This volume describes and reproduces 379 drawings by Italian artists of the seventeenth century in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The most brilliant draughtsmen of this period--Annibale Carracci, G.B. Castiglione, Pietro da Cortona, Guercino, Carlo Maratti, and Salvator Rosa--are well represented in the Museum's collection, and the book offers a survey of Italian baroque draughtsmanship. It includes innovative work by Carracci, as well as drawings by such late baroque masters as Sebastiano Ricci and Francesco Solimena. Four hundred five illustrations are contained in this inventory. Entries for the drawings provide essential bibliographical references, provenance, and a discussion of the purpose of the drawing when known. -- Inside jacket flap.

Perhaps more than any other collector of his generation in the United States, Robert Lehman was interested in acquiring early drawings. He made a great effort to add drawings to the collection of paintings, sculpture, ceramics, glass, and other objects that his father, Philip Lehman, had begun assembling. The 116 Italian drawings analyzed and discussed in this volume are among the more than 2,000 works of art from the collection now housed in the Robert Lehman Wing of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Robert Lehman's collection demonstrates the variety of drawings produced in Italy from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, a period when the purposes and techniques of drawings, as well as the aims and abilities of the artist who made them, became increasingly sophisticated. The volume includes an elaborate design for an equestrian monument by Antonio Pollaiuolo, a magnificent study of a bear by Leonardo da Vinci, a cartoon by Luca Signorelli, a study for a vault fresco by Taddeo Zuccaro, and many other drawings that are among the best Italian examples to have survived from that era. Most types of drawings, in a wide variety of techniques, are represented—figure studies, grand compositions, landscapes, cartoons, modelli, and even sculptors' studies. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.

This superb book presents 100 notable examples from the Harvard Art Museums’ distinguished collection of Dutch, Flemish, and Netherlandish drawings from the 16th to 18th century. Featuring such masters as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Peter Paul Rubens, and Rembrandt van Rijn, the volume showcases beautiful color illustrations accompanied by insightful commentary on prevalent styles and techniques. Genres that define this artistic period—landscape, scenes of everyday life, portraiture, and still life—are explored in detail. The book also presents the results of new conservation and technical study, including infrared analysis and scientific examinations of drawing materials. This revelatory new research has allowed previously illegible underdrawings and inscriptions in many of the artworks to surface for the first time, shedding light on longstanding mysteries of production and provenance.