Landscape 1600 - 1700

Aureliano Milani created this landscape drawing with red chalk sometime in the early 18th century. Chalk is a humble material, literally dust held together with a binder, and that gives the image a wonderful immediacy. Look closely, and you can see the tactile qualities of the chalk itself. Milani has used it to build up the composition from the foreground rocks to the distant mountains, using a technique related to modeling in clay. The repeated strokes create an all-over surface texture, an atmospheric haze. He has used the material to its best advantage by playing with the buildup of tone in multiple layers of hatching. It’s a virtuoso performance, but also one that is rooted in the everyday act of drawing. By concentrating on the qualities of the chalk itself, we get a sense of the artist's hand, and how it transforms base material into a compelling image. Seeing this link between process and image, we move beyond the traditional separation of fine art and craft.