Every summer as part of the Rome Art Program drawing and painting lessons, our group of instructors takes the students to analyze and draw or paint some of the masterworks of Italian artists exhibited in museum collections, churches, or outdoor settings.
This exercise requires much more than copying the original image that a student sees in front of him; the challenge is to focus on the composition and discover the main lines of force of the figures arranged in the space. The next step is to think about the values of darks and lights in the arrangements – almost weighing these values or tones against each other and to eventually map out on the sketchbook page the design of force-lines and values that make up a sort of abstract of the actual, real painting or fresco.
Throughout my many years painting, I have found this exercise very rewarding for my own development as an artist, and it is comparable to reading a musical score written by Mozart or Brahms and playing the notes on the score on one’s violin or piano, then playing those notes again and again and again. After a while one has hopefully done more than sound off notes or copied lines and values, one has managed to convey some part of the coherence and force and even the grace of the masterpiece. This practice I am convinced, is comparable to working in the studio of the master and humbly subjecting one’s impulses and hand movements to some of the dictates that emanate from the masterpiece.
The two sketches above are really one and the same, but I started by drawing the one in sepia or sanguine on a first visit to Florence late this summer, and then went back again to the site and laid on the color transparencies onto the sepia figures slowly, softly.
The subject charmed me from the start: Andrea del Sarto, a contemporary of Raphael and Michelangelo, painted the Holy Family of Mary, Joseph, and Jesus, on a moment’s rest during their difficult voyage to Egypt. The title of the fresco (almost The Madonna of the Dufflebag !) captures the beautiful simplicity of the family moment, even as Del Sarto’s minimalist background and setting make the simplicity monumental.
Jose Grave de Peralta, Drawing Instuctor