LONDON.- The work of more than 80 Italian Renaissance artists will go on display at The King’s Gallery, Buckingham Palace from tomorrow (Friday, 1 November), in the widest-ranging exhibition of drawings from the period ever shown in the UK.
Drawing the Italian Renaissance brings together around 160 drawings by artists including Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian, as well as lesser-known names, to demonstrate how drawing flourished between 1450 and 1600. Over 30 works are on display for the first time, and a further 12 have never been shown in the UK.
Martin Clayton, curator of Drawing the Italian Renaissance, said: ‘The Royal Collection holds an astonishing array of Italian Renaissance drawings, and brought together on this scale, they show just how dynamic and exciting drawing became during this period. Viewing these drawings up close gives us an intimate insight into the artist’s mind and creative process, almost as if we are looking over their shoulder and watching them work. These drawings cannot be on permanent display for conservation reasons, so this is a once-in-a-generation chance to see such a breadth of Italian Renaissance masterpieces together in one exhibition.’
During the Italian Renaissance, as paper became more accessible and new materials were introduced, drawing became central to every stage of the artist’s process. Visitors will see drawings created as preparatory works for a wide range of projects, from paintings, architecture and sculpture, to metalwork, tapestry and costume – as well as rare examples of drawings created as finished works of art in their own right.
Star works by Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo highlight the variety of works on display, from functional design sheets to highly finished drawings. A busy sheet by Leonardo shows the artist in the early stages of laying out a new composition of the Virgin and child (c.1478-80). The drawing is dominated by a sketch of the Virgin Mary, her head drawn in two possible positions, with the infant Christ and John the Baptist on her knees. Scattered around this are a multitude of other heads – a young child, an old man, lions and even a dragon – as the artist made the most of the large sheet of paper to capture his stream of ideas. Leonardo’s study The drapery of a kneeling figure (c.1491–94) for the painting The Virgin of the Rocks now in The National Gallery, is more worked up, but still we get the sense of the artist hard at work in the studio with ink all over his fingers, through a partial fingerprint left in the bottom corner.
In contrast, Michelangelo’s A children's bacchanal (1533), a bizarre scene created as a gift for a Roman nobleman with whom he had fallen in love, is a meticulous and remarkably accomplished drawing, with each figure built up using tiny strokes of red chalk. The drawing is in perfect condition, allowing us to see every touch of the artist’s hand.
The exhibition also shines a light on lesser-known artists who produced some of the finest drawings of the period. A striking example is a dynamic study of a young man from c.1590, newly reattributed to Pietro Faccini, and last exhibited in Rome over 50 years ago. The strong jaw, fleshy lips, and pared-back use of oiled charcoal are all typical of the Bolognese artist, who fell into obscurity due to a lack of surviving paintings.
Another less familiar name will be that of the Carracci family – brothers Annibale and Agostino, and their cousin Ludovico – who founded an informal academy that insisted on the importance of drawing from life. They worked in a variety of genres as they prepared compositions for paintings including altarpieces and friezes – such as Ludovico Carracci’s sketch of A seated male nude (c.1590) – as well as fictional landscapes. On display for the first time is an amusing early work by Annibale Carracci, A landscape with a lobster (c.1590), showing the sea creature with a nutcracker, possibly depicting a proverb or joke about the lobster not managing to crack a nut with its own claws.
Visitors will discover the draughtsmanship of artists better known today for working in other mediums. In Paolo Veronese’s A prophet or philosopher (c.1557), we see the famed painter experimenting with the twisting shape of a body, sketching multiple versions of the same bearded man. Executed in black and white chalks on blue paper, the drawing is thought to be a study for Veronese’s decorations of the Library of St Mark, Venice.
On display for the first time is the large-scale The Virgin and Child (c.1570–80) by Bernadino Campi. As a cartoon, used to transfer a final design onto a painting’s surface, the drawing was executed on poor-quality paper and never intended to be kept – let alone displayed. In preparation for the exhibition, this rare survival underwent approximately 120 hours of conservation treatment by Royal Collection Trust conservators to remove a degraded canvas backing and support sections where the paper had become as delicate as lace.
At times, the viewer can imagine what it was like to be a patron seeing their commission come to life. A recently conserved, 1.36-metre-high drawing of an extravagant candelabrum (c.1560-80) attributed to Marco Marchetti, features a noticeably asymmetrical design and a riot of different motifs – presumably acting almost as a menu, from which a patron could select the elements he liked the most.
Reflecting the continued importance of drawing for artists and creatives today, The King’s Gallery’s will host its first Artists in Residence programme, organised in partnership with the Royal Drawing School. The artists Jesse Ajilore, Joshua Pell and Sara Lee Roberts – whose work ranges from computer game design to urban landscapes – will be drawing in the gallery on Mondays, Thursdays and Fridays throughout the exhibition’s run, bringing a fresh perspective to the Renaissance masterpieces on display. Visitors to the exhibition will also be encouraged to try their hand at drawing, with paper and pencils available in the gallery, and will hear from one of the artists, Jesse Ajilore, on the complimentary multimedia guide.
