Naissance et Renaissance du Dessin Italien

Leonardo da Vinci, Leda and the Swan, ca. 1505-07, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam. Loan Stichting Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen (former Koenigs Collection), inv. no. I 466

Among the large variety of collections held by Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen in Rotterdam can be found one of the most noteworthy holdings of Old Master Drawings in the world. Eager to introduce this prestigious collection to a wider public, this exhibition at the Fondation Custodia presents 120 of the museum’s finest fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Italian drawings from the Rotterdam museum.

The aim of the exhibition is to reveal those talented draughtsmen whose artistic innovations were at the core of the Italian Renaissance. Pisanello, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Veronese, Correggio... Thanks to recent research carried out at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, in collaboration with international experts and the Fondation Custodia, a number of important discoveries have been made regarding the drawings and some have been re-attributed to leading artists including Pontormo, Federico Zuccari, Aurelio Lomi and Pellegrino Tibaldi.

Drawings made by some of the early fifteenth-century precursors of the Italian Renaissance, today of the greatest rarity, are one of the salient features of the collection of Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Several studies by Pisanello, Parri Spinelli and Benozzo Gozzoli open the exhibition in an impressive way. From then on, the pre-eminent centres of Florence and Venice take over. These were the principal hubs of artistic creation at the time and indeed dominate the Rotterdam collection. The museum is famous for its exceptional collection of 400 drawings by the Florentine painter Fra Bartolommeo, thirteen of which are presented in Paris. Venice is not far behind and the exhibition contains work by its greatest representatives: Vittore Carpaccio, Gentile Bellini, Veronese, Jacopo Tintoretto and their workshops, as well as that of the Bassano family.

Drawings by the three great masters of the Renaissance – Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael and Michelangelo – constitute another high point in the exhibition and lead us on to the work of Roman artists (Giulio Romano, Sebastiano del Piombo), those from Parma and Emilia (Parmigianino, Correggio) and other regional schools. The exhibition ends with drawings by the generation of artists active at the end of the sixteenth century and the turn of the seventeenth, including Federico Barocci, the Zuccari, Cavaliere d’Arpino and the Carracci.