SKETCH. - It is a model of painting or sculpture, executed in small dimensions, to summarily define the compositional lines and bring out the masses (that is, "to sketch" or "to rough out," and hence the etymology of the word), without reaching the extreme details of a finished work. For practical purposes the bozzetto is the means by which the artist shows the patron the general guidelines according to which he will carry out his work and the form that a commission has taken in his imagination. Artistically these first general ideas, not well defined in their ultimate particulars, are of the greatest interest because they not only shed light on the creative process of a work, but often visibly translate an emotional state that in the definitive execution loses intensity. The bozzetto came into use in the late sixteenth century and gradually became ever more prominent until it came to equal, especially in certain respects, in modern art, the finished work of art.
However, it must be borne in mind that it is not permissible to confuse the summary quality of the sketch, which presupposes the finished completeness of a work, with the summary quality deriving from a free, spontaneous vision which, as such, is for the artist defined and therefore definitive in its plastic or pictorial realization despite its apparent summary quality. Very well known are the bozzetti for large decorative works by P. Da Cortona, by Baciccia or by Tiepolo, no less than those for many sculptures of the Baroque age. Rubens already executed bozzetti far superior in spontaneity and vividness to the finished works. - See Pl. CXX.
Guglielmo Matthiae