REWORK | RETOUCH | CARE: Case Studies from the Bibliotheca Hertziana's Art Collection
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EXHIBITION: March 4, 2025 to September 19, 2025
Bibliotheca Hertziana – Max Planck Institute for Art History
Palazzo Zuccari, Via Gregoriana, 28, 00187 Rome
Introduction
Long after leaving the artist’s studio, drawings continue to transform. More fragile and responsive than canvas or panel, paper not only registers the passage of time but also readily reflects shifts in ownership, taste, and interest. This exhibition presents for the first time a selection of case studies from the Hertziana collection that draws attention to the open temporality of these works.
The exhibition explores a selection of chronologically and stylistically diverse drawings that share notable material features and a layered history. These works were examined during the Getty Paper Project Workshop Touched/Retouched: Paper Across Time, 1400-1800; through a conservation and diagnostic campaign carried out by the Paper Conservation Department of the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica; and during the ongoing research conducted by the Lise Meitner Group Decay, Loss, and Conservation in Art History led by Francesca Borgo. Together, these initiatives provided a unique opportunity to explore not only questions of technique, function, and typology, but also issues of value, authorship, and attribution.
The curatorial project transformed the Institute’s exhibition space into a site of active research and scholarly dialogue. By foregrounding the study of works on paper—rather than the drawings themselves—as the focal point of the display, the exhibition underscores the collaborative and iterative nature of this inquiry. It raises open questions about these objects and invites the scholarly community that animates the Hertziana daily to contribute insights, observations, and proposals for new attributions. To support this engagement, scholars are provided with essential tools of the trade: a magnifying lens, pencil, paper for note-taking, and a selection of comparative images.
The Getty Paper Project Workshop
The exhibition was part of Rework (2024/25), one of the Annual Research Initiatives of the Lise Meitner Group. It built on research conducted in November 2024 during the Getty Paper Project Workshop Touched/Retouched: Paper across Time, 1400–1800, a collaboration between the Lise Meitner Group and the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica. On that occasion, twenty-four specialists in prints and drawings from across Europe and North America convened in Rome to examine these works firsthand. Beyond object-based analysis, the workshop focused on premodern practices of retouching and tested an expansive new definition of the term—one that encompassed any discernible alteration made to a drawing or its support after completion—opening a broader discussion on taxonomy and methodology. By centering on retouching, the workshop advanced a materially layered understanding of paper objects and explored a fundamental point of intersection between academic, curatorial, and conservation practices.
Among drawing specialists, detecting and dating traces of retouching is considered to be largely a matter of tacit knowledge; and while the reconstruction of the chronological sequence of interventions via close looking or the help of diagnostic technologies is carried out on a daily basis in collections worldwide, the practice is often virtually inaccessible to outsiders. Given that the subtleties of this set of skills are impossible to express or extract through text alone, the workshop was specifically designed also to provide an opportunity to acquire technical and material knowledge that will prove essential for drawings and prints curators entering the field.
The Exhibition Design
The graphic design for the exhibition was developed by Verso in close dialogue with the fellows of the Lise Meitner Group, turning the design process itself into a site of inquiry on how scholarly knowledge can be communicated visually in a research-driven exhibition. Geometric typography, paired with a system of icons and infographics, establishes a visual framework that supports the curatorial narrative and its emphasis on studying, conserving, and caring for objects through time. The graphic design also acts as a mediation tool, facilitating reading and interpretation, even by non-specialist audiences.
The use of canvas coverings for the wall panels references premodern supports, evoking the materiality that is central to the project. Beyond being a display surface however, each panel is here also a scholar’s working table: magnifying glass, pencil, notebook, and a selection of comparative images provide the visitor with tools for inquiry, annotation, and hypothesis. This call to scientific, active engagement underpins the curatorial concept: the exhibition becomes a shared critical practice, in which the viewer is invited to inhabit the position of the researcher.
The burgundy line traversing the logotype, beyond echoing the Hertziana visual identity, serves as a graphic index of visual and narrative continuity, reappearing across media to emphasize historical layering. The lines act as a literal and metaphorical common thread connecting the historical dimension of the drawings to its contemporary state of research. This timeline motif extends across the panels, each structured to be read vertically from top to bottom: the lines map the stratigraphy of interventions in chronological sequence and tag them directly on the drawing’s surface, in alignment with material features such as watermarks and collectors’ marks. A complementary system of icons establishes a taxonomy of rework and retouch—an attempt to tightly weave scholarly content into visual form, reinforcing the exhibition’s methodological aims.
Three Case Studies
I: Doodling Afterlifes: Follower of Raphael, Three Draped Male Figures Surrounded by Doodles
This drawing (Inv. D10095) was selected from among the works on display not so much for the intrinsic quality but rather for the evident manipulations it has undergone over the centuries. The three draped figures derive from models circulating in the workshop of Raphael, and it is quite straightforward, in this case, to follow the graphic procedure deployed by the artist who made them: the initial red chalk sketches are reinforced with contours in pen and ink; next is the articulation of light and shadow using a brush and diluted ink. The drawing is made on one of the two halves of a standard-format sheet, as indicated by the visible chain line along the right margin.
