DISCOVERING PIER FRANCESCO FOSCHI

The Galleria dell’Accademia’s Education Department offers three kinds of educational material devised for a broad audience ranging from young children (kindergarten and primary school) to teens and grown-ups.

Look for the detail
This game is a fully-fledged “treasure hunt” for girls and boys that also involves their families and schools. When you download the map, you are led into the exhibition in search of such details as objects, accessories and monograms: a simple, fun and captivating way of approaching the painter and his work and of gaining a better understanding of his artistic career.
Look for the detail

From cartoon to canvas: the pouncing technique
This journey back in time takes us into 16th century artists’ workshops where young apprentices practised copying their masters’ masterpieces. In the course of this particular educational activity, we explain the technique known as “pouncing”: first painters would study the composition of a work and all its details by making preparatory drawings. Then they would transfer their composition onto a life-size cartoon using a technique called squaring or chequering. They would then prick the silhouettes all over the drawing with a pin before laying the cartoon on top of the canvas and dabbing it with a pouch filled with powdered charcoal and red earth, a process known as “pouncing”, so that they could then use the outline traced on the canvas as a guide over which to paint.
From cartoon to canvas: the pouncing technique

Curiosities
This is an activity designed to provide information that will allow participants to appreciate in full both the artistic value of Foschi’s work and the cultural and religious climate in which he trained. We analyse a number of his paintings together, dwelling on certain details or sharing interesting stories to do with their commissioning and the patrons who commissioned them, the painting’s history or its intended destination.
Curiosities