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

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is fortunate to have a collection of Italian drawings that encompasses a broad sweep of Italy's art history, ranging from Renaissance and Baroque to Futurist and contemporary works by such famed artists as Parmigianino, Francesco Salviati, Guercino, Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Pompeo Batoni, and Amedeo Modigliani. With this publication, eighty of these drawings are provided with commentary, complete scholarly analysis, and biographies of the artists by the renowned scholar Mimi Cazort. The volume opens with an illustrated essay by Ann Percy, the Museum's Curator of Drawings, who offers the first full account of the people and events that shaped the formation of this exceptional but little-published collection.

Through the works of the major fifteenth-century draughtsmen - Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, Carpaccio and Leonardo da Vinci - Francis Ames-Lewis then explores new types of drawing evolved during the century: the free sketch contrasting with the frozen control of the model-book, the exploratory study of the nude, the preparatory compositional sketch and the cartoon.

Published in conjunction with an exhibition on view at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, May 12-Aug 15, 2010.

"Many famous artworks of the Italian Renaissance were made to celebrate love, marriage, and family. They were the pinnacles of a tradition, dating from early in the era, of commemorating betrothals, marriages, and the birth of children by commissioning extraordinary objects - maiolica, glassware, jewels, textiles, paintings - that were often also exchanged as gifts. This volume is the first comprehensive survey of artworks arising from Renaissance rituals of love and marriage and makes a major contribution to our understanding of Renaissance art in its broader cultural context. The impressive range of works gathered in these pages extends from birth trays painted in the early fifteenth century to large canvases on mythological themes that Titian painted in the mid-1500s. Each work of art would have been recognized by contemporary viewers for its prescribed function within the private, domestic domain."--BOOK JACKET.