Blog, Work of the Week

Work of the Week: Unknown Artist after Sebastiano Serlio,“Study for a Stage Design: Street Lined with Palatial Buildings”

We do not know who drew this delicate ink and chalk drawing. We do know, however, that it is a copy of a woodcut from a book rather famous at the time, the Second Book on Perspective by Italian architect and theorist Sebastiano Serlio (published in 1545). Today, Serlio is remembered as the author of the first architectural treatise in a modern language to be printed with illustrations, also the first to devote an entire section to the theatre. That is where we find the source image for this drawing, titled The Tragic Scene. The drawing may have been a lesson in perspective (apprentices repeatedly copied works by other artists in order to master various skills, types of compositions, or media), or a point of departure for a different composition.

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Blog, Work of the Week

Work of the Week: Emilio Sanchez, “Untitled, Blue House with White Shutter, St. Barts”

Sanchez was born in Cuba, to a wealthy family that was involved in the sugar trade. Like other members of Cuba’s pre-Revolutionary upper class, he was mostly educated in the United
States. After a few years in Florida, he made his was to the Northeast, where he overlapped at Choate with future President John F. Kennedy. After college (Yale followed by the University of Virginia), he studied at the Art Students League, splitting his time between his father’s estate in Cuba, his mother’s residence in Mexico, and New York. He also traveled throughout the Caribbean, gathering subject material for his prints and paintings depicting the bright sunshine and vernacular architecture of the region.

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