Maarten van Heemskerck: The Roman Sketchbook

Between 1532 and 1536/37, the Dutch artist Maarten van Heemskerck traveled to Rome, strolled through the city, visited art collections and antique gardens, made pilgrimages to the holy sites, and filled his sketchbook with drawings. Most of the sheets created there and now kept in Berlin come from a sketchbook whose original binding has been lost. The latest art-technological investigations at the Berlin Kupferstichkabinett have now largely reconstructed the original sequence of the book's pages. This forms the basis of the present facsimile. In his fascinating studies, Van Heemskerck captur ed ancient sculptures and ruins, the admired art of Michelangelo and Raphael, and Roman cityscapes. In doing so, he demonstrated a special flair for composition and perspective as well as an extraordinary drawing sensibility. In the sketchbook, the artist found his personal field of experimentation and at the same time created a valuable pool of motifs from which he would draw throughout his life. Tatjana Bartsch has been Deputy Head of the Photographic Collection at the Bibliotheca Hertziana - Max Planck Institute for Art History since 2011. Christien Melzer has been curator for Dutch and English art before 1800 at the Kupferstichkabinett of the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin since 2020.