Jan van der Straet, View of the River Arno in Florence, looking upstream, with fishermen and a river god, around 1575
(Picture: Courtauld Gallery)Blockbuster shows are all very well, but there’s a lot to be said for small exhibitions: more focus, greater opportunity for close scrutiny. The calm space of the drawings room at the Courtauld Gallery is pretty well perfect for its purpose: the presentation of drawings, chiefly from the gallery’s extensive collection. Here are just 16 works, mostly from its 250 Flemish works – it used to be 300 until a Belgian curator, Maarten Bassens, weeded out imports from other countries – with a specific focus on their relation to print and etchings.
The printmaking industry was centred in Antwerp, which had some of the most expert practitioners in Europe. Thus the title, Traces. The technique whereby a drawing is transferred to copper is shown here in two interesting videos, and it does indeed leave outline traces on the wax coating on the metal plate, which is then incised for printing. And drawings that have been incised show traces of the blade and often traces of the grid used to scale the drawing up or down subsequently.
