The eighteenth century in Italy;

by Jacob Bean

This is the third in a series of catalogues published jointly by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and The Pierpont Morgan Library to record exhibitions of drawings from the two institutions and from distinguished private collections. The exhibitions and the books that illustrate them document the finest traditions of European draftsmanship, from the Renaissance through the nineteenth century.

The Eighteenth Century in Italy, which follows The Italian Renaissance and The Seventeenth Century in Italy, contains reproductions of 300 drawings, presented one to a page. The book brings together, chronologically, brilliant works by G. B. Tiepolo, Canaletto, Francesco Guardi, Giovanni Battista Piranesi, and Domenico Tiepolo—as well as drawings of fifty-one other masters of the Settecento.

As in the preceding catalogues, the photographic reproductions have been made directly from the drawings themselves in order to retain, as much as possible, the original tonalities. Each of the 300 drawings has a commentary, record of provenance and exhibitions, technical description, and bibliography. And, for the first time in the series, many watermarks have been drawn and reproduced photographically. [This book was originally published in 1971 and has gone out of print. This edition is a print-on-demand version of the original book.]

443 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1971

About the author

Jacob Bean was the curator of drawings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art for 31 years.

Bean graduated from Harvard University in 1945. Before joining the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he had worked at the drawings department of the Louvre from 1957 to 1960. He was adjunct professor at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University from 1967 to 1980. From 1963 until his death, he was the associate editor of Master Drawings, a scholarly publication about Old Master drawings.

He died of cancer of the oesophagus in 1992, aged 68.