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Philbrook Museum of Art is pleased to announce an exhibition of seventy superb sixteenth-century Italian drawings will be featured in From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci: A Century of Italian Drawings from the Prado. The exhibition will be on view May 17 through July 26, 2009. The Museo del Prado is acclaimed as one of the world’s premier art institutions and this exhibition tour marks the first time that most of these extraordinary works have appeared outside of Madrid. That such a fine sequence of European Old Master drawings exists in the Prado today is due to the generosity of the little known Spanish nobleman Don Pedro Fernández Durán (1846-1930), who bequeathed his considerable art collection, including paintings, sculpture, decorative arts, armor, furniture as well as drawings, to the museum. The works have been selected by Guest Curator Nicholas Turner, formerly of the J. Paul Getty Museum and the British Museum, and a specialist in Renaissance and Baroque drawings.
Giulio Romano, Paolo Veronese, Giorgio Vasari, and Andrea del Sarto are just a few of the artists represented by detailed studies for commissioned works, as well as intimate primi pensieri – the quick sketches that captured the inspiration and energy of a creative moment. The drawings demonstrate the intrinsic importance of the medium, as well as its significance in the artistic process. Included in the exhibition are highly refined works which were used in preparation for paintings, as well as rapid compositional sketches and figure studies. Research in preparation for the exhibition revealed that the two Michelangelo drawings included are figure studies for the Sistine Chapel’s Last Judgment.
The exhibition explores the working methods of the most important artists active in Italy during a time of unprecedented artistic patronage, focusing on examples from Mannerism to the early Baroque period (1520-1620). The sixteenth century was a key period for the development of a variety of regional and individual styles of drawing in Europe. During the first half of the century, the technical and representational innovations in figure drawing pioneered by Leonardo da Vinci and other Renaissance masters were consolidated and improved upon to such a degree that artists were able to put the practice to a wider range of functions than ever before, achieving exceptional technical proficiency as they did so. By the end of the sixteenth century, drawing was increasingly used to record human appearance truthfully, placing the figure within a real setting that showed actual effects of daylight and shadow. The exhibition reflects the variety and type of drawings produced during this pivotal century, and investigates the artistic characteristics of various geographical regions.
The From Michelangelo to Annibale Carracci exhibition will open in conjunction with an additional exhibition Peggy Preheim: Little Black Book. The Preheim exhibition features work that includes seventy-five drawings, paintings, sculptural objects, and photographs, the first museum survey of this contemporary artist’s work. The primary focus of each exhibition is the medium of drawing. Visitors will gain a unique opportunity to witness the versatility and interpretive power of this medium in the hands of artists from very distinct historical and cultural moments.
The Museo del Prado houses one of the oldest and greatest collections of art in the world, and at its core are the finest works collected by Spanish royalty. Included in the Prado's collection are nearly four thousand drawings. Those in this exhibition came to the Museum in 1931 through the bequest of Pedro Fernández Durán, who assembled a remarkable group of drawings from old European collections built up in the seventeenth to nineteenth centuries. Prior to their exhibition in 2005 at the Prado, these sixteenth-century Italian works were mostly unknown, as they had never previously been studied as a group. Only a dozen had been published, and Nicholas Turner’s research for the exhibition resulted in the re-attribution of a number of the works. This tour provides a rare opportunity for American audiences to view these extraordinary drawings for the first time.
The exhibition is organized and circulated by Art Services International Alexandria, Virginia in association with The Museo del Prado, Madrid.
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