Bruegel in Black and White: Three Grisailles Reunited - Exhibition and accompanying catalogue
- Submitting institution
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Courtauld Institute of Art
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 89
- Type
- M - Exhibition
- Venue(s)
- The Courtauld Gallery, London
- Open access status
- -
- Month of first exhibition
- February
- Year of first exhibition
- 2016
- URL
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- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
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- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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- Research group(s)
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- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- The output Bruegel in Black and White: Three Grisailles Reunited is a curatorial project consisting of an exhibition (The Courtauld, London, 4 February – 8 May 2016) and a catalogue.
The portfolio has two components:
1) The catalogue Serres, ed., Bruegel in Black and White: Three Grisailles Reunited (The Courtauld/ Paul Holberton Publishing, 2016). Serres authored the essay (4,000 words) and 8 entries (7,000 words total; two were co-authored). The catalogue was designed to be a long-term scholarly resource on the subject.
2) A dossier illustrating: the range of research undertaken; installation views showing how the research was communicated through the exhibition and evidence of scholarly reception.
The aim of Serres’s research was to shed light on a small but important part of the oeuvre of Pieter Bruegel the Elder (c. 1525-1569). Of the 40 works attributed to him, three belong to the unusual genre of grisaille. Serres’s research was threefold: it 1) considered the works from a historical and technical point of view within the particular genre of monochrome painting, practiced in Northern Europe and Italy from the Middle Ages; 2) situated them within Bruegel’s production and 3) elucidated their legacy after the artist’s death. Serres’s research demonstrated that these works are the earliest known independent grisailles in Europe and were intended for a specific audience of Bruegel’s friends and art lovers who revelled both in the painterly tour de force and in dissecting their multilayered meaning.
The exhibition, devised and curated by Serres, brought together Bruegel’s three grisailles for the very first time, enabling their direct comparison. It included painted copies and prints after these works to understand their relationship and dissemination. Finally, it displayed grisailles by contemporary Northern painters to demonstrate the unique character of Bruegel’s work in technique, style and subject matter.
- Author contribution statement
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- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
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