DUSSELDORF, GERMANY.-Thanks to the collection activities of Kunstakademie Düsseldorf, the Graphics Collection at museum kunst palast comprises a wealth of Roman baroque drawings, covering an extremely wide range by German standards. For the first time, the Graphics Collection is now showing about 80 of the drawings by Giovanni Lanfranco, available in Düsseldorf. Most of these are preliminary sketches and studies, done in black chalk on blue or reddish brown paper and forming the basis for Lanfranco’s painting projects.

Giovanni Lanfranco was born in Parma in 1582. In 1612 he became the most important personality on the art scene within Papal Rome. With his novel ideas, the artist created the first baroque interior design of a church in Sant’Agostino in Rome. Lanfranco’s work was sponsored by a range of significant clients in Rome until 1634, so that he left a large number of altarpieces and frescoes there. In Naples, too, the artist created numerous works in important churches and monastic establishment while he lived in the city for 12 years of his life. Lanfranco died in Rome in 1647.

Sketching numerous frescoes and altarpieces with a pencil, the artist was inexhaustibly active in the creation of figures, groups of figures and heads. At times he filled both the front and the reverse of his paper with sketches.

For the first time the current collection of works by Lanfranco includes 14 drawings that were originally on the reverse sides of other drawings and which have recently been discovered and restored with the help of the Restoration Centre of Düsseldorf, sponsored by Henkel. As was customary in so many other ancient collections, the drawings were firmly stuck to stiff handmade paper, so that only the front drawings were visible.

The Düsseldorf exhibition catalogue has been written by the internationally renowned Berlin researcher Dr. Erich Schleier, who is famous for his expertise in Roman baroque and who has been widely involved in the big Giovanni Lanfranco exhibition in Parma, Naples and Roma.