I disegni di paesaggio di Federico Barocci

A protagonist in the history of sixteenth-century drawing, Federico Barocci is one of the main innovators, both technically and aesthetically and typologically, of the genre of landscape drawing, which he adressed uninterruptedly between about 1550 and 1610. This essay presents the first attempt at systematic cataloging and dating of the over sixty landscape drawings by Barocci that have come down to us, a fragment of the over two hundred sheets of naturalistic themes described in the artist’s studio after his death in the autumn of 1612. The drawings, considered by typology individuated through the analysis of ancient testimonies, are compared with the work of artists who influenced Barocci, such as Titian, Gherardo Cibo, Taddeo and Federico Zuccari. The rereading of the graphic production and a series of new attributions allow us to rethink the relationship between drawing and painting in Barocci's work and his approach to the broader subject of the representation of nature.