Drawing Tradition: Malvasia, Alfonso Lombardi, and the Use of Models in Bologna

In 1519 Alfonso Lombardi (c. 1497-1537) realised a monumental group in terracotta for the oratory of Santa Maria della Vita in Bologna. According to Carlo Cesare Malvasia (1686), Lombardi's sculptures were cast and reproduced, so that Bolognese painters could use them as a models in their workshops. An overlooked series of drawings from several museums (Florence, Chicago, Haarlem, London and New York) confirm Malvasia's words. These sheets demonstrate that Lombardi's sculptures circulated in Bolognese workshops from the sixteenth century to the nineteenth century. Celebrated painters such as Bartolomeo Passerotti, Pellegrino Tibaldi, Guido Reni and Donati Creti used Lombardi's three-dimensional creations as drawing models. The rediscovery of such an artistic practice based on sculpture challenges the historiographical tradition of Bolognese art dominated by its school of famous painters.