The Academy of Fine Arts in Rome, in collaboration with the Koninklijk Nederlands Instituut Rome, presents the first edition of the International Conference on the Study of the History of Art and Drawing, dedicated to the theme Books and Drawing Albums in the Modern Age / 1550-1800.
The terminological and typological distinction between drawing books and drawing albums was introduced by contemporary art historiography on the basis of documentary and literary evidence from the 16th and 17th centuries. According to the sources, artists and connoisseurs used the expression “drawing book” to refer to that part of the graphic production of painters, engravers, sculptors and architects (and/or their heirs and ateliers), bound in a volume. Unlike the drawing album, the definition of which remains open, the drawing book can be described as “a book of original drawings in a bound volume (book, codex), consisting of one or more quires (gatherings), which are predominantly filled with drawings, irrespective of the age, intention and profession of a draughtsman … whether the structure has been consolidated before or after the drawing process, protected by a leather binding or a simple parchment or paper cover” (Elen, 1995). While drawing books that are intact in their original form are rather rare, little known and little studied (there is still no systematic and reasoned census of them), there are countless drawing albums (monographic or collective), created by connoisseurs, collectors and curators of the 17th–20th centuries, which contain individual fascicles or individual sheets from older drawing books.
The widespread presence of drawing books and drawing albums – which have reached us in a more or less fragmented condition and after many changes of ownership – in collections and in public and private libraries all over the world calls for a full investigation and analysis of the historical developments of their forms, functions and contents, and for their study under the historical lens of critical and material fortunes, taste and the art market. Through the original contributions of some of the leading scholars on the subject, the International Conference aims to highlight the essential circularity that exists between the study of drawing books created by artists and the study of drawing albums compiled in the context of collecting. This is in order to advance new or as yet unexplored perspectives of research, inventory and typological classification, and of material, historical and theoretical-critical exegesis. To deepen the knowledge of individual objects (books vs albums) and the understanding of the theories and working practices (authorial and/or academic and/or atelier) of Italian and Northern European drawing in the Modern Age. To expand the genealogy, most often undefined and complex, of international graphic design collections, starting with the historical reconstruction of the dispersion of the rich heritage of bound volumes of drawings, left to us – as a legacy – by the artists of the past.