Before the Boldness Vanished

"Many painters," the biographer Giorgio Vasari noted in 1550, "achieve in the first sketch of their work, as though guided by a sort of fire of inspiration, a certain measure of boldness: but afterwards, in finishing it, the boldness vanishes." The first sketch of which Vasari spoke was usually an oil sketch on relatively fragile paper or unprimed canvas. On it, the artist of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries delineated his ideas, often in considerable detail, and submitted them to a patron for approval. The dash and daring all too often vanished when he transferred his design to an immense ceiling or wall. One reason: the sketch was the work of the artist, while the fresco was sometimes completed with the aid of assistants.

Despite their casualness, such preliminary sketches are beginning to be seen more and more in U.S. museums and galleries. In 1967, an exhibit of 79 oil sketches, organized by Columbia University's Rudolf Wittkower, made a brief but much applauded appearance at Manhattan's Knoedler's Galleries. Next week, a collection of 60 sketches assembled by the Salzburg Dealer-Scholar Kurt Rossacher goes on view in Kansas City's Nelson-Atkins Gallery, and will subsequently be seen in Toledo, Providence and Minneapolis.

Inner Freedom. The Rossacher collection, while lacking the variety and consistent excellence of the Knoedler's exhibit, offers a valuable look at what almost seems to be a contradiction in terms: intimate baroque painting. Virtually every sketch in the show depicts Biblical or mythological figures arranged in elaborate compositions, dramatized with sometimes exaggerated chiaroscuro and overwrought perspective. Yet if the viewer can accommodate himself to the baroque's love of allegory, he will find the oil sketches a delight.

The brushwork is highly personalized and uninhibited. The earthy zest and pounding rhythm of Luca Giordano's 1702 Crucifixion is all the more remarkable because the artist turned out his work at maximum speed; in his day, he was known as Luca fa presto, or Fast Worker Luca. Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini's Fall of Phaethon is built of thin, semitransparent layers of oil paint and has a lightness that the finished fresco undoubtedly lacked (the sketch has outlived the fresco, which was destroyed in World War II).

Common to both these oil sketches is a genuineness of inspiration that has nothing to do with techniques. As Wittkower observes, the finished fresco had to be made solid and impressive with all its forms and symbols differentiated and understandable. Patrons expected such qualities. But in the preliminary sketch, the artist was working for the moment--and thus shares with the viewer the freshness and spontaneity of his initial vision.

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