General Inventory of Italian Drawings: Volume XII

The Mark Pigott Lecture and Research Fund was established in 2010 by Mark C. Pigott, KBE and KStJ to support scholarly initiatives at the Louvre. This year the fund is responsible for making possible the publication of Volume XII of the General Inventory of Italian Drawings. This tome features an important selection of works from the Louvre’s Drawings and Prints collection by sixteenth-century Bolognese artists.

This grouping of works on paper is an unparalleled resource for scholars researching the Cinquecento artists who created the altarpieces and murals of Bologna before the arrival of the Carracci. The inventory published by the Mark Pigott Lecture and Research Fund contains 44 plates from artists from or working in Bologna c. 1500 – 1580, such as Amico Aspertini, Bagnacavallo, Peregrino da Cesena, Francesco Francia, Innocenzo da Imola, Biagio Pupini Marcantonio Raimondi, and Girolamo da Treviso. These artists were inspired by classical antiquity and by the master Raphael. Their work evolved a new style, characterized by the intense play of light and the beginnings of what would come to be known as chiaroscuro.

The catalogue accompanied an exhibition on the same subject, which was held in the Hall Napoléon from May 25 to August 10, 2022 and completes the volume by Catherine Loisel, published in 2013 (Musée du Louvre, Inventory of Italian Drawings: Bolognese drawings of the 17th century, 2013), on Bolognese drawings of the subsequent century.