Old Masters: Highlights from the Works on Paper Collection

The Works on Paper Collection of the Carlos Museum contains more than 4,000 prints, drawings, and photographs. Chronologically, it ranges from a thirteenth-century illuminated manuscript page to a twenty-first-century monoprint. This exhibition is the second of two that focus on the highlights of the collection. While the first featured modern and contemporary works, this one presents prints and drawings from the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries.

The earliest works here are engravings by three great printmakers of the early sixteenth century: Albrecht Dürer, Lucas van Leyden, and Marcantonio Raimondi. Also to be found are portraits of and by noted Netherlandish engravers of the latter half of the century, Philips Galle, Dirck Coornhert, and Hendrick Goltzius. These three artists, among others, also feature prominently in this fall’s third floor exhibition, Scripture for the Eyes: Bible Illustration in Netherlandish Prints of the Sixteenth Century (October 17, 2009 - January 24, 2010).

By the end of the sixteenth century, etching had become the favored printing technique of artists in Italy and the North, as the works by Annibale Carracci, Frederico Barocci, and Rebrandt show. Along with the etchings by Carracci and Barocci, the two drawings by the Italian masters Palma Giovane and Giovanni Mauro della Rovere manifest the increasingly naturalistic form of expression coming to the fore at the turn of the seventeenth century. The two prints by Barocci and Rembrandt also demonstrate how the dissemination of prints facilitated the exchange of ideas and influences between one part of Europe and another.

The exhibition closes with several images of Rome. The seventeenth century Gardens of Rome by Falda document the appearance of the city in the age of the Baroque. Piranesi’s views and imaginative recreations of ancient Roman monuments reveal the thinking of an early archaeologist in the eighteenth-century city.