The Assumption of the Virgin

This drawing is a typical, particularly lively work by Abraham van Diepenbeeck. As so often with the artist, his main source of inspiration can be found in the œuvre of Peter Paul Rubens, in this case the latter’s celebrated altarpiece of the Assumption of the Virgin in Antwerp cathedral, in which both the Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist are depicted in similar poses. Van Diepenbeeck successfully adapted the movement and monumentality of Rubens’s picture to the much smaller scale and round format of his drawing. Other roundels by Van Diepenbeeck can be connected to dishes for ewers in silver or gold (see S. Alsteens in From Floris to Rubens. Master Drawings from a Belgian Private Collection, exhib. cat., Brussels, Musées Royaux des-Beaux-Arts, and Maastricht, Bonnefantenmuseum, 2016, under no. 76). The religious subject matter makes such a connection unlikely for the present sheet; rather, it could be a design for a glass roundel. Van Diepenbeeck, the son of a glass painter, was himself active in this field, although very little of his output in the medium survives.