Curtis_O_Baer_2010

collectors. More rare, and of particular historical value, are drawings such as the Baer sheets, which document some of Bramer’s lost illusionistic ceiling paintings. Other such examples are housed in the British Museum, the Kupferstichkabinett in Berlin, the National Museum in Oslo, and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. This particular sheet shows a group of standing men looking down from a balustrade, rendered in animated poses and gestures under an elaborately coffered ceiling, and may be instructively compared with the example in Philadelphia, though the drawings are stylistically distinct. The latter depicts male and female musicians standing and sitting beneath a vaulted ceiling; below them is a coffered ceiling with the same circle and diamond pattern as in the Baer drawing, and a similar balustrade. The relationship between the two sheets is not known. Though Hofrichter dates both drawings in the 1660 s, Goldsmith and Plomp refer to the group of drawings to which the Baer sheets belong as dating from the 1640 s (“Several drawings from the 1640 s show figures look ing down—sometimes along a balustrade, sometimes making music.” Jane Ten Brink Goldsmith and Michael Plomp, Leonaert Bramer, Ingenious Painter and Draftsman in Rome and Delft , (excat.), Zwolle and Delft, ca. 1994 , p. 63 ). Scholarly interest in Bramer’s work has increased enormously over the past decade, due to a favorable reevaluation of the quality of his best drawings, and to their privileged position in the early historical reception and market for Dutch drawings. Early collec tors that can be identified by name include many French figures such as Pierre-Jean Mariette (the source of most of the Louvre’s drawings by Bramer), and artists such as Coypel, Boucher, and Fragonard.