It was in the foundry of the maternal family, the Nero artistic foundry, that Carlo Alberto Petrucci along with bronze casting techniques and goldsmithing, he learned the principles of engraving, the art in which he would most assert himself, becoming one of the protagonists of the rebirth of engraving art in the Italian twentieth century. Artistic, technical and administrative director of the Foundry since 1902, Petrucci obtained his first artistic training in the same years, attending between 1902 and 1903 the evening school of the nude at the Circolo of the International Art Association in via Margutta, where he befriended Umberto Prencipe and in particular tied himself to Antonio Mancini, for whom he worked as secretary. After making his debut as a painter at the exhibition of the Society of amateurs and connoisseurs of fine arts in Rome in 1907, and having achieved some success the following year with the Bronzist, he published for the publisher Garzoni Provenzani in 1910 the Roman aquatints, a technique to which he dedicated his first critical intervention, Notes on the aquatint, in 1912. A shining example of his graphic activity in the first decade of the century, Il fonditore combines the techniques of etching and aquatint, experimented by Petrucci in this period in the creation of refined tickets advertising or invitation and ex libris. Specifically, the aquatint was favored by the artist for the intensely pictorial and impressionistic effect based on chiaroscuro and the play of light planes. After having founded the GRIA (Gruppo Romano Incisori Artisti) in 1921, in 1933 he became director of chalcography, engaging in the census and ordering of historical collections and at the same time starting the ancient institution to become a laboratory for modern engraving through a tight promotion and enhancement of contemporary graphic culture.

Alessandra Imbellone