From about 1515 until his death, Andrea del Sarto (1486–1530) ran the most successful and productive workshop in Florence, not only leaving his native city richly decorated with his art but also greatly influencing the art produced in the remainder of the century. By 1700, however, Andrea’s reputation had declined, not to be revived until the publication of monographs by Sydney Freedberg and John Shearman in 1963 and 1965, respectively. Although his oeuvre represents the essence of Florentine High Renaissance creativity and the magisterial beauty of his drawings is well known to scholars and collectors, he is less known to the general public. In 2015, audiences will experience the first major monographic exhibition on this artist ever to be presented in the United States (and the first in nearly thirty years shown anywhere). Andrea del Sarto: The Renaissance Workshop in Action, co-organized by The Frick Collection and the J. Paul Getty Museum, opens in Los Angeles in summer 2015, prior to coming to New York in the fall of 2015. A richly illustrated scholarly catalogue written by an international team of Renaissance scholars and drawings experts will provide further focused investigation and appreciation of Andrea del Sarto’s working process. Principal funding for the exhibition in New York is generously provided by the Robert H. Smith Family Foundation, The Christian Humann Foundation, The Peter Jay Sharp Foundation, and Andrea Woodner.
Assembled from major institutions such as the Louvre, the Uffizi, Palazzo Pitti, National Gallery of Art, and the British Museum, this selection features nearly fifty drawings — red and black chalk figures, expressive heads, and compositional studies — and three related paintings. The show will examine the important role drawing played in Andrea del Sarto’s paintings and will present, for the first time, the two media in concert. By showing select groups of drawings with their completed paintings and by grouping together other drawings that relate to specific commissions, the exhibition will shed light on the artist’s creative process.
