 questions about social history—the sourcing, cost, and distribution of paper, for example—but can also reveal letter writers’ highly personal tendencies.
In the next few years, the Rubenianum hopes to initiate the fundamental on-the-ground research and documentation of Rubens’s correspondence in order to provide an important resource for scholars and the public. Archives are cultural repositories that are ripe for new exploration, documentation, dissemination, and interpretation in our digital age. Building on the “art history of the archive” that some scholars have begun to invoke, the Rubenianum aims to contribute to an even broader “cultural history of the archive,” whereby such archival materials as letters are viewed for their own material properties and as conveyers of information, with both the material and immaterial qualities pointing outward toward a range of questions of relevance in cultural history and modern society. By viewing the
archive in this way, the Rubenianum would hope to achieve its goal of gathering, preserving, and making accessible the raw materials of Rubens’s correspondence, contextualized with documentation to facilitate study.
Abigail D. Newman is Research Advisor at the Rubenianum, Antwerp and Professor at the University of Antwerp.
1 “Met myn heer Rubbens hebbe gesproken, ende opentlijck geseght van hondert pattacons die U.L. soude willen besteden: waerop antwoorde dat geen van drye subjecten onder de twee hondert pattacons soude konnen maecken midts te vol wercks zijn. Bij soo verre U.L. Diana met twee nymphen soude begheeren geschildert te hebben, ofte eenige andere materie van twee oft dry persoonen, soude U.L. seer geerne dienen voor dese voorschreven hondert pattacons.” Max Rooses and Charles Ruelens, Correspondance de Rubens et documents épistolaires concernant sa vie et ses oeuvres, 6 vols., Antwerp: De Backer/Buschmann, 1887–1909, vol. V, p. 333, no. DCLXXXV; MPM Arch. 142, pp. 152–53).