If we can see those small masterpieces, we must thank Cardinal Leopoldo de’ Medici for his farsightedness, acumen and sensitivity. During the second half of the 17th Century, he bought, through one of his agents, the painter Giovan Battista Natali, many Lombardic paintings. The decision of the cardinal, taken under suggestion of Filippo Baldinucci, an expert, might be considered very wise, since he had been able to bring to Florence the paintings of Camillo Boccaccino, Antonio Campi, Bernardino Gatti, Giovan Battista Trotti, called the Malosso.
A high technique made possible to realize beautiful things and masterpieces. On those centuries, being a painter meant to be a designer and to have the skill of drawing the representations of the world: both the supernatural world and the real one.
If a man was not a good designer, he could not be a painter; the higher was the technique of the artist with a paint-brush or a pencil, the highest was his merit.
Nowadays, also because there are other arts, painting and painters do not depend only on the perfection of the drawing and their merit is not valued on the perfection of the cross-hatch only.
Behind the great paintings that, starting from the Renaissance, can be considered as the most beautiful of the figurative art, there is an extraordinary ability on drawing.
In any way, we must consider as small masterpieces the drawings from Cremona that are exhibited at Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi (enter from Via della Ninna) until January 23rd 2000.
The exhibition at the Uffizi has been organised by Mr.Marco Tanzi, who studied the whole contest of the realisation of these masterpieces
