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| Bartolomeo Cesi Seated Youth wearing a Monk's Habit 1590 drawing Art Institute of Chicago |
"This work was modeled on a young studio assistant who appears frequently in Cesi's drawings, but it was preparatory for a painting of a much older Saint Benedict in the church of San Procolo, Bologna."
– from curator's notes at the Art Institute of Chicago
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Youth gazing upward in Adoration (studio assistant posed as an ecstatic saint) ca. 1594 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Draped Youth playing a Lute (studio assistant posed as an angel) ca. 1594-95 drawing British Museum |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Draped Youth with arms uplifted (studio assistant posed as an ecstatic saint) ca. 1607-1615 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Draped Youth seen from below (studio assistant posed as God the Father) ca. 1593-94 drawing British Museum |
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| attributed to Bartolomeo Cesi Half-length study of Youth looking up before 1629 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
"Despite his humanist education, the Counter-Reformation had a deeper influence on Bartolomeo Cesi's painting. Emphasizing clarity and impact, Cesi's paintings reflect the Counter-Reformation interest in instruction. Born into affluence, the young Cesi studied under Nosadella. In the 1570s, while decorating the apse and crypt of the Bologna Cathedral, Cesi absorbed strict Counter-Reformation beliefs from the cardinal who coordinated the project. Promoting art solely as a vehicle for renewing faith and promoting Roman Catholic teachings, this cardinal later wrote that painted nudes were unsuitable for private houses and churches. . . . Cesi's figures derive from life drawings that the indefatigable draftsman made for his paintings. Along with his contemporary Ludovico Carracci, Cesi successfully campaigned for a separate painter's guild in Bologna in 1599."
– from curator's notes at the Getty Museum
"Cesi was an artist devoted to the Counter-Reformation belief, expressed most forcibly in the 1582 treatise of the Bolognese Cardinal Gabriele Paleotti, that the proper function of painting was the clear communication of a religious message. Like the Carracci brothers, Cesi reacted against the complexity and artificiality of much sixteenth-century painting and returned to the study of nature, beginning each work with careful drawings from the model and abstracting from these to create an ideal form. In his later works, however, Cesi strove for an increasingly severe geometry and reductive purity that were far removed from the dramatic action and externalization of emotion characteristic of the Carracci."
– from curator's notes at the Metropolitan Museum
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Centaur before 1629 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| attributed to Bartolomeo Cesi Study of Two Youths Asleep (studio assistants posed on the floor and radically foreshortened) before 1629 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Male Figure carrying a load of wood (posed by studio assistant) before 1629 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Mourning Virgin - study for The Deposition (posed by draped studio assistant) before 1629 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi St Lawrence - study for altarpiece 1619 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi St Anne - study for The Immaculate Conception before 1629 drawing British Museum |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Draped Male Figure before 1629 drawing Museo del Prado, Madrid |
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| Bartolomeo Cesi Five Putti bearing the Column of the Passion before 1629 drawing Museo del Prado, Madrid |