Presentation of the book Raphael: Drawing and Eloquence, edited by Ben Thomas and Catherine Whistler (Accademia Raffaello – Urbino 2020)
Ben Thomas (University of Kent) and Catherine Whistler (Ashmolean Museum) in conversation with Angelamaria Aceto (Ashmolean Museum), Francesco P. Di Teodoro (Polytechnic of Turin), David Love (independent scholar), Ita MacCarthy (University of Durham), Marzia Faietti (Uffizi and Visiting Scientist at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max-Planck-Institut), Christian K. Kleinbub (Ohio State University) and Alexandra Kocsis (independent art historian).
A series of original insights from leading experts into the great Renaissance artist, that originate from the series of interdisciplinary research workshops that supported the Ashmolean’s award-winning exhibition Raphael: The Drawings in 2017. The essays in this volume, published by the Accademia Raffaello in Urbino, all develop in different ways the claim of that exhibition that a focus on Raphael’s drawings as material objects that are eloquent in themselves reveals a less classical, more approachable and emotional artist. For some authors the detailed technical analysis of the drawings has led to new discoveries about the layered approach to design that these fragile sheets of paper embody, while others have explored what the drawings signified in a culture saturated with rhetorical concepts.
Ben Thomas is Reader in History of Art at the University of Kent. He was co-curator, with Catherine Whistler, of the Ashmolean Museum exhibition Raphael: The Drawings (2017), and subsequently curated the exhibition Drawing Together at the Courtauld Gallery (2017-18). An interest in the graphic arts, both prints and drawings, informs his research and teaching. He founded the Kent Print Collection in 2005, a collection run entirely by undergraduate students, and supporting exhibitions they curate. He also teaches a course called Drawing: History and Practice which combines the art historical analysis of drawings with practical exercises. Other exhibitions he has curated include: The Paradox of Mezzotint at UCL Art Museum in 2008, and Alfred Drury and the New Sculpture at the Stanley and Audrey Burton Gallery in Leeds in 2014. Recent publications include the books Edgar Wind and Modern Art: In Defence of Marginal Anarchy (2020) and Humphrey Ocean (2019).
Catherine Whistler is Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum and Professor of the History of European Art, University of Oxford. Her recent research project with Dr Ben Thomas on Raphael and the Eloquence of Drawing, supported by the Leverhulme Trust, resulted in the award-winning exhibition, Raphael: The Drawings (2017) and related academic publications. Her previous research on Renaissance and Baroque art ranged across areas such as Venetian art, the history of collecting and the Grand Tour, including curating various exhibitions. She was awarded a British Academy medal for her book, Venice and Drawing 1500-1800: Theory, Practice and Collecting (2016). She is currently working on the Ashmolean’s Italian drawings collection, part of a project supported by the Getty Foundation (The Paper Project) that involves cataloguing and curatorial training.
Angelamaria Aceto is an art historian and drawing specialist currently working on architectural and ornament drawings as part of a new catalogue of Italian drawings at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Previously, she was Research Assistant on a Leverhulme-funded project devoted to Raphael’s drawings, and on the resulting exhibition Raphael: The Drawings (Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, 2017). Since then, she has contributed to other international Raphael exhibition catalogues.
Francesco P. Di Teodoro is Professor of History of Architecture at the Polytechnic of Turin. He is Academician of Honour of the Accademia Raffaello – Urbino. He is co-author, with Vincenzo Farinella, of the entry Raffaello in the Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (2017), and Olschki is about to publish his new book Scritti di e per Raffaello.
David Love is an independent scholar of Raphael’s circle in Rome with a background in intergovernmental negotiation and cross-cultural dynamics and has published extensively on Gianfrancesco Penni
Ita MacCarthy, Associate Professor in Translation and Italian Studies at Durham University, works on the connections between Renaissance Italian literature and art, seen in the context of cultural and social history and in a comparative European perspective.
Marzia Faietti, previously Director of the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe at the Uffizi, collaborates with the Uffizi and is Visiting Scientist at the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz-Max-Planck-Institut. He has co-curated, with Matteo Lafranconi, the exhibition Raffaello 1520-1483 at the Scuderie del Quirinale in Rome in 2020).
Christian K. Kleinbub is Professor of Art History at Ohio State University and co-director of the New Foundation for Art History.
Alexandra Kocsis is an independent art historian and translator based in Budapest. Her research interests include the history of printmaking, on which she has published “Recontextualizing Raphael: The Function(s) of Inscriptions in Sixteenth-Century Reproductive Prints” in the Annual of Medieval Studies at CEU (2015).
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