CODART, Dutch and Flemish art in museums worldwide

Lucas Gassel of Helmond

From 10 March 2020 to 7 June 2020 the exhibition Lucas Gassel of Helmond: Master of Landscapes will be on view at Museum Helmond/Kunsthal Helmond. On Monday, 9 March 2020 CODART hosted a CODARTfocus meeting on the eve of this event. The exhibition is the first major retrospective of this sixteenth-century master of landscape painting. Works on loan from around the world will be brought together for the first time.

The CODARTfocus consisted of an in-depth study visit to this monographic exhibition. It provided an opportunity to view the exhibition with its curator Anna Koopstra, who discussed some of the facts involved in the selection and display of the works, with a view to fulfilling the aims of the show: to highlight Gassel’s core oeuvre and to gain a better understanding of the defining features of Gassel’s work. This information will provide a crucial basis for all those wishing to conduct further research into Gassel’s workshop and followers and the many paintings associated with them.

Participants also had the opportunity to visit Museum Helmond and its medieval castle, the construction of which started around 1325. Annemieke Hogervorst, curator at Museum Helmond, provided a guided tour of the building and its late eighteenth-century stucco decorations.

Kasteel Helmond (photo by Johan Bakker – CC 4.0 BY-SA)

In the afternoon we discussed the latest findings regarding the oeuvre of Lucas Gassel while looking at the artworks themselves. Anna Koopstra, Luuk Hoogstede (paintings conservator at SRAL) and Lars Hendrikman (curator at the Bonnefanten Museum, Maastricht) lead the discussion, which examined Gassel’s oeuvre from different angles. Subjects included were the artist’s materials and working methods (based on recent technical examinations, produced for this exhibition, of several of Gassel’s paintings), iconography and artistic context. Since the exhibition is also intended to serve as a point of departure for a fresh look at the artist and his oeuvre, this CODARTfocus meeting generated a lively discussion and provided plenty of food for thought.

CODART members and members of the CVNK  (Contactgroep Vroege Nederlandse Kunst/Network for specialists in Early Netherlandish Art) were invited to attend. Registration was also open for a limited number of art history students (MA, PhD).

Contact CODART

If you have any questions, you are welcome to contact the CODART office:
Brenda Eijkenaar-Schooneveld
events@codart.nl
+31 70 333 9744 (also during the CODARTfocus)

This event was a collaboration between CODART, the Museum Helmond and the Network for Specialists in Early Netherlandish Art. We wish to thank the RKD – Netherlands Institute for Art History, The Hague, for its ongoing support of CODART.