Recently discovered in Paris, this sketch is one of two known copies of a lost original sketch for Rubens 1615 painting of Diogenes' Search for True Man, currently located in a European private collection. The other known copy of the sketch was made in 1635 and is housed in the Städel Museum in Frankfurt.

The Parisian sketch is made using the "trois crayons" technique on paper, presumably by a talented student in Rubens' workshop before it was corrected and revised by Rubens himself using black chalk. The aim of Infrared Reflectography (IRR) analysis is to improve the legibility of several inscriptions in red chalk or red ochre on the back of the sketch, which are obscured by remnants of adhesive from a previous mounting. This technique was paired with analysis by Multispectral Imaging (MSI).

Images in preview are compressed and of lower quality. They are mainly intended to serve as thumbnails. Original hiqh quality TIF images can be found in the PROCESSED folder below (zip file). For information about filenames and folderstructure as well as IRR system related info, please read the "Brief Description of Datasets for Infrared Reflectography Version 2024". 

The research for this project was funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG, German Research Foundation) under Germany's Excellence Strategy – EXC 2176 'Understanding Written Artefacts: Material, Interaction and Transmission in Manuscript Cultures', project no. 390893796. The research was conducted within the scope of the Centre for the Study of Manuscript Cultures (CSMC) at Universität Hamburg.