© Ashmolean Museum
Sienese trecento. Wing of a diptych of Gothic shape, relief work in gesso, a gold background. One of 8 gifts to the Ashmolean, Fitzwilliam and Wallace Collection by F A Drey through the Art Fund between 1938 and 1943.
Nominally inspired by Lucretius' De rerum natura, Piero di Cosimo's The Forest Fire takes its scientific subject and embellishes it with fantastical creatures from the artist's imagination: Bulls, bears, lions and deer-like creatures with human faces all flee wearily from a fire.
Rubens' portrait of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel dates from about 1629. The Earl was a great collector, and Rubens had painted the earl's wife a few years earlier on a visit to Antwerp. This drawing in pen and ink with a chalk base is unusually informal, reflecting perhaps the comfortable relationship between artist and patron.
