New insights into Antwerp's Old Masters in Dresden

The Flemish masters of the 17th century already relied on teamwork, cooperation and exchange: an exhibition at Dresden's Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister uses the latest, as yet unpublished research findings to show how famous artists and their painting workshops joined forces and worked together by hand in organized work processes. For the show "Teamwork in Antwerp!", the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen (SKD) was able to draw on its own holdings - with the exception of six loans from museums and private collections.

"The majority of the works have not been on display since the Second World War," said SKD Director General Bernd Ebert. Until October 5, 53 paintings and 28 drawings and prints are on display in the Semperbau. More than half of the 49 Dresden paintings have been in storage for decades. Some from the workshops of the Bruegel and Francken families have never been shown before, said curator Uta Neidhardt. She has been researching the entire Flemish painting collection for years and the show focuses on the famous Bruegel, van Balen and Francken families.

The painters formed networks, they cooperated with each other within their families and their workshops cooperated with competitors in the production of cabinet paintings. "The affluent middle class wanted small precious objects instead of large altarpieces or history paintings," said Neidhardt. In view of the growing demand for small-format landscape paintings, floral still lifes, paintings with biblical scenes or mythological figure paintings, artists focused on efficiency and quality.

Director General: "many treasures to be unearthed"

The exhibition testifies to the wealth of the SKD, said the Director General. There are "endless treasures to be unearthed" in the collections, he said, through teamwork. "We have the collections, we have the expertise, we can exhibit this here in one place, from our own holdings with world-class objects, without loans as a prerequisite for success."

The masterpieces vividly illustrate how collaboration was organized, who was involved and how the paintings were created. Copies by assistants, students or itinerant workers are sometimes difficult to distinguish from the original and are "actually versions of it", said Neidhardt.

45 paintings, including "The Sermon of John the Baptist" by Pieter Bruegel the Elder, were examined in detail from a technical and art-historical perspective as part of the research project. Its restoration, which can be seen in the exhibition, showed "that it is an outstanding version of the known 36 repetitions after the original", said Neidhardt. Another highlight is the very rare and rarely exhibited pen and ink drawing "The Gooseherd" by the artist from the Dresden Kupferstich-Kabinett. It can be found again and again in paintings.