A number of engravings after paintings of the best-known Flemish artists of the Baroque epoch Peter Paul Rubens and Anthon van Dyck, as well as a Portrait of the burgomaster of Brussel Franciscus van der Ee, recently reattributed to Anthony van Dyck himself will be on view at the Lviv Art Gallery until 20 March 2012. A Portrait of a Man was purchased by the Lviv Art Gallery from the Dushin collection in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) back in 1958. Initially the Portrait was attributed to Peter Paul Rubens, however, doubts over the authorship bof Rubens remained. Recent research, however, showed that the painting is a work of Rubens’ best pupil Anthony van Dyck. An engraving after this portrait, made by Joannes Meyssens can be found in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam.
A number of engravings after paintings by Rubens and van Dyck are also presented at the exhibition, among others by W. Hondius, P. Ballu, S. Bolswert and Pontius P. For example, among the known engravings are the Portrait of Willem Hondius by Hondius himself after van Dyck, the Portrait of Anton Bourbon
by P. Ballu after van Dyck, Salome places the head of St. John on the table by Sc. Bolswert after Rubens as well as Ruben’s own engraving of the Adoration of the Magi. The presented engravings belong to the collection of Lviv National Scientific Library named after V. Stefanyk. These are the items that remained in Lviv from the Ossolineum collection, a public research library and museum founded in November 1817 by J. Ossolinski in Lviv (Lemberg). Significant parts of the Ossolineum collection were moved to Wroclaw (Poland) after WWII, and only a smaller part of the collection remains in Lviv. The engravings are exhibited to the public for the first time.