Visiting Scholar Cara Rachele presents her research:

This lecture investigates the explosion of detail drawings in the Renaissance. It connects the emergence of the detail in the sixteenth century as a canonical drawing type with the evocation of the material antique. The organic evolution of the detail drawing method can be seen in the sketchbooks of everyday practitioners, and the lecture considers examples from the collections of the CCA and the Uffizi. Along with a variety of other drawing methods developed at the time, including orthographic projection, the detail contributed to shifts in both ideas of architectural creativity and the professional status of the architect that continue to resonate today.

Cara Rachele received her PhD in art history from Harvard University in 2015. Her research focuses on Italian Renaissance architectural representation and works on paper, disegno and drawing practice more broadly, and the development of architectural practice and education. She was recently a fellow at the Drawing Institute of the Morgan Library & Museum and the Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz Max Planck Institut, and she is the 2016–2017 David and Julie Tobey Fellow at the Villa I Tatti: The Harvard University Center for Renaissance Studies.

Cara Rachele was a Visiting Scholar at the CCA in 2016.