Sunday, November 6, 2016

Sketches and Prints, 17th century

Marcantonio Franceschini
Angel leaning over a tablet 
ca. 1690-95
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Andrea Procaccini after Raphael
Two soldiers
17th century
etching
British Museum

"There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing that delights us in our dreams, than in our waked senses: without this I were unhappy; for my awaked judgement discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that I am from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness; and surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and the conceits of this life are as mere dreams to those of the next; as the phantasms of the night, to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both, and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other: we are somewhat more than ours selves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. . . . In one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I chuse for my devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed." 

– from Religio Medici by Sir Thomas Browne (1643)

Bernardo Strozzi
Sketches
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Anthony van Dyck
Sketches after Titian
17th century
drawing
British Museum

Stefano della Bella
Theseus and Ariadne from the Game of Mythology
1644
etching
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous copy of a Parmigianino drawing in the Louvre
Apollo
17th century
drawing
British Museum

Annibale Carracci
Sculptural Torso
early 17th century
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Jan de Bisschop
Painter at an Easel
ca. 1648-71
wash drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Willem Panneels after Peter Paul Rubens
Drunken Silenus with Nymphs and Satyrs
1632
etching
British Museum

Jusepe de Ribera
Drunken Silenus with Pan and Satyrs
1628
etching, engraving
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Falda
Catafalque 
funeral memorial in Florence for Philip IV of Spain
1665
etching
British Museum

Gregorio de' Ferrari
Design for an Overdoor
ca. 1670-90
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pietro Santi Bartoli
Aldobrandini Wedding (left)
ca. 1693
engraving
Philsdelphia Museum of Art

Pietro Santi Bartoli
Aldobrandini Wedding (right)
ca. 1693
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

The fresco called the Aldobrandini Wedding was one of the few Roman wall-paintings known before the excavation of Pompei and Herculaneum in the 18th century. It generated enormous amounts of conjecture and commentary throughout the 17th century. Pietro Santi Bartoli's engravings were intended to provide a minutely accurate rendering for European scholars who could not examine the original in Rome.