Graceful and True

When Francesco Scannelli described the art of Lodovico Cigoli (1559-1613) and his contemporaries as "graceful, delivate and true" in 'Il Microcosmo della Pittura' of 1657, he was recording the emergence of a new mode of painting and drawing in late sixteenth-century Florence. Other writers of the seventeenth century admired the lyricism and naturalism of this generation of Florentine artists, as distinct from the more convoluted, virtuoso style of their predecessors. The practice of drawing - particularly drawing from life and from nature - was at the heart of this stylistic revolution in Florence, which is comparable in its innovations and effects to the changes brought about at the same time in Bologna by the Carracci. This book illustrates the quality, beauty and importance of drawings by Florentine artists such as Cigoi, Federico Zuccari, Andrea Boscoli, Alessandro Allori, Cristofano Allori and Giovanni Balducci, whose work was often connected with the Medici court and its public festivities and ceremonies. The 'Graceful and True' exhibition at the Ashmolean Museum was the first dedicated show of late sixteenth century Florentine drawings in the United Kingdom, and represents a major achievement in highlighting such little-known treasures. While recent exhibitions in Italy, America and elsewhere have encouraged the study and appreciation of drawings from this period, the richness and quality of works from British collections is explored here, in a fitting fashion.