WRITER: HANVEY HSIUNG
CONTACT: PETER ALEXANDER
100 Old Public Library
Iowa City IA 52242
(319) 384-0072; fax (319) 384-0024
e-mail: peter-alexander@uiowa.edu

Release: Oct. 29, 1997

Exhibition of ‘Old Master Drawings’ will be at UI Museum of Art Nov. 6-Jan. 9

IOWA CITY, IA -- An exhibition of 20 drawings by European artists of the 16th through the 18th centuries will be on view from Nov. 6, 1999, through Jan. 9, 2000 in the Works-on-Paper Gallery of the University of Iowa Museum of Art. These Old Master drawings will be drawn from the museum’s permanent collection.

The drawings in this exhibition span 200 years, beginning with "Portrait of a Youth" by the Italian Giovanni Battista Franco (1498-1561) -- purchased by the museum with the help of the
Mark Ranney Memorial Fund -- and ending with "Landscape with Trees and Hunter" by Englishman Thomas Gainsborough (1727-1788).

Figurative works include "Flying Angel" by Giovanni Battista Trotti, a representation of a sibyl corresponding to a fresco in the church of San Pietro al Po in Cremona. Other drawings, including "Hagar and Ishmael in the Desert" by Francois Boucher and "Celestial Wedding of Adam and Eve at the Foot of Christ" by Scarsellino, represent Biblical events, adopted by patrons to inform and advise. Landscape sketches are represented with works by Elisabetta Sirani and Claude Lorrain.

Several of the drawings can be positively attributed to the Italian artists Giovanni Battista Trotti, Giovanni Francesco Barbieri and Elisabetta Sirani, active in the 17th century. However, Kathleen A. Edwards, curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the UI Museum of Art, says "other attributions are less presumable."

For example, in 1984 Susan E. Wegner of Bowdoin College reattributed to Federico Zuccaro a drawing that had come into the museum attributed to Giorgio Vasari. In order to make the new attribution, Wegner compared the drawing with other known drawings and established characteristics of the artist.

The UI Museum of Art, located on North Riverside Drive in Iowa City, is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free. Public metered parking is available in UI parking lots across from the museum on Riverside Drive and just north of the museum.

For information on the UI Museum of Art, visit http://www.uiowa.edu/~artmus on the World Wide Web. Information is available on other UI arts events at http://www.uiowa.edu/~uiowacr.