The primary goal of Ludovico Carracci and the Art of Drawing is
to provide a ground-breaking model for a new kind of book on
Italian drawings. In addition to covering the traditional scholarly
terrain of chronology, style, and connoisseurship, this book
utilizes up-to-date art historical methods, including
considerations of the historical context of Bologna, its impact on
Ludovico's art, and a new portrayal of the role of women and women
artists in the city.
"Bologna is perhaps the last great artistic capital in Europe
that...still offers the specialist the possibility for ground
breaking studies." This quotation from a recent exhibition at the
Metropolitan Museum testifies to the rich possibilities for
research in this field. In 1983, Sydney Freedberg wrote a book on
the three pivotal innovators in Italian painting at the turn of the
seventeenth century: Caravaggio, Annibale Carracci, and the
latter's cousin Ludovico Carracci (1555-1619). The dramatic
intensity of Ludovico's paintings exerted a seminal influence on
the direction of Italian Baroque painting. His highly individual
renditions of his subjects make him one of the great interpreters
of Italian art. Working in Bologna, the second city of the papal
states, during the period of the Counter Reformation, Ludovico was
well positioned to reshape religious painting during a period that
demanded change.
Ludovico 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 and planned his dramatic
compositions in these sheets. Like most Italian artists of the
early modern period, Ludovico developed his ideas in drawings and
began painting only after his conceptions had been finalized. 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. Such drawings as these have tremendous
appeal to modern audiences, who are attracted by the excitement of
watching the creative process in progress, rather than seeing only
the painting that represents the end of that process.
The Carracci have always been considered some of the most important
draftsmen in Italian art, for their revival of drawing the human
figure from life in the course of designing paintings. But
Ludovico's drawings were not only preparatory studies for 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 book will be indispensable for university libraries, museum
libraries, and the private libraries of all scholars, dealers, and
collectors with a serious interest in Italian art. As a study of a
major artist that breaks new methodological ground, the book will
bring together fresh insights on the artist and his culture with a
useful compendium of illustrations and will provide a model for
future studies of draftsmen from the early modern period.
Babette Bohn is Professor of Art History at Texas Christian
University in Forth Worth Texas. She has published widely on
Italian prints, and paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries.
"Thoroughly researched and carefully written, this commendable
book is the fruit of much dedicated scholarship over a period of
more than twenty-five years." (N. Turner in The Burlington
Magazine, July 2006, p.491-492)
"Here, after studies spanning more than twenty-five years,
Bohn's connoisseurship comes to full fruition. In bringing together
in one volume both a thoughtful consideration of the draftsman
Ludovico Carracci and a collection of 319 works, Bohn has provided
a rich resource for students of the artist and his area." (R.R.
Coleman in CAA revieuws, 6/16/2006 )