Prado Museum Presents Major Rubens Exhibition and Italian Stone Paintings

The Museo del Prado in Madrid is hosting two concurrent exhibitions exploring lesser-known aspects of 16th-century painting. The main show, "Rubens, Painter of Sketches," features 73 oil sketches by Peter Paul Rubens, who is credited as the inventor of the oil sketch on panel. Curated by Alejandro Vergara and Friso Lammertse, the exhibition includes works from the Louvre, Hermitage, National Gallery, and Metropolitan Museum of Art, alongside drawings and prints. The sketches range from studies for the Jesuit Church ceiling in Antwerp to the Achilles series and the Eucharist series for the Monastery of Las Descalzas Reales. A second exhibition, "In Lapide Depictum," presents nine paintings on stone by Italian artists from 1530–1555, including Sebastiano del Piombo, Titian, Daniele da Volterra, and Leandro Bassano. Curated by Ana González Mozo, it explores the technique of painting on slate and marble, with loans from the Museo di Capodimonte. Both exhibitions run until August 5, 2018, at the Prado, with the Rubens show traveling to Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam in September.