Book Launch: The Farnese Drawings Collection

Join author Claire Van Cleave for the launch of her much anticipated publication:

The Farnese Drawings Collection, Editori Paparo, Naples, 2025

The Farnese Drawings Collection chronicles the rise and fall of the drawings collected in the Palazzo Farnese, Rome from the heyday of Farnese power in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries through to the remnants of the collection now held in the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte, Naples. At its peak, the collection included over 850 works on paper by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Parmigianino, Jacopo Bertoia, Giulio Clovio, Sofonisba Anguissola, Annibale Carracci, Albrecht Dürer, and other great artists of the period, but today only 57 drawings with a Farnese provenance are identifiable in Capodimonte collections.

The book, published in English and Italian editions, is comprised of two parts: a history of the collection and a catalogue of the drawings with a Farnese provenance remaining at Capodimonte. The opening chapters explore the intellectual atmosphere of the Palazzo Farnese during the age of Pope Paul III and the Farnese cardinals Ranuccio, Alessandro, and Odoardo. This is augmented by an in-depth study of three men who worked for the family and collected drawings under Farnese patronage: the major domo Conte Ludovico Tedesco, the resident artist Giulio Clovio, and the curator and librarian Fulvio Orisini, and suggests that the connection each of these erudite men had with each other and also with Tommaso de’ Cavalieri created a uniquely learned environment within the palace for collecting works on paper. The scope of the original collection and its later demise is examined through contemporary inventories and archival documents. The catalogue identifies Farnese drawings in the Capodimonte collections, taking into consideration recent publications, and explores each sheet in terms of attribution, style, subject, and how it might relate to Farnese collecting. The catalogue proposes a number of updated attributions, including drawings newly ascribed to Parmigianino, Bartolomeo Passarotti, and Giovanna Garzoni.

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Dr Claire Van Cleave is an independent scholar with an expertise in the study of Italian drawings. Her book is novel in its appraisal of the Farnese drawings collection as a stand-alone subject. Detached from wider Farnese studies, the importance of the collecting of drawings within the Palazzo Farnese and its impact on the nascent history of collecting Italian drawings in Rome during the sixteenth century is given its rightful stage. Van Cleave’s book is much more than a traditional museum catalogue as it also traces the social history and cultural circumstances which influenced collecting within the palace. Richly illustrated, it is a significant update to earlier Capodimonte publications on drawings and an important new addition to Farnese literature.

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This event is organized by The Drawing Foundation in association with Thank you to Stephen Ongpin Fine Art for their generosity on hosting this event in their exhibition at Adam Williams Fine Art.

Host or Publisher The Drawing Foundation