0319 Transparent Paper as a Medium of Copying and Design in the Early Modern Architectural Workshop

  • Anna Bortolozzi (Author)
    https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6071-9151

    Anna Bortolozzi is an Italian art historian specializing in Early Modern architecture, with a focus on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe. She is the author of the book Santi Ambrogio and Carlo al Corso. Identità, magnificenza e culto delle reliquie nella Roma del primo Seicento (2014), as well as several articles on the completion of New St Peter’s during the pontificate of Paul V, the memory of the old basilica and the Vatican Grottos. As a researcher at the Nationalmuseum in Stockholm, she specialized in the study of architectural drawings and their materiality, publishing a catalogue of Italian Architectural Drawings from the Cronstedt Collection (2020) and articles on the drawing practice of Giulio Romano and Carlo Maderno. She has recently curated the digital exhibition "Transparent designs: Copies and tracings in 18th-century architectural practice", produced with the support of The Paper Project initiative (Getty Foundation). Bortolozzi is currently Associate Professor of Art History at Stockholm University.

Identifiers (Article)

Abstract

This article explores the use and function of the lucido technique in architectural workshops from the Renaissance through the late eighteenth century. By examining evidence from written sources and key drawing collections, the study compares the copying practices of architects with those of artists. The findings reveal that transparent paper was not appreciated as a copying medium in Europe’s architectural workshops until the mid-eighteenth century. When employed, transparent paper was primarily used for copying figure and ornamental drawings that were challenging to transfer using the pricking technique. The paper argues that the marginalization of transparent paper in architectural practice was possibly due to the coating process and the characteristics of the substances employed – vegetable oils and resins – which were incompatible with the working environment of architects. It was only with the commercialization of machine-made wove transparent paper in the early nineteenth century that architects and engineers began to systematically adopt this medium.

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Language
en
Keywords
architectural drawing, copy, tracing, transparent paper, architectural practice