Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum Hosts Rare Italian Sculpture Drawings
BOSTON (CBS) – For the first time in the United States, drawings of famous sculptures are being shown together with those sculptures in a new exhibit at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum in Boston.
The idea behind "Sculptors' Drawings From Renaissance Italy", which opens Thursday, is that the sculptors always use drawings first, but very few of those sketches are still around.
The exhibit showcases drawings from master sculptors of the 15th and 16th centuries, like Donatello, Michelangelo, and Cellini.
Donatello has just one known drawing still in existence.
Museum Curator Oliver Tostmann says the exhibit revolves around the importance the drawings had to the sculptors, making them part art, part history, and part detective work.
"This show for the first time brings all of these scattered objects together and presents them to the visitor," Tostman told WBZ NewsRadio 1030.
"What is so fascinating to see is that we show artists who left us an abundance of works and then we show a lot of artists who are major sculptors who left us a lot of sculptures but not many drawings."
One of Tostman's favorite pieces of the show is a Cellini relief, a treasure because there are only five or six Cellini drawings left.
"To show such an amazing piece of art, it left Italy for the first time for our show and to bring it together for the first time with this drawing here from the Louvre is just something amazing," Tostman said.
For more information on the exhibit, visit the museum's website.
WBZ NewsRadio 1030's Karen Twomey reports
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