Sketches after Various Paintings, including the Visitation

Follower of Francesco Monti · n.d.

Medium

Brush and brown ink and wash, heightened with white gouache, on tan laid paper, laid down on ivory card

Original size

21.5 × 31.2 cm (8 1/2 × 12 5/16 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

This intimate sheet of studies captures the fluid, searching quality of an eighteenth-century Italian draughtsman thinking through composition in real time. Working in the tradition of Francesco Monti — the Bologna-born painter known for his sweeping Baroque frescoes and vigorous figure work — the artist behind this sheet used brush, brown ink, and wash with white gouache highlights to sketch multiple poses and groupings, including a tender rendering of the Visitation. The tan laid paper provides a warm middle tone that the white heightening exploits beautifully, lifting figures from the ground with a sculptural confidence typical of Central Italian academic training. That layered approach — dark wash building shadow, white gouache pulling light — gives even a preparatory sketch the presence of a finished work. Sheets like this were prized by collectors even in the artist's own era; study drawings from Italian workshops circulated widely and found their way into significant cabinet collections across Europe, valued as evidence of the creative mind at work rather than mere preparatory material. The hand-painted oil reproduction translates the drawing's tonal range and gestural energy into pigment on canvas, preserving the interplay of warm shadow and lifted light that makes the original, held at the Art Institute of Chicago, so quietly compelling.