Fantasy and Passion Drawing from Carracci to Bernini

PRESS RELEASE

FANTASY AND PASSION: DRAWING FROM CARRACCI TO BERNINI

10 OCTOBER 2024 – 12 JANUARY 2025
Städel Museum, Exhibition Hall of the Department of Prints and Drawings
Press Preview: Wednesday 9 October 2024, 11 am

The Städel Museum presents the great masters of Italian Baroque draughtsmanship. For the brothers Agostino and Annibale Carracci, Guercino, Stefano della Bella and Gian Lorenzo Bernini, drawing was a central component of their artistic work. In their drawings, they not only laid the foundations for their paintings, sculptures or prints, but also demonstrated the independence of the medium. Executed with pen and brush or black or red chalk, the sheets are sketches, studies or precisely rendered individual works. They impress with their sweeping lines, their dramatic chiaroscuro and their extraordinary expressiveness. From 10 October 2024 to 12 January 2025, the Städel Museum will be showing 90 of these remarkable Italian Baroque drawings from its own collection in an exhibition parallel to the Frankfurt Book Fair with Italy as this year’s Guest of Honour, inviting visitors to an intimate encounter with the artistic drawings of a bygone era.

The scholarly analysis of the drawings was made possible by the generous support of the Gabriele Busch-Hauck Foundation in Frankfurt. This multi-year research project has produced a wealth of new information on individual artists and their working methods, the subjects depicted and the techniques used, as well as on contemporary and later collectors.

The 17th century was a time of change in Italy. Baroque art emphasized movement and dynamism, contrasts and the play of light and shadow. These characteristics can be seen not only in the paintings and sculptures, but also in the drawings of the period. The artists studied individual motifs, figural groups, postures, draperies and sequences of movement. They drew from nature, developed complex pictorial narratives and created designs for large-format works. The emotional spectrum of their depictions ranges from delicate and introspective to ecstatic, expressive and sometimes cruel. The works on paper were often the basis for paintings, sculptures or prints and refer to the exchange between artists and patrons. They are therefore not only an expression of individual artistic creativity, but also a reflection of larger cultural contexts.

Read the full press release here