Battle of Nude Men

Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Artist, Flemish, 1577 - 1640

Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Attributed to

Drawn with brown ink and black chalk on buff-colored paper, the whole bodies or parts of bodies of at least eleven muscular, nude men fight across this horizontally oriented sheet. In a vignette to the left, one man lifts a club high overhead as two men cower at his feet. Next to that, a man slices the head from a prone victim. Next, a man holds hands overhead as he pins another prone man on the ground with a foot to the neck. Others struggle to get up, lie injured, or swing weapons. One disembodied head is at the top center of the composition, and a pile of armor with a shield, a bow, quiver and arrows, and a sword are near the lower right corner. The four corners of the paper appear to have been cut and then the bits of paper replaced next to the main sheets.

Media Options

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Artwork overview

  • Medium

    pen and brown ink over black chalk on four irregularly cut pieces of two types of buff laid paper; laid down and with corner pieces added

  • Credit Line

    Julius S. Held Collection, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund

  • Dimensions

    support: 14.1 x 25.2 cm (5 9/16 x 9 15/16 in.)

  • Accession Number

    1984.3.57


Artwork history & notes

Provenance

Julius S. Held

Associated Names

Exhibition History

1970

  • Selections from the Drawing Collection of Mr. and Mrs. Julius S. Held, University Art Gallery, Binghamton; traveling exhibition, 1970, no. 39.

2005

  • Rubens: A Master in the Making, The National Gallery, London, 2005 - 2006, no. 6.

2017

  • Rubens: The Power of Transformation, Kunsthistorisches Museum Wien, Vienna; Städelsches Kunstinstitut und Städtische Galerie, Frankfurt, 2017, no. 9.

Bibliography

1966

  • Jaffe 1966, p.51.

1978

  • Logan, Anne-Marie. "Some Early Drawings by Rubens." Gentse Bijdragen tot de Kunstgeschiedenis 24 (1976-1978):105-107, fig. 1.

1979

  • Master drawings from the Collection of Ingrid and Julius S. Held. Exh cat. Burlington, VT, Robert Hull Fleming Museum 1979: 9.

Inscriptions

across top verso in red chalk: Giulio Romano

Wikidata ID

Q64632554


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