Murillo and His Drawings Author:Jonathan Brown Until the turn of the 20th century, the art of Murillo was highly appreciated and valued. Since then, he has usualy been considered and overly sentimental devotional painter of limited talent and appeal. This dramatic change in taste has several causes, one of which is the lack of thorough scholarly study of his art. In this book, his drawings, ... more »an important and neglected aspect of his work, are given comprehensive study, with special emphasis on the role they played in his creative process. The results reveal a dedicated and versatile draftsman, who used sketches in several media to develop his pictorial ideas. In addition, the author defines the evolution of Murillo's style as a draftsman and places him in the rich but little-known tradition of drawing in Seville during the 17th century.
All of the known drawings -- nearly one hundred -- are fully catalogued and illustrated; over one-third of them have not been previously studied or published. Comparative illustrations show works by followers of Murillo as well as many of his own oil paintings. There is also a preliminary checklist of Murillo's oil sketches.
This book, which responds to the need for monographic studies of the major Spanish Baroque draftsmen, is published in conjunction with an important exhibition of Murillo's drawings held at The Art Museum, Princeton University, in December 1976 - January 1977.« less