Fig. 1. Left to right: Dr Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, Queen Beatrice of the Netherlands, and Museum Director Dr Gerard de Kleijn, at the opening of the exhibition.
A new exhibition about the sixteenth- and seventeenth- century cartoons for the famous stained glass windows of the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda (Netherlands) has opened at the city museum and will run until 9 April.
Called ‘Sketches of Beauty’ it shows some of the preparatory cartoons of the famous 72 windows of the church started in 1555 by the brothers Dirck (1510-1572) and Wouter Crabeth; a unique collection as nowhere else in the world have so many full sized cartoons for stained glass of this period been preserved.
Fig. 2. Detail of cartoon.
An excellent book to accompany the exhibition has descriptions and illustrations of every drawing together with information about the draughtsmen who made them. The authors include Dr Zsuzsanna van Ruyven-Zeman, the President of the Dutch Committee of the Corpus Vitrearum.
For further information about the exhibition visit the website.
Cartoons of the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda by Zsuzsanna Van Ruyven-Zeman, Arjan R. De Koomen, Antonie L. H. Hage, and Jan Piet Filedt Kok is published by Eburon Academic Publishers, price € 39,95 (€ 44,95 from February 22, 2012). It has 320 pages, and 218 colour plates. Copies are available via Amazon.
Fig. 3. Cartoons of the Sint-Janskerk in Gouda.
For more information about the windows visit this website.
