One of the weirdest and most wonderful drawings in the world takes center stage in the Cleveland Museum of Art’s fascinating new international loan exhibition, “Tales of the City: Drawing in the Netherlands from Bosch to Bruegel.’’
'Tales of the City' exhibit at Cleveland Museum of Art explores Netherlandish drawing from Bosch to Bruegel, including "The Tree Man,'' by Jheronimus Bosch, made in 1500-1510.CLEVELAND, Ohio —
In the Albertina drawing, the mood has shifted. The tree man is shown in the midst of a bucolic landscape with a city skyline in the distance. Extending from his giant arms and shoulders, the tree man’s chest cracks open like the shell of an egg to reveal a tavern filled with rowdy drinkers gathered around a table inside.
On view through Sunday, January 8, the free exhibition takes viewers on an extensive tour of life in the 1500s in counties now known as Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg. Across the region, fast-growing mercantile and manufacturing cities such as Antwerp, Bruges, Haarlem, and Amsterdam chafed under Spanish rule, struggled over religious controversies, and confronted moral questions raised by the first wave of capitalism and global trade.
The two drawings by Bosch in the show are rarely exhibited because of their sensitivity to light. A group of drawings by Pieter Bruegel the Elder including scenes of the Last Judgement, “Christ in Limbo,’’ and the sin of sloth, were last exhibited in the U.S. in 2001, she said. Among the most impressive works in the show is a pair of drawings more than 7 feet high that were made in 1515-20 by Jan de Beer of Antwerp as designs for stained glass windows portraying the Biblical figures of Jesse, David, and Solomon, considered by Christians to be antecedents of Christ. The windows have been lost, but the drawings remain.
A trio of sketches by Roelant Savery, one of which is from the Cleveland collection, offer snapshot views of a pair of Bohemian peasants, a seated peasant with a basket, and a peasant riding one of two harnessed horses.