Snite’s ‘Disegno’ transports viewers

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There’s something about walking into a gallery filled with old Italian art that can’t fail to please lovers of traditional art. Multiculturalists and postcolonialists would strongly disagree with me if I said that all art museums should be at least partially filled with old Italian art, so I won’t say it. I will say, however, that looking at a 17th- century Italian drawing in a dimly lit gallery provides the classic art museum experience — do it, and you’ll be able to convince yourself that you’re somewhere in Europe, in a venerable museum with giant columns flanking the front doors, no matter where you actually are.

Aside from assembling an impressive collection of works on paper, “The Art of Disegno,” an exhibition of Italian prints and drawings currently on display at the Snite Museum of Art, offers just such an experience.

The exhibit, which has been organized by the Georgia Museum of Art, features dozens of drawings, prints and other works on paper from the 16th through the 18th centuries. The disegno of the show’s title translates literally as drawing or design, but its meaning in the history of art is a little more subtle; an artist with a mastery of disegno had control of the foundation of art, according to commentators of the time, and with it, the ability to accurately reproduce nature, as all art should strive to do. These masters of disegno included such familiar names as Tiepolo, Parmigianino, Canaletto and Veronese, all of whom are among the many artists represented in the exhibition. ...

All of the works are accompanied by excellent text panels that provide both biographical details about the artists and extensive contextual information about the individual pictures. They add considerably to the sense of the show’s art historical significance and make the exhibition a wonderful opportunity to immerse oneself in the most famous era of Western art.

Image: Tribune Photo/SANTIAGO FLORES
Antonio Canaletto’s print “View of a Town With a Bishop’s Tomb” “View of a Town With a Bishop’s Tomb,” one of the works featured in “The Art of Disegno: Italian Prints and Drawings from the Georgia Museum of Art” at the Snite, is as meticulously detailed as his more famous cityscapes.