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Odoardo Fialetti<break strength="x-strong"/> Bologna 1573 – Venice 1637<break strength="x-strong"/> Male Heads, circa 1608<break strength="x-strong"/> Etching, millimeters 103 x 136<break strength="x-strong"/> In addition to being a painter, Odoardo Fialetti was a prolific engraver. He produced approximately 240 etchings, some of which are based on works by Polidoro da Caravaggio, Pordenone and Tintoretto. Many are of his own invention and among these are the fifteen Love Jokes, the thirteen Landscapes, the three Hunts, the frieze with Tritons and Nereids and those published for a collection of religious clothes in three books (De gli abiti delle religioni, 1626). His elegant engravings combine, through a clear and light sign, the Bolognese taste of the Carracci school with the Venetian taste of Titian and Palma il Giovane. With the latter Fialetti collaborated on a drawing manual, Il vero modo et ordine per dissegnare tutte le parti et membra del corpo humano, divided into two volumes, each with its own frontispiece: the first, Il piccolo libro dei disegni, dedicated to the Duke of Modena Cesare d’Este, was printed in Venice by Justus Sadeler in 1608 and includes 10 engravings; the other, Il grande libro dei disegni, undated, contains 36 prints. Il vero modo et ordine per dissegnare is a work that assumes considerable importance in the history of Venetian art. Fialetti’s etchings analytically illustrate the various parts of the human body and explain, with a great variety of examples, the criterion of “elementary drawing”. One of these is number 14, Male heads, in which the Bolognese artist, while referring to Annibale’s teaching tradition based on drawing from nature, shows a completely personal freedom of expression combined with an absolute mastery of the sign.