Italy, Florence / c. 1508
Farmhouse on the Slope of a Hill
The Cleveland Museum of Art catalogs Farmhouse on the Slope of a Hill as drawing (Italy, Florence · c. 1508).
The artist who made this drawing, Fra (brother) Bartolommeo, left his successful Florentine artistic studio in 1500 and renounced painting in order to join the Dominican Order.
A CLOSER LOOK
The museum identifies this drawing as pen and brown ink and credits Fra Bartolommeo (Italian, 1472–1517).
The museum's collection notes: This is a significant early example of pure landscape drawing in Europe, as it is dedicated completely to the depiction of nature for its own sake, without suggestion of a biblical or historical narrative. The rapidity and regularity of strokes used for the evergreen and deciduous trees and the sweeping lines in the foreground suggest that the landscape in Farmhouse on the Slope of a Hill was made directly from nature. The sheet comes from an album of 41 landscape studies by Fra Bartolommeo assembled by an eighteenth-century collector and disbound for sale in the mid-20th century. A member of the Dominican Order, Fra Bartolomeo likely produce
FOLLOW THE EVIDENCE
The Cleveland Museum of ArtFarmhouse on the Slope of a HillOriginal explanation based on the sources above. Images carry their own reuse terms.