Italian Renaissance Drawing: Design, Form and Function

This course will look at the powerhouse behind the Italian Renaissance – the drawing.

Looking at a variety of drawings across 300 years you will see examples of the practise from Verrocchio, Raphael, and Ghirlandaio. There will also be individual classes dedicated to Leonardo and Michelangelo. The course will demonstrate how behind every great Renaissance painting is an equally astounding drawing. Artists were judged firstly not by the quality of their paintings, but by their skill in drawing. We will bring together some of those paintings with their accompanying drawings to demonstrate the importance of drawing upon the Renaissance without which there could be no Renaissance. You will examine how these, at first purely functional objects, were made and how they would eventually be regarded as works of art in their own right. The 8 lectures will be complemented by 2 visits to the Prints and Drawings Departments of the Royal Collection, Windsor and the British Museum.

Introduction: Material and Techniques

In this lecture we will ask - can we fathom the artist’s intentions by looking at the materials (tablets, vellum, paper, chalks) and techniques used? We will examine the use of black and red chalks, and why the need for difference; likewise between silverpoint and metal point drawings. We will also look at how the instruments used to create these works also appear in other works of art.

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