Fra Bartelommeo, “Young man leaning on a pedestal, and five heads,” studies for bystanders in the painting “Madonna della Misericordia,” circa 1515, red chalk.

MAASTRICHT, THE NETHERLANDS — The loan exhibition of The European Art Fair Maastricht (TEFAF), running March 11–20 at the Maastricht Exhibition & Congress Centre (MECC), will be “Collecting Collectors,” comprising master drawings and prints from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam.

The exhibition will take place in the TEFAF Paper section and will offer visitors a small but choice selection of works the museum acquired over the last 167 years. A particular highlight of the collection are the works by Fra Bartolommeo (1473-1517), numbering 400 sheets with 500 drawings assembled in two luxury albums by Florentine collector Niccolò Gabburri in 1729. One of the albums will be included in the selection at TEFAF Maastricht 2016, as a prelude to the large Fra Bartolommeo exhibition opening this fall in Rotterdam.

The collection of prints and drawings is the largest subset of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen’s collection, containing around 17,000 drawings and 65,000 prints. It provides an overview of Western art history from the Middle Ages until the present day. Included in the exhibition are works by old masters such as Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden and Rembrandt van Rijn to modern and contemporary artists like Paul Cézanne, Salvador Dalí, René Magritte and Yayoi Kusama.

Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen is named after two collectors who both were essential in the establishment of the museum’s international reputation – Frans Boijmans (1767–1847) and D.G. van Beuningen (1877–1955). Boijmans’ bequest founded the museum in 1849 and in 1940 Van Beuningen acquired and then donated the majority of the Franz Koenigs collection of master drawings. Other eminent collectors who contributed greatly to the collections were Dr Adriaan Domela Nieuwenhuis (1850–1935) and Dr. Johan Bierens de Haan (1867–1951).

The MECC is at Forum 100. Fair hours are 11 to 7 daily except on the final day when the fair closes at 6 pm.

For more information, www.tefaf.com.