A child’s first encounter with art and self-expression is normally scribbling with crayons on paper. Later as we grow up, from distracted students in tedious lectures to absent-mindedly doodling whilst on the phone or in business meetings, everyone draws to some degree.
Drawing is one of the most familiar art forms, yet it is often under-represented in collections and in public appreciation. Most masterpieces began their life as a sketch, a quick imprint of inspiration, or a live rendering of a natural scene or model committed to paper before the light fades. Drawings serve as studies or designs for larger paintings, frescoes, sculpture, architecture and the decorative arts, as presentation pieces for commissioned works, as copies of renowned artworks and as works of art in themselves. The techniques and materials range from pencil to pen and ink, wash, chalk, charcoal and metal point on paper or parchment.
Now, thanks to a grant from the Getty Foundation in Los Angeles, a little-known collection of 150 Old Master drawings dating from the 15th to the 18th centuries in the reserve collection at MUŻA, the National Community Art Museum, will be given the attention they deserve on a digital educational platform, to be accessed by everyone, everywhere. This substantial grant given to Heritage Malta forms part of ‘The Paper Project: Prints and Drawings Curatorship in the 21st Century’, an initiative the prestigious foundation launched in 2018. Many of the drawings featuring important names such as Vittore Carpaccio, Giorgio Vasari, Giovanni Baglione, François Boucher, and Adrien Manglard were originally purchased by Vincenzo Bonello, the first curator of Fine Arts at the Valletta Museum, in 1933. At the time, Bonello was seeking to expand the national collection, anchoring it in the Italianate tradition. Other drawings seem to have already been part of the collection before Bonello’s time.
The MUŻA collection of Old Master drawings, along with other works on paper at the museum, was partly digitised by the Malta Study Center at the Hill Museum and Manuscript Library, Minnesota, in 2017-2018. The digitised drawings, supported by updated, exciting new research and contextual information, will be uploaded onto the Heritage Malta Collections Management System. Curatorial detective work reveals often overlooked detail. For example, one drawing features the price paid for its purchase -1 scudo- on its reverse; another an inscription with the name of the attributed artist written by the unknown collector who bought it. Splotches of paint on Mattia Preti’s studies for his ceiling fresco at St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta testify to their use onsite by the artist as a point of reference.
A microsite accessed via the MUŻA website linked to the collections management system will provide international exposure to the entire Old Master drawings collection, which has received limited scholarly or public scrutiny. The microsite will have three access points catering for different audiences, including children, the general public, students and academics. Through online videos and outreach workshops held at MUŻA, children will be able to experiment with media and form. Fine art students and artists, who have few opportunities to learn about Old Master drawings, will be taught about line and techniques by studying such artworks while the general public and researchers will be able to learn more about provenance, subject matter, the use and function of these drawing, materials and techniques used, schools and periods.
Highlights in the collection include a figure from ‘La consegna delle chiavi’ fresco in the
Sistine Chapel by Pietro Perugino, dated 1481, in silverpoint, a rare black and white chalk academic study of a nude by Guercino dated between 1618-19 and a nostalgic impression in chalk of what Msida must have looked like in in 1744 by Antoine Favray.
Federico Zuccari’s spectacular ‘Study for the Allegory of Summer’ made in the late 16th century, is a highly finished presentation piece for one of the frescoes in Zuccari’s Florentine home. Executed in pen and brown ink, brown wash, traces of black chalk and heightening, it has a blue mount with black and gold frames.
The project, expected to near completion towards the end of 2023, will involve the participation of international experts. Curator Krystle Attard Trevisan, who was instrumental in applying for and securing the grant, and Principal Curator Bernadine Scicluna, responsible for MUŻA’s dedicated Department of Prints, Drawings and Maps, will be collaborating with experts in the field to revisit attributions and invite analyses of the drawings, especially the anonymous ones.
Besides generating priceless new insight into the drawings’ provenance and history, the Getty grant hopes to encourage the next generation of local curators and academics to develop interest in Old Master drawings.
This digital project is made possible with support from the Getty Foundation through The Paper Project initiative.
For more information, visit www.muza.mt
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