Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence

Description

Martyrdom of Saint Lawrence is an early seventeenth-century drawing from the workshop of Peter Paul Rubens, attributed to Anthony van Dyck. A reclining body reaches upward amid an energetic cluster of surrounding figures, with white highlights sharpening the central action. Made after Rubens’s painting, the sheet prepared the composition for Lucas Vorsterman’s engraving, translating the religious scene into carefully divided areas of light and darkness.

The contours were traced with a stylus to transfer the design to the copperplate, leaving the sheet connected to a further stage of making. Its careful tonal divisions helped the engraver interpret the painted image through marks that could be printed. The museum allows the possibility that Van Dyck made the drawing and Rubens retouched it in pen. That qualified account preserves the collaborative character of the work without assigning every passage confidently to a single hand.

Read our guide to giclée prints or browse the Peter Paul Rubens collection.