Jonathan Bober
Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings
National Gallery of Art
No sooner had a system and modality of drawing coalesced in late fifteenth-century Italy than individual examples were appreciated as autonomous works. Highly finished presentation drawings are the most conspicuous expression of this interest. Less developed studies were also exchanged between artists and pursued by discriminating patrons. It is possible to demonstrate the simultaneous emergence of a much larger category of autonomous drawing: autograph replicas of preparatory studies. Though seldom differentiated from copies, such replicas conveyed graphic personality in and of itself––the hand of the artist apart from context and other function––on an increasingly wide scale over the course of the sixteenth century. The type anticipated the flourishing of original etching in the seventeenth century. And it inaugurated the collecting of drawings according to the criterion that dominates to this day.
LOCATION:485 Broadway, Lower Lecture Hall STATUS:CONFIRMED DTSTART:20230404T220000Z DTEND:20230404T220000Z END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR