The Metropolitan Museum of Art: An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo May 12–August 15, 2010

An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo will present 70 extraordinary works by masters of the 16th through 18th centuries, from one of the preeminent collections of Italian Old Master drawings in private hands. Impressive in its variety, the collection includes figure studies, historical and mythological narratives, landscapes, botanicals, motifs copied after the antique, and designs for painted compositions. All the principal centers of Italian art —Florence, Rome, Naples, Bologna, Parma, Venice, Genoa, Milan—are represented.

Among the many treasures of the collection on view to the public for the first time are a recently discovered, magnificent red chalk drawing of the head of Julius Caesar by Andrea del Sarto, the leading Florentine painter of the first decades of the 16th century; a luminous study by Correggio for the figure of Eve in his great masterpiece, the painted dome of the cathedral of Parma; a sprightly pen drawing by his younger contemporary Parmigianino—hailed in his day as the spirit of the divine Raphael reborn—for one of his most important painted portraits; brilliantly rendered colored studies by the Florentine artist Jacopo Ligozzi, one depicting, with poetry and scientific precision, a plant, and another an exotic Oriental theme; a powerful study of a recumbent nude man by the towering genius of Baroque Rome, Gianlorenzo Bernini, and of a fanciful ship by his contemporary, the sculptor Alessandro Algardi, made for the pope; a rich concentration of drawings by some of the leading Bolognese painters of the 17th century, notably Guercino, who is represented by three masterful studies; fine examples by the great Venetian draftsmen of the 18th century, among them Canaletto, Guardi, Piranesi, and the greatest artistic luminary genius of the age, Giambattista Tiepolo.

An Italian Journey: Drawings from the Tobey Collection, Correggio to Tiepolo is organized by Linda Wolk-Simon, Curator, George R. Goldner, Drue Heinz Chairman, and Carmen C. Bambach, Curator, all of the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Drawings and Prints.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue that will be available for sale in the Museum's bookshops.

Among the educational programs that will accompany the exhibition are: a Sunday at the Met program; gallery talks; film screenings; a workshop for teachers; and family programs in English and Spanish.

The exhibition and its related programs will be featured on the Museum's website at www.metmuseum.org.