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Francesco Curti<break strength="x-strong"/> Bologna, approximately 1603 – approximately1670<break strength="x-strong"/> Bust of an old man with a long beard, approximately 1640-1650<break strength="x-strong"/> Red chalk on paper, 185 x 270 millimeters<break strength="x-strong"/> Francesco Curti is an artist about whom, to this day, there is a lack of comprehensive biographical information. He was a skilled engraver, draftsman, painter “although nothing is known of his painted works” and executed, especially with burins, several series of prints based on drawings by Carracci, Guercino, Guido Reni, Simone Cantarini Denis Calvart and others. He engraved several preparatory drawing manuals, the first of which, published in 1633, includes 17 plates based on drawings by Guido Reni. Curti engraved two other manuals, both based on drawings by Guercino. The first of these, for apprentice draftsmen, includes 19 sheets engraved with burins. The second manual, entitled I principi del disegno, includes 26 prints and can be dated around 1640. His activity well reflects the study program contemplated by the Accademia degli Incamminati, which required adequate graphic preparation ranging from the anatomical details of the limbs and faces to the composition as a whole, up to the physiognomic analysis of the expressions and fundamental characteristics for the creation of the portrait. In this extraordinary Bust of an Old Man made in sanguine, from an idea by Guercino, the Bolognese artist becomes the interpreter of modern portraiture, in which great skill and purity of the sign become the medium for a research in which the expressive component plays an absolute role. From this drawing Curti made a burin engraving (116 by 226 millimeters), published in the volume Album per lo studio del disegno (1640-1660), whose matrix is preserved at the Calcografia Nazionale in Rome.