Timeless Renaissance

Timeless Renaissance features 74 recently rediscovered drawings from the 16th through the early 18th centuries. The book offers a fascinating glimpse of Count Allessandro Maggiori (1764-1834) as an art collector and reveals the cultural and historical importance of the collection he assembled in his villa near Monte San Giusto.All of the works were clearly influenced by Raphael's 16th-century Renaissance ideals of beauty, which were further developed throughout the 17th century by Bolognese masters such as Annibale Carracci, Guido Reni, and Domenichino. The Maggiori collection embraces this Neo-Renaissance, or "Timeless Renaissance."Mostly gathered in the years of the Napoleonic dominion over the Italian peninsula, the drawings selected by Maggiori subtly reveal the emergence of Italian collective identity and a new civic awareness before Italy became an autonomous state. Deeply indebted to the seats of Catholicism in Rome and Bologna, the works represent a tradition opposed to the ideals of post-revolutionary France. They are distinctly Italian.