. As for the art historian, a team of specialized bibliographers would not be enough to provide him with the list - not closed - of the exhibitions, or those of the books, reviews, articles published since the bibliography of Prosper Arent, in 1940, or even since David Rosand's clarification of the state of research concerning the drawings of Rubens ' and the remarkably complete account by Müller Hofstede, of the corpus of drawings by Burchard-D'Hulst: published one and other in 1966. I will therefore deal here only with a few of the essential aspects of the Rubens year, examine the questions they pose and offer some directions for research.