First insights into Lazzaro Bastiani's underdrawing

The underdrawing is a preliminary sketch of the composition executed by the artist on the preparatory ground of a painting and works as a guide to help him during the application of the paint layers. It is revealed by the infrared reflectography (IRR), a non-invasive imaging technique. IRR has proven to be a fundamental tool for art historians, through the cross-linking of the scientific information with documentary sources and personal connoisseurship, and so adding a new key of interpretation of artworks by broadening our knowledge of the modus operandi of the artist since the genesis of the painting. Lazzaro Bastiani was a minor painter active in Venice in the second half of the 15th century, who was influenced by Venice and Veneto major artists. A small number of autograph and securely dated paintings, and only in the later years of his career, are known, and documentary sources are scarce. This leads to a problematic definition of Bastiani’s corpus of artworks and its chronology. The present contribution presents a first insight on Lazzaro Bastiani’s underdrawing technique in two small panels at the Gallerie dell’Accademia, Venice. This study is the preliminary step of an extensive research to define Bastiani’s modus operandi.