Mettere mano. Reworking Early Modern Drawings

Gernsheim Study Days

Public event without registration
Beginn: 04.03.2025
Ende: 07.03.2026
Vortragende(r): Gernsheim Study Days
Ort: Villino Stroganoff, Via Gregoriana 22, 00187 Rome and online (Vimeo)
Kontakt: Editorial-LMG@biblhertz.it

<i>Mettere mano</i>. Reworking Early Modern Drawings

“… con questo, che Taddeo potesse correggere e mettere mano nei disegni e cartoni di Federigo a suo piacimento …” In the Vita of Taddeo Zuccari, Giorgio Vasari describes the reworking of drawings — in contrast to that of paintings — as a common and spontaneous practice. The 2025 Gernsheim Study Days are dedicated to all aspects of reworking, retouching, and repairing early modern European drawings, engaging with both artistic and material issues.

Few other media are as easily and as quickly altered as paper: folding, pasting, trimming, and bleaching require readily accessible tools and minimal expertise in their handling. Reworking by another hand — highlighting, retracing, adding or erasing marks — as well as archival and curatorial practices — mounting and re-mounting, inscribing, stamping, and annotating — can alter the drawing’s appearance, reception, attribution, and market value. Equally important is the slow material change of paper or ink over time, triggered by the most common environmental conditions. Being uniquely vulnerable, drawings are a productive starting point for thinking about the ways in which the material turn might be brought to bear on an object's material afterlife, and beyond the artist’s initial conception and expression.

The Photographic Collection’s Gernsheim Study Days this year are connected to “Rework” (2024/25), the Annual Research Initiative of the BHMPI Lise Meitner Group Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History; the Getty Paper Project “Touched/Retouched: Paper across Time, 1400–1800,” a collaboration with the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica; and the forthcoming Research Exhibition “Rework, Retouch, Care: Case Studies from the Hertziana Collection” (March 2025).

Please follow the event also on our VIMEO: https://vimeo.com/event/4883852

PROGRAM

Tuesday, March 4

17:15 Welcome

17:30 Opening Keynote by Jonathan Bober (formerly National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC), Mettere mani: A Typology of Rework in Drawings

18:45 Exhibition Opening
Rework, Retouch, Care: Case Studies from the Hertziana Collection, curated by Francesca Borgo (BHMPI/University of St Andrews), Camilla Colzani (BHMPI/Università degli Studi di Urbino Carlo Bo)

Wednesday, March 5

10:00 Viewing session, Istituto Centrale per la Grafica [conference participants only]

Giorgio Marini (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica), Gabriella Pace (Istituto Centrale per la Grafica)

14:00 Welcome and Opening Remarks

Tatjana Bartsch (BHMPI), Francesca Borgo, Johannes Röll (BHMPI)

14:30–15:30 SESSION 1: ORIGINS

Chair: Francesca Borgo

Alice Ottazzi (I Tatti – The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies), Retracing “Retouching”: Historiography of a Concept

Laura Moretti (University of St Andrews), Assembling, Gluing, and Framing: The Role of Artist Portraits in Vasari’s (and Gaddi’s) “Libro de’ disegni”

15:30–16:00 Coffee break

16:00–17:30 SESSION 2: REWORK IN THE RENAISSANCE WORKSHOP

Chair: Simona Vergassola (independent scholar)

Lorenza Melli (Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz - MPI), Discernimento dei ritocchi e accertamento dell’autografia: il caso di un disegno di Raffaelo

Angelamaria Aceto (Ashmolean Museum, University of Oxford), Collecting and “Reworking” Raphael’s Drawings in the 20th Century: A Case Study

Bruno Escobar (Universidad Autónoma de Madrid), Overwritten Traces: Reuse and Transformation in Alonso Berruguete’s Drawings

Thursday, March 6

10:00–11:30 SESSION 3: RETOUCHING AND COLLECTING

Chair: Giorgio Marini

Sietske Fransen (BHMPI), Cutting and Pasting in the Archive: Preparing Drawings for Prints in the Royal Society

Silvia Massa (Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel), “mitt blau zu schattiren”: Reworked Drawings with Annotated Instructions from the Kupferstich-Kabinett, Dresden

Francois Marandet (Musée départemental d’Art ancien et contemporain, Épinal), Embellishing and Blurring: Michel II Corneille (1642–1708) as Restorer of Drawings for Everhard Jabach

11:30–12:00 Coffee break

12:00–13:00 SESSION 4: RETOUCHING AND CONSERVATION

Chair: Tatjana Bartsch

Elizabeth Mattison (Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College), Foxed: The Environmental Making and Unmaking of Drawings in Early Modern Europe

Birgit Reissland (Cultural Heritage Agency of the Netherlands), Idelette van Leeuwen (Rijksprentenkabinet, Rijksmuseum Amsterdam), Washes in Brown, Blue or Frey? Additions or Original?

13:00–14:00 Lunch [participants only]

14:00–15:00 SESSION 5: ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS

Chair: Mauro Mussolin

Cara Rachele (ETH Zurich), Antonio da Sangallo the Younger and Multi-Author Drawings: The setta sangallesca Reconsidered

Mari Yoko Hara (University of Notre Dame), Extracted Fragments: Collecting Renaissance Architectural Drawings

15:00–15:30 Coffee break

15:30–16:30 SESSION 6: BAROQUE RETOUCHING

Chair: Mary Vaccaro (University of Texas at Arlington)

Stefan Albl (Alte Galerie, Universalmuseum Joanneum), Testa and Mola: The Exchange of Ideas in 17th-century Drawings

Heiko Damm (GRASSI Museum für Angewandte Kunst), Expanding Drawings: Rubens and His Contemporaries

Friday, March 07

9:30–13:00 Roundtable

chaired by Jonathan Bober and Johannes Röll

_{Caption: Michelangelo, Preliminary Study for the Hand of God
(detail), c. 1511. Haarlem, Teylers Museum, Inv. A 25}