PAPER lit Raphael’s imagination. Angelamaria Aceto, researcher in Italian drawings at the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, fizzes with enthusiasm as she explains how the humble pulp powered Renaissance art. ‘It suddenly allowed artists to make mistakes. It’s a freedom they didn’t have when drawing on parchment. Raphael was a genius, but he was also a man born in the right place and at the right time. Paper opened up infinite possibilities.’
Dr Aceto is spearheading a three-year project to catalogue the Ashmolean’s collection of about 200 drawings by Raphael and his circle. Cataloguing is a deceptive word. The project actually entails a thorough study of details such as the underdrawings on Raphael’s sketches, the structure of the paper on which he drew and even the tears and stains on each sheet, all of which provide clues that could make a substantial difference in our understanding of the Italian master as a draughtsman, as well