SKETCH. – It is a small-scale model in painting or sculpture, executed to outline the compositional lines and bring out the masses (i.e., to “sketch” or “rough out,” from which the word’s etymology derives), without arriving at the final details of a completed work. For practical purposes, the sketch is the means by which the artist shows the client the general guidelines according to which he will develop his work and the form that an order has taken in his imagination. Artistically, these first general ideas, not yet fully defined in their final details, are of great interest because they not only illuminate the creative process of a work but often visibly convey an emotional state that loses intensity in the definitive execution. The use of the sketch became common in the late 16th century and gradually gained prominence until, in modern art, it is equivalent—especially in certain respects—to the finished work of art.
It must be kept in mind, however, that it is not permissible to confuse the sketch’s lack of finish, which presupposes the completed refinement of a work, with the lack of finish arising from a freely spontaneous vision that, as such, is definitive for the artist in its plastic or pictorial realization despite its apparent simplicity. Well-known are the sketches for large decorative works by P. da Cortona, Baciccia, or Tiepolo, as well as those for many Baroque sculptures. Already Rubens produced sketches far superior in spontaneity and vitality to the finished works. – See Pl. CXX. Guglielmo Matthiae