On both the recto and the verso, elegant pen doodles are visible, executed in an ink different from that used for the principal composition and probably dating to the eighteenth century. Defined by Ernst Gombrich as “pleasures of boredom,” these marks are non-representational in nature, born of rhythmic movement and manual dexterity. In their volutes, loops, and knots, the line extends and curls without interruption, framing the three central figures without ever overlapping them. On the verso, an inscription attributes the drawing to the “School of Raphael,” confirming its iconographic connection to the Raphael circle despite its later execution.
Traces of glue in the corners and nail holes along the lower edge attest to the various methods of display the drawing has undergone over time, offering material clues to its collecting history.
II: The Conservator's Touch: 17th-century Italian artist, Rest on the Return from Egypt
The small-format drawing (Inv. D10017) is distinguished by its fine, closely spaced hatching and a pen-drawn border enclosing the scene, formal elements reminiscent of devotional prints widespread in early seventeenth-century Italy. As part of the research project, the sheet, which was previously in particularly poor conservation condition, underwent a radical restoration. The removal of stains caused by glue residue transferred from an earlier mount allowed for a more complete reading of the subject, which is now interpretable again: it is no longer a simple domestic scene, but a “Rest on the Return from Egypt“, identified by the reappearance of the figure of Saint Joseph at the center of the composition. This detail echoes an iconographic invention by Federico Barocci, in which Saint Joseph extends a branch of a cherry tree toward the Christ Child, following a motif widely circulated through the print by Cornelis Cort. A proposed attribution, recorded in the visitor notebook available during the exhibition, suggests placing the drawing within the French school of the second quarter of the seventeenth century, based on stylistic affinities with the etchings of Laurent de La Hyre (1606–1656).
During the restoration work carried out by Martina Moroni at the ICG in February and March 2025, the drawing was removed from the support to which it had been glued, on which the old inventory number (‘21’) added by Christof Thoenes (1928–2018) around 1969 and the new numbering affixed in 1996 under the direction of the then collection curator, Julian Kliemann (1949–2015) by Oliver Lenz (‘10017’) are still legible; the stitching on the left side of the support suggest that the drawing was once bound inside a volume. The surface of the drawing was then subjected to controlled cleaning using gellan gel, revealing a third figure that was previously illegible. The work was then subjected to a deacidification and oxide-reducing treatment to slow down the degradation of the paper and the corrosion of the ink. The verso was then reinforced with Japanese paper tissue, loose fragments were reattached and finally the lacunae caused by the corrosion of the metal-gallic ink were filled with dyed Japanese paper inserts and then harmonised chromatically by means of pictorial retouching.
III: The Passepartout as Method: Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, Draped Male Figure
This study of a draped figure (Inv. D10036) was formerly classified among the anonymous drawings of the Hertziana collection. During the exhibition and the related research campaign, it became the subject of significant scholarly investigation and contextualization, which culminated in a proposal by Jonathan Bober to attribute the sheet to Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (1609–1664). The fluid and confident handling of the red chalk, together with the quick sketch in the upper right corner, suggests the stylistic maturity of the artist and supports a proposed dating to the 1650s.
Several material details on the passepartout of the drawing offer insight into its subsequent history. For this reason, and as an exception, it was decided to leave the entire mount visible—to reaffirm its significance as a site of historical inquiry. It served as a surface for the exchange of attributional opinions, a space for annotations, collection stamps, and inventory numbers, and thus contributes to the reconstruction of the sheet’s provenance, in this case including its institutional history. The mount thus becomes an essential source for the study of the material manipulation of works on paper over time.
The drawing is mounted within an eighteenth-century British-style frame. In the lower right corner, one can discern an attempt to erase a former collector’s mark, above which is the stamp (Lugt 2604) of William Bates (1824–1884). The sale of the Bates collection dates to 1887, shortly before Henriette Hertz began her own collecting activity. A further change of ownership is also documented in the same lower right corner, within the mount, through a set of punctuated initials. Along the lower edge, an attribution to Giulio Carpioni (ca. 1613–1678) is inscribed in red chalk, later reaffirmed in graphite near the right margin. The current inventory number, added by Oliver Lenz in 1996 under the direction of then-curator Julian Kliemann, is accompanied by an earlier handwritten number (“no. 41”), traceable to Christof Thoenes, who was affiliated with the Institute for many years and to whom we can also attribute the first typed inventory of the drawings collection, compiled in April 1969.
Catalogue of Drawings on Display
Selected Bibliography
Alberti, Francesca and Diane Bodart, ed., Gribouillage: de Léonard de Vinci à Cy Twombly (Rome - Paris: Villa Médicis, Académie de France à Rome ; Beaux-Arts de Paris éditions, 2022).
