The Departure of Saint Paula and Saint Eustochium for the Holy Land 1740

Giuseppe Bottani sketched this preparatory drawing in the 18th century with pen and brown ink, and brown wash over a grid in red chalk. This drawing depicts Saint Paula and Saint Eustochium leaving for the Holy Land, a popular subject in Counter-Reformation Italy, a period in which the Catholic Church sought to revitalize religious piety through art. Bottani uses visual codes to emphasize the virtue of his subjects, such as the classical robes, referencing Roman attire. He made this drawing in Italy, where institutions such as the Catholic Church still exerted considerable cultural power. The gridlines visible throughout the sketch speak to the institutional history of the art. Bottani’s choice to use this technique shows us this drawing was not intended to be seen as a finished work, but as a stepping stone to a fresco in the church of Sant’ Agostino, in Milan. Historians look to the iconography of an artwork, and the ways art was commissioned, exhibited, and interpreted in its time, so we can better understand the society which shaped its production.