From 17 February to 13 May 2018, it will be held From Agostino Carracci, Aeolus guardian of the winds paper, red pencil, 264 x 327 mm, Modena, Galleria Estense. Masterpieces on paper from the collection of the Dukes of Este, an exhibition that will present a selection of drawings by authors such as Correggio, Lelio Orsi, Ludovico, Annibale and Agostino Carracci, Lo Scarsellino, Guido Reni, Guercino.
From free studies of invention to real preparatory drawings, the choice involved some of the great Emilian masters already present in the Estense Gallery with their pictorial works. The exhibition will therefore allow the visitor to make direct comparisons between drawings and paintings, and cast a different look at the style, technique and secrets of composing of the great masters of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
A calendar of educational and guide initiatives will welcome visitors on this journey of discovery.
The drawings now in the Estense Gallery come from centuries-old events. The sources suggest the presence of some graphic masterpieces already in the famous dressing rooms of Alfonso I d'Este, in the Castle of Ferrara.
However, it was above all during the seventeenth century that the Dukes of Este, now transferred to Modena, created a truly modern collection of drawings. It culminates in the years of Alfonso IV (1658-1662), when the Palazzo Ducale houses, together with the famous galleries of paintings and sculptures, antiquities and marvels, one of the richest and most varied graphic collections of the time comparable to the Florentine one of Cardinal Leopold de' Medici.
The inventories allow us to estimate more than 2.840 sheets of which it was composed, and which included specimens by the major masters. With the eighteenth century, however, progressive hardships and dispersions begin which reach the most critical point with the Napoleonic looting. Almost all of the approximately 1300 drawings transferred to France will never return to Modena and still today they form a fundamental part of the collections of the Louvre Museum.
Image: Agostino Carracci, Aeolus guardian of the winds paper, red pencil, 264 x 327 mm, Modena, Galleria Estense
