Focusing exclusively on examples from the 16th century, the great age of Italian drawing, this stunning volume, published to accompany an early-1994 exhibition at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, includes 124 prized works from The Metropolitan, the Pierpont Morgan Library, the Cooper-Hewitt Museum, and some 20 private collections in New York. The catalogue is organized by school and, within each section, chronologically by artist. Each drawing is illustrated and presented with a discussion that places it in the context of the artist's career and explores the purpose for which it was made. Paper edition (unseen), $35. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Evelyn Karet's in-depth study of the Antonio II Badile Album - the earliest known example of an art collection pasted onto the pages of a book - is both focused and broad in its appeal to those interested in the early modern era. The provenance of the album is traced from its assemblage to the seventeenth-century collection of Conte Lodovico Moscardo to its dismantling by the dealer Francis Matthiesen in the 1950s, establishing that the volume conserved in the Frits Lugt Collection is not an original but a replica produced by Matthiesen. Although Antonio II must be celebrated as the collector of the drawings, new paleographic analysis has identified the actual compiler of the album after Antonio?s death providing a terminus post quem in the late 1530s or early 1540s. Karet enlarges the focus from the album itself to the historic tradition of collecting drawings in northern Italy in the early modern era before Vasari, for which the album provides a new point of reference. Throughout the book, Karet discusses the Badile family, examines the individual drawings in the book, investigates the contacts between artists and humanists, their rich, diverse collections and the humanist mind-set that fostered the appreciation of drawings. She explores notable early drawing collections in northern Italy and the role of northern Italy as a center of collection in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The book concludes with two appendices: a reconstruction of the original album, including a discussion of the reconstruction process, suggestions about what the album originally looked like, and a page-by-page guide to its contents; and a detailed analysis of Francis Matthiesen's career. This book opens up new areas of inquiry into an overlooked subject.

Why is a cross-eyed man from the small town of Cento in northern Italy now regarded as one of the greatest draftsmen of the seventeenth century? Featuring important Guercino drawings from the Courtauld Institute of Art Gallery, London, and the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, this volume looks deeply into the nature of the artist’s extraordinary talent for drawing.

Published to accompany an exhibition at the Art Institute of Chicago, from October 28, 2008 to January 18, 2009.

This publication is a study of technically masterful, even boldly experimental, graphic art that illustrates Genoa's growth by the seventeenth century into an important regional art school. -- Metropolitan Museum of Art website.