Baldinucci, Filippo. Vocabolario dell’arte del disegno. Firenze, 1681.
Blunt, Anthony. The Drawings of G. B. Castiglione and Stefano della Bella in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen at Windsor Castle. (London: Phaidon, 1954).
De Tolnay, Charles. History and Technique of Old Master Drawings, a Handbook. (New York: Hacker Art Books, 1972).
Fagan, Louis. Collectors’ Marks. London: Field & Tuer, 1883.
Faietti, Marzia, Lorenza Melli and Alessandro Nova, eds., Le tecniche del disegno rinascimentale: dai materiali allo stile, atti del convegno internazionale, Firenze, Kunsthistorisches Institut, 22-23 settembre 2008, Mitteilungen des Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, 52 (2008).
Fowler, Caroline. The Art of Paper: from the Holy Land to the Americas (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2019).
Fowler, Caroline and Alexander Nagel, eds., The Expanded Field of Conservation (Williamstown, MAs: Clark Art Institute, 2022)
Gagné, John. “Paper World: The Materiality of Loss in the Pre-Modern Age.” In Approaches to the History of Written Culture: A World Inscribed, ed. by Martyn Lyons and Rita Marquilhas (London: Palgrave MacMillan, 2017), pp. 57–72.
Gombrich, Ernst. “Caccia allo scarabocchio”, in Giuseppe Zevola, Piaceri di noia: quattro secoli di scarabocchi nell’Archivio storico del Banco di Napoli (Milano: Leonardo, 1991), pp. 7–18, transl. as “Pleasures of Boredom: Four Centuries of Doodles” in id., The Uses of Images: Studies in the Social Function of Art and Visual Communication (London: Phaidon Press, 1999), pp. 212–225.
Holben Ellis, Margaret, ed., Historical Perspectives in the Conservation of Works of Art on Paper (Los Angeles: Getty Conservation Institute, 2015).
Monbeig-Goguel, Catherine. “Taste and Trade: The Retouched Drawings in the Everard Jabach Collection at the Louvre.” Burlington Magazine 130, 1028 (1988), pp. 821–835.
Percy, Ann. Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione: Master Draughtsman of the Italian Baroque, Philadelphia: Philadelphia Museum of Art, 1971. Exhibition Catalogue.
Petrioli Tofani, Annamaria, Simonetta Prosperi Valenti Rodinò and Gianni Carlo Sciolla, eds., Il Disegno. Forme, tecniche, significati. (Turin: Istituto Bancario San Paolo di Torino, 1991).
Poulsson, Tina Grette. Retouching of Art on Paper (London: Archetype, 2008).
Tordella, Piera Gabriella. “Il disegno tra conservazione e «renovatione» nelle fonti e nella pratica artistica tra Quattro e Settecento.” In Conservazione dei materiali librari, archivistici e grafici, ed. by Marina Regni and Piera Giovanna Tordella, 2 vols., (Torino: Allemandi, 1996), vol. II, pp. 181–200.
Wyatt Thibaudeau, Alphonse. Dictionnaire des marques et monogrammes d’amateurs, manuscript. Berlin: Kupferstichkabinett, WGa 0 19.
Online Resources
Briquet, Charles-Moïse. Les filigranes: Dictionnaire historique des marques du papier dès leur apparition vers 1282 jusqu’en 1600, Online Database
Lugt, Frits. Les Marques de collections de dessins & d’estampes, Online Database
Imprint
The exhibition REWORK | RETOUCH | CARE: Case Studies from the Hertziana Collection was curated by Francesca Borgo and Camilla Colzani.
A dedicated conservation and diagnostic campaign was carried out by the Paper Conserva-tion Department of the Istituto Centrale per la Grafica: Gabriella Pace (Department Head), Karmen Corak, Martina Moroni, Miriam Pitocco (ICR–MIC).
Enrico Fontolan, photographer at the Photographic Collection of the Bibliotheca Hertziana, carried out an extensive photographic campaign covering both the drawings on display and under examination, as well as the exhibition itself.
Special Thanks
We extend our gratitude to all who contributed, in particular:
Jonathan Bober, Hugo Chapman, David Ekserdjian, Mattia Giancarli, Francesco Grisolia, Victor Hundsbuckler, Oliver Lenz, Pietro Liuzzo, Giorgio Marini, Golo Maurer, Heather McDonald, Lorenza Melli, Mauro Mussolin, Luigi Oliva, Alice Ottazzi, Leonardo Pili, Domenico Pino, Simonetta Prosperi Valenti, Johannes Röll, Cristiana Romalli, Nicola Suthor, Patrizia Tosini, and Vitale Zanchettin. A special acknowledgment to Susanne Kubersky-Piredda, Curator of the BHMPI Art Collection.
Graphic Design
Verso
Exhibition Installation
mae – media arte eventi
Online Exhibition
Tatjana Bartsch
Translation and Editing
Greta Lamanna und Viktoria Hörtenhuber
Institutional support
September 19, 2025
