Federico Barocci master draughtsman. The creation of images
THE CREATIVE PROCESS
This exhibition, which follows the one held in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the Uffizi Galleries from the 18th of December 2015 to the 3rd of April 2016, focuses on the drawings of Federico Barocci (Urbino 1533/1535-1612) to gain an understanding of their most distinctive features. The “Breeding Ground of Creative Images” is a laboratory of sorts where Barocci’s ideas take shape through a constant process of transformation and review, strictly tied to his operating procedures and working practices. The selected works highlight some of the recurring features of the artist's complex creative process. In particular, the exhibition investigates the connection between the design stages through the different means of figure construction he incorporated. It also focuses on varied reiteration: repeatedly drawing similar forms on a single sheet or in a sequence of thematically-connected studies was a method that proved extremely effective and enjoyable to the artist. Barocci constantly scrutinized every single detail of his works, so this technique was perfect for him. Another important aspect is the examination of the procedural framework described by Giovanni Pietro Bellori in "The Life of Federico Barocci from Urbino", published in his work The Lives of Modern Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1672). The Roman biographer divides Barocci's preparatory phases into a precise and strict series of consequential steps that were carried out in a particular order. This interpretation, although it remains valid in a general sense, can not be considered as a model to be applied literally in organizing and understanding the plurality of the artist's "corpus" of graphic works. Rather it should be evaluated on a case-by-case basis against the work of art it produced, and articulated as necessary based on this.
CREDITS
The exhibition was curated by Roberta Aliventi with the content coordinated by Marzia Faietti.
Editing: Roberta Aliventi Laura Da Rin Bettina
Revision: Marzia Faietti Raimondo Sassi
The introduction to the exhibition, the in-depth analysis, and the fact sheets of the artworks are available on the website of the Project Euploos