Guercino. La scuola, la maniera: I disegni agli Uffizi by Nicholas Turner (review)

REVIEWS 340 Nicholas Turner, Guercino. La scuola, la maniera: I disegni agli Uffizi (Florence: Olschki 2008) 196 pp., 95 ill. Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (1591–1666), nicknamed Guercino (“squinter”) after a childhood incident that left him cross-eyed, is regarded as one of the most significant Italian artists of the Baroque period. A prolific and fluent draughtsman who was known as “the Rembrandt of the South,” he was hailed for his inventive approach to subject matter, his deftness of touch and his ability to capture drama and movement. The Uffizi Gallery is exhibiting seventyfive sketches by Guercino, which were painstakingly gathered together by Cardinal Leopaldo de Medici between 1650 and 1675. The idea for this exhibition originated with Marzia Faietti and Giorgio Marini. The collection, usually stored in the Uffizi`s Prints and Drawings Department, features a range of Guercino`s lively, lifelike drawings from throughout his career. Guercino is today best known for his figure studies and preparatory drawings, which account for most of the exhibited works. But the Uffizi collection also features landscapes and caricatures. Of particular interest are several rare examples of his earlier drawings, prior to a two-year stay in Rome between 1621 and 1623, which marked an important turning point in the artist’s style. Also on exhibition are a number of works by artists who worked in Guercino`s studio, including his nephews Benedetto (1633–1715) and Cesare Gennari (1637–1688). Another section looks at drawings by later imitators and copyists, such as Livio Mehus, Antonio Domenico Gabbiani, Giuseppe Maria Ficatelli, and Francesco Bartolozzi. The drawings in the exhibition have been chosen to demonstrate Guercino’s remarkable technical and compositional ability as well as his wide-ranging choice of subject matter. They include a rare study of a male nude, several imaginary landscapes, some caricatures, physiognomic studies, a number of highly appealing informal scenes from everyday life, and exploratory studies for large painted compositions. Guercino’s early biographer, Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1616–1693), recorded the artist’s affection for the poor. His sympathy for a variety of human situations is particularly apparent in such scenes as Interior of a baker’s shop. Guercino, is undoubtedly one of the most important and prolific masters of seventeenth-century Italian drawing. The Florentine collection boasts an assortment of more than seventy-five sheets, mostly studies of figures and graphic works. The exhibition is accompanied by an Italian catalogue (unfortunately not bilingual) with critical essays on Guercino’s early years, and an overview of Italy’s cultural and socio-economic life in the seventeenth century. As well as catalogue entries, the text includes a biography of the artist, notes on the provenance of the collection of Guercino drawings, and a chapter characterizing the artist’s unique style and process of drawing, a rich bibliography and a useful index of drawings. This catalogue provides an in-depth examination of the works by the famous Guercino scholar Nicholas Turner, a careful reading of the sources by Elizabeth Cropper, the analysis of the relationships between technique and style by Piera Giovanna Tordella, as well as a list of the works not displayed in the exhibition. Moreover there is a section devoted to scientific analysis of the Guercino graphic technique. This section is edited by a research group of scientists of University of Florence (P. Baglioni, R. Giorgi, G. Poggi) REVIEWS 341 with the collaboration of Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi, Research Laboratory. In conclusion, the exhibition is an exceptional event, and the catalog is rich with special data, although it is sometimes it is too specifically intended for an audience of Italian (or Italian-speaking) experts. GIULIA SAVIO, University of Genoa-Italy Venice, Cità Excelentissima: Selections from the Renaissance Diaries of Marin Sanudo. ed. Patricia H. Labalme and Laura Sanguineti White, trans. Linda L. Carroll (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press 2008) 640 pp. Cità Excelentissima serves as the culmination of a lengthy project to increase accessibility of Marin Sanudo’s diaries. Historians and scholars of Venice have long mined for Sanudo’s writings for tidbits of information to reconstruct life on the Veneto in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Replete with details of government bureaucracy, civic ceremonies, diplomacy...