Reviews #11
500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum (16 Feb – 23 Jun)
The Benton Museum of Art, Pomona College
Reviewed by Emma P. Holter (Tyler School of Art and Architecture)
Gian Lorenzo Bernini (1598–1680), Seated Male Nude, ca. 1618–24. Princeton University Art Museum. Museum purchase, Laura P . Hall Memorial Fund and Fowler McCormick, Class of 1921, Fund (2005-128)
Guercino (Giovanni Francesco Barbieri) (1591-1666), Study for Queen Semiramis Receiving News of the Revolt of Babylon, 1624. Princeton University Art Museum. Bequest of Dan Fellows Platt, Class of 1895 (x1948-727)
On view from February 16th to June 23rd, “500 Years of Italian Drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum,” highlighted the breadth and depth of one of the most significant university collections in the United States. Since the Princeton University Art Museum’s closure for renovation in 2020, there have been very few occasions to view the collection of works on paper in person. With the anticipated re-opening of the museum in 2025, the opportunity arose to showcase gems from Princeton’s drawing collection at another collegiate art museum on the opposite side of the country. The exhibition was mounted at The Benton Museum of Art at Pomona College in Claremont, California and featured 95 works from Princeton’s collection of nearly one thousand Italian drawings.
Spread across two rooms, the thematic organization of the show permitted an appealing and instructive juxtaposition of drawings from a wide chronological scope. The selection of themes was evidently geared towards an undergraduate audience and offered an in-depth look at the fundamentals of drawing—including paper supports, types of media, function, collecting history, and connoisseurship. A thread running through the exhibition labels and didactics emphasized how fundamental drawing is to the artistic process: from Donato Credi’s primi pensieri sketches in pen and ink for his Jacob Wrestling with the Angel, to Giovanni Battista Naldini’s deft and highly finished drawings after Michelangelo Buonarroti’s sculptures of Lorenzo and Giuliano de Medici.
A significant portion of the exhibition was dedicated to the centrality of drawing within artistic training on the Italian peninsula beginning in the fifteenth century. The first room focused on drawing the human figure from a live model, anatomical studies, and composing figural groupings for large-scale compositions. Some marvelous examples included Gian Lorenzo Bernini’s red chalk study for seated male nude, Paolo Veronese’s brush drawing on blue paper of Saint Herculanus Visited by an Angel, and Federico Barocci’s two studies in multiple coloured chalk for the figure of Saint Sebastian.
Interestingly, the ‘Collecting & Connoisseurship’ subsection showcased drawings that have been reattributed since entering the Princeton University Art Museum. The most notable of these were two sheets now given to Parmigianino, one of which has recently been linked to the artist’s frescoes in San Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, and the other that originally had entered the collection with an attribution to Pordenone. Likewise, the exhibition highlighted the strengths in Princeton’s collection of drawings by Guercino, Giambattista Tiepolo and Luca Cambiaso. A final section of the show was dedicated to these three painters, as well as a Princeton alumnus and university art museum benefactor. The collector Dan Fellows Platt presciently took advantage of the relatively affordability of their drawings and purchased them in large numbers during the early twentieth century, at a time when their art had fallen out of favour. Twelve of the fifteen sheets on display in this section were gifted by Fellows Platt. Standouts in this group included Tiepolo’s delicate chalk and wash allegorical drawing of Faith, Hope and Charity, and Cambiaso’s dynamic red chalk preliminary drawing for The Return of Ulysses.
The themes of the exhibition were demarcated by section labels, while individual object labels and tombstone information were reproduced in a printed booklet available at the museum’s front desk. The absence of object labels on the walls of the exhibition encouraged viewers to be attentive to the formal qualities of the drawings and the visual storytelling created through thoughtful and astute juxtapositions. This curatorial choice permitted the inclusion of two portrait drawings attributed to Amedeo Modigliani, which would have otherwise seemed out of place, considering the evident strengths of the collection in sixteenth- through eighteenth-century Italian drawings.
The show presented an exceptional opportunity for audiences in southern California to study the renowned collection of Italian drawings from the Princeton University Art Museum, leaving viewers anticipating the future displays of works on paper in Princeton’s newly renovated galleries, which are estimated to open in September 2025.
View more drawings from the exhibition here.
Luca Cambiaso (1527–1585), Study for the Return of Ulysses, ca. 1565. Princeton University Art Museum. Laura P. Hall Memorial Collection (x1946-155)
