Drawing Cabinet

The Pinacoteca’s less well-known collections include a collection of drawings dating back to the first half of the 19th century, part of a group of drawings that began to build up as teaching supports when the Accademia di Belle Arti was first established. According to a tradition dating back to the school of the Carracci brothers, drawing contains within it a synthesis of the manual and intellectual processes that form the basis of an artist’s training.
The initial core of the collection contains a number of preparatory drawings for paintings now in the Pinacoteca, along with several extremely rare cartoons published only in 1959 in a series of exhibitions in Bologna and bearing out the importance of drawings in increasing our understanding of paintings (and vice-versa) in the wake of a renewed interest in 17th century painting of the Emilian school in the modern era.
The collection has continued to grow thanks to donations and acquisitions that include the drawings of the Surrealists Picabia, Duchamp and Man Ray, offering a truly unique opportunity for research into workshop secrets and into the creative processes through which artists move as they draw ever closer to the execution of the final image.