Study

Giuseppe Nogari · n.d.

Medium

Red chalk, heightened with white gouache, over traces of graphite on tan laid paper, laid down on cream laid paper

Original size

31.2 × 24.3 cm (12 5/16 × 9 5/8 in.)

Currently held

Art Institute of Chicago

Movement

Baroque

Giuseppe Nogari's *Study* is a quietly intimate work — a drawing that rewards close attention, with its warm chalk lines describing form through touch rather than precision. Nogari was an eighteenth-century Venetian painter and draughtsman, trained under Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, who shaped his sensitivity to light and texture. He became particularly associated with *teste di carattere* — expressive character heads that captured age, mood, and inner life with unusual directness. This study reflects that instinct: the use of red chalk, lifted with white gouache against the warmth of tan laid paper, creates a luminous, almost tactile surface. The technique was common among Venetian draughtsmen of the period, but Nogari brought to it a softness that feels less like academic exercise and more like genuine observation. The work is held in the permanent collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, one of the foremost repositories of European works on paper in North America. Translating a chalk drawing into hand-painted oil is a considered act — the reproduction works with the tonal warmth of the original, rendering Nogari's delicate contrasts in a medium that carries its own depth and physical presence, making the work accessible in a new form without losing the quiet humanity at its centre.