1. Van Gogh left for Antwerp on Tuesday, 24 November: see letter 544.

2. Michelangelo’s Pensieroso (1525) is the central sculpture on the tomb of Lorenzo de’ Medici in the basilica of San Lorenzo in Florence. Van Gogh may have known the work from the Gazette des Beaux-Arts, no. 13, second series, (1876), which contains the engraving Le penseur (The thinker) by Burn Smeeton and Auguste Tilly, after a drawing by Achille Gilbert (p. 101). Ill. 1156 .

3. Fromentin had also praised this painting in Les maîtres d’autrefois: he asserted that one had enough in strong figure of Christ alone, in which ‘things inspired one knows not where and produced one knows not how’ (choses inspirées on ne sait d’où et produites on ne sait comment) are expressed (see Fromentin 1902, chapter 14, pp. 380-382). Van Gogh had read this book: see letter 450. See for Rembrandt’s The pilgrims at Emmaus : letter 34, n. 5.

4. The views of the courtly Rubens as against the human Rembrandt echo what Fromentin and Thoré had written about them. See Fromentin 1902 and Thoré 1858-1860.

5. The quotation about Thomas Gainsborough comes from E.J.T. Thoré (under the pseudonym W. Bürger), Trésors d’art en Angleterre. Paris 1865, p. 394. After ‘so much effect’ (tant d’effet), Van Gogh omitted the words ‘to Gainsborough’s landscapes’ (aux paysages de Gainsborough).

6. The enclosed sonnet is ‘Les ruines’ by Jules Breton, which was published in La Nouvelle Revue 7 (volume 35), 15 July 1885, p. 408. Van Gogh read this periodical in his parents’ house (FR b2268). The poem was collected in Oeuvres poétiques. Les champs et la mer / Jeanne. Paris 1887, p. 76. Cf. Pabst 1988, p. 88.

7. Andreas Pauwels.

8. Charles Blanc, Grammaire des arts du dessin; see letters 536 and 538. The book was never sent.