The Blue Landscapes: A group of early sixteenth-century landscape drawings reconsidered

Abstract

This Master thesis concerns a group of five Netherlandish sixteenth-century landscape drawings on colored ground paper that belong together regarding style, technique, size, composition and figure type, here called the Blue Landscapes. This study investigates their coherence, dating, function and attribution through placing them within the broader developments of landscape painting and the use of drawings in the sixteenth century. It thus reconsiders their putative attribution and their alleged importance for the genesis of landscape and the emancipation of drawing.