The Farnese Drawings Collection

This scholarly volume reconstructs one of the most remarkable drawing collections assembled in Renaissance Italy – the celebrated Farnese collection of works on paper once housed in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome.

At its height in the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries, the collection comprised more than 850 drawings by masters including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Parmigianino, Annibale Carracci, Albrecht Dürer, and other leading figures of the Renaissance and Mannerist periods. Today, only fifty-seven sheets with confirmed Farnese provenance survive within the holdings of the Museo e Real Bosco di Capodimonte in Naples.

Published by Editori Paparo (Naples, 2025) in English and Italian editions, the book is structured in two major parts. The first reconstructs the intellectual and cultural climate of the Palazzo Farnese during the era of Pope Paul III and the powerful Farnese cardinals. It explores the role of key figures such as the court artist Giulio Clovio and the humanist Fulvio Orsini, revealing how scholarship, collecting, and artistic patronage intersected within one of Europe’s most sophisticated courts.

The second part presents a detailed catalog of the surviving Farnese drawings at Capodimonte. Each sheet is examined in terms of attribution, style, subject, and historical context. The publication proposes several updated attributions, including works newly assigned to Parmigianino, Bartolomeo Passarotti, and Giovanna Garzoni, making this volume an important contribution to Renaissance drawing scholarship.

Richly illustrated and grounded in archival research, this museum collection catalog is an essential reference for specialists in Renaissance art, museum professionals, academic libraries, and collectors of works on paper. It offers not only a reconstruction of a lost princely collection, but also insight into how drawings functioned as intellectual and artistic currency in early modern Europe.