Author Description

"Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619) was a pivotal innovator in Italian painting at the turn of the seventeenth century. Carracci's highly individual approaches to religious subjects made him one of the great interpreters of Christian art, and the dramatic lighting and emotionality of his pictures exerted a seminal influence on Italian painting." "Carracci was a prolific draftsman who produced over 300 extant drawings. His drawings offer the key to his artistic personality, because he conceived his original subjects, studied his figures from life, and planned his painted compositions in these sheets. Thus his drawings reveal how he thought, how his ideas changed, and which features of a composition were most important or challenging to his creative imagination. But Ludovico's drawings were not only preparatory studies for his pictures. He was also an innovator in developing finished compositional drawings that were produced as works of art in their own right, made for sale to a new audience of private collectors in Bologna." "This groundbreaking study of Ludovico Carracci's drawings examines his style, methods, iconography, and chronology, also considering the historical context of Carracci's native city and the portrayal of women in the artist's work. Discussing drawings in relation to contemporary religious, social, and intellectual developments, the book's five chapters analyze pertinent aspects of early modern Bologna, Carracci's development as a painter, earlier traditions for works on paper in the city, and the artist's production of drawings. The book concludes with a fully illustrated catalogue raisonne of Ludovico's autograph drawings, questionable sheets, and rejected attributions."--BOOK JACKET.