Tommaso Minardi

Tommaso Minardi (Faenza 1787 – Rome 1871) Sketchbook of drawings Technical specifications: mm. 246 x 395 x 24; 59 sheets; 176 drawings; coeval binding; paper cover decorated with blue and gold floral motifs; in the center on the front cover there is a later rectangular label with blue and gold frames and the words “Minardi Tomaso 1787-1871” written in black ink. The sketchbook is presented as a collection of drawings by Tommaso Minardi, only a small part of which are written on the pages of the album itself (cc. 1-12; 58) and mostly pasted on afterwards. The two lives of the object are also evidenced by the presence of a double numbering: a first, characterized by numbers affixed with brown ink at the top right on the recto of each sheet, and a second that numbers the individual drawings in pencil. The thirteen sheets used as a support for the drawing demonstrate that the album was certainly used by Minardi as a sketchbook in his youth. In addition to the stylistic compatibility with the artist's known sheets, the drawings in fact reveal a coincidence with the movements that can be verified in his biography (G. De Sanctis, Tommaso Minardi e il suo tempo, Rome 1900; Tommaso Minardi: disegni, taccuini, lettere nelle collezioni pubbliche di Forlì e Faenza, edited by M. Manfrini Orlandi and A.Scarlini, Bologna 1981; Disegni di Tommaso Minardi 1787-1871, exhibition catalog edited by S. Susinno, 2 vols, Rome 1982). First of all, there is a copy from the Disputation on the Coronation of the Virgin by Jacopo Bertucci, kept in the art gallery of his native Faenza, followed by copies of Bolognese works, sometimes accompanied by the words “TM Bologna 1808”, which appears on several drawings by the master already known, including the School of Mathematics now kept at the National Gallery of Modern Art in Rome (Disegni... 1982, p. 138, cat. 18). Also among those directly drawn on the album is a beautiful watercolor drawing depicting an Adoration of the Shepherds taken from the lost frescoes by Nicolò dell’Abate in Palazzo Leoni in Bologna (Fogli della follia. Fortunato Duranti, visionario e romantico, edited by A. Giovanardi, F. Pozzi, Rimini 2018, p. 48). In the pages left blank by the artist, a collation of drawings attributable to him for the most part was later carried out. This is a careful and extremely coherent operation, since it mainly brings together studies carried out in the same context in which the sketchbook had been used: at c. 30 there is, for example, once again the indication “Bologna 16 apr.le 1808”, while many other copies were probably made on the basis of engravings widely spread in the Bolognese area (copies from Correggio, Raffaello and Giulio Romano). In general, most of the sketches were made during the artist's youthful stays in central-northern Italy between 1808 and 1812 (Disegni...1982, pp. 73-76). In fact, copies appear from Milanese works – such as Leonardo’s Last Supper –, from Ravenna (from the mosaics of Sant’Apollinare Nuovo, but also from the Giottesque cycle of Santa Maria in Porto Fuori), from Siena (it is known that his drawings from Nicola Pisano’s pulpit illustrated the History of Sculpture by Leopoldo Cicognara, published between 1813 and 1818). A smaller number of sketches appear referring to a more mature moment, as evidenced by the presence of Roman works. The autograph of most of the drawings can therefore be established both on a stylistic basis and for its consistency with the biography, but also, in some cases, due to the artist's reuse of sheets previously used for correspondence, which bear his name. The comparison of watermarks with those found in the papers of the master's personal archive, kept at the State Archives of Rome, also offers a positive outcome. Certainly not attributable to Minardi's hand are the various floral compositions, the sketch of reclining figures (c. 59v), the pastel portrait of a man (c. 14v) and this, in addition to the fact that he used to collect albums of his own drawings dividing them by subjects (S. Ventra, Disegni di Tommaso Minardi in Accademia di San Luca. Il legato testamentario e altre acquisizioni, in “Horti Hesperidum”, 1, 2014, pp. 303-350) attests that the collation of the album is due to the hand of a careful collector and not to the master himself. Important because it documents the selection of models in the youth phase by Minardi and the formation of a taste that privileges the artistic production of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries which will consolidate in the master's culture until the adherence to purism and which will involve many protagonists of the nineteenth-century artistic and cultural panorama in Italy (S. Ricci, Agli albori del purismo: il riflesso degli “antichi maestri” nell’opera del giovane Tommaso Minardi, in La ricerca giovane in cammino per l’arte, edited by C. Bordino, R. Dinoia, Rome 2012, pp. 241-261). Stefania Ventra