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Excerpt from The Art of the Great Masters, as Exemplified by Drawings, in the Collection of Emile, Wauters, Membre De L'académie Royale De Belgique To discoxer the springs of a painters activities, to trace the progress of his methods, to foreshadow the orbit of his flight and unfold his biography by the aid of the preparatory studies for his finished handiwork what more exhilarating task than this could a student of ait be set? Think of his joy at having a collection of original drawings and sketches by the old masters placed before him, and being told to examine and investigate; think of his gladness on perceiving some fresh glimpse of an artists personality, his delight at each fresh discovery of an idea which blossomed into a masterpiece. Some pages of sketches by Michelangelo first come under his hand. Thought and research reveal the fact that they are the painters initial studies for the figure of the cross-bearer in his Last Jitd Iiiiit and for the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, in Rome. A study by Correggio is discovered to be one of the apostles of the dome of the Cathedral of Parma, a page of pen-and-ink sketches by Paolo Veronese to be the great venetian's first ideas for the erona Ma) tyrc(o)ii of St. George, a composition by an Dyck to be the one he made before painting the Brussels Martyrdom of St. Peter. But hat have we here? Surely a Rubens: one of the original sketches, unless we are greatly mistaken, for his Cottf de Lance in the Antwerp Gallery. And that this series of pen-and-ink studies are by Rembrandt (there is no mistaking his free and lifelike draughtsmanship) is as clear as that this other work is a Holbein a drawing for the famous Dance of Death series, and the only one of the forty which is known to exist; or, again, that this spirited drawing is by Teniers: the preliminary sketch with numerous variants of devils and fantastic animals for the Berlin Temptation of St. Anthony. About the Publisher Forgotten Books