David Freedberg
Rubens was a great and varied draughtsman. One could call him ecumenical in his extraordinary stylistic range and his engagement with the work of his predecessors and his contemporaries. But Rubens was also a politician and diplomat, who worked towards the reconciliation of religious and political difference. In this lecture, David Freedberg, Pierre Matisse Professor of the History of Art at Columbia University and Director of the Italian Academy for Advanced Studies in America, will demonstrate how the drawings in the exhibition Power and Grace: Drawings by Rubens, Van Dyck, and Jordaens reveal not just his artistic virtuosity, but his efforts to seek peace in his time.