Good evening, colleagues, ladies and gentlemen, we are waiting for more chairs, but in order to save time, I thought I would do the introduction.
Now, then we can all get seated. Then we can all enjoy Professor Insurgents' lecture.
I'm also told by colleagues in the Maths Institute that if you all promise to come back next week,
we can have the big lecture theatre and we'll all fit into it extremely comfortably.
But we have some more chairs while colleagues are sending them out.
I will continue to speak.
So it's my privilege on behalf of the Slagle actors to welcome you all and to introduce this Yearsley lecturer, Professor David Exergen.
He's professor of art and film history at the University of Leicester and is
widely known as an international authority on Italian Renaissance painting.
Just how widely known, I think, is gauged by the number of people very gratifyingly in the room.
David has already published major monographs with Yale University Press on Correggio in 1998 and Parmigiani A. in 2008.
He also has significant interest in the history of collecting, which have informed his work as an adviser to major auction houses,
museums and galleries, including the National Gallery and Tate Britain, as well as private collectors.
He is a trustee of Art UK and Sir John Soren's Museum and a former trustee of the National Gallery and of Teet.
Another of his areas of expertise is bronze sculpture.
And it's this which formed the topic of the most recent of the many exhibitions that he has conceived and curated.
The Royal Academy 2012 exhibition called Curated with Cecilia Greaves and simply called Bronze,
was explicitly international in scope and innovative in its address to a single material across space and time.
He drew international acclaim on almost a quarter of a million visitors.
Almost as many people as appear to be in this room.
And his book of the exhibition was described by The Wall Street Journal as the most beautiful book published anywhere in the world this year.
And it went on to win the Association for Cultural Enterprises award for best new publication.
Davidic Surgeon is also widely known as a critic and commentator on art and exhibitions.
It's now exactly 20 years since the Italian renaissance provided the matter of a slide lecture series.
Professor Exergen has two major research enterprises underway at present in this area,
one being the Italian renaissance altarpiece between icon and narrative and the second being from drawing to painting in the Italian renaissance.
And it's this second project which we are fortunate enough to have advanced access to in the form of the eight lectures he will deliver this term.
Can I please ask you to note that after next week's lecture and we better lay in some more drink,
there will be a reception just outside this lecture theatre, an opportunity for a glass of wine and general conversation.
Finally, I'd like to thank colleagues in the history of art department.
I'd like to thank our colleagues in the maths institute. But in the history of art department,
I'd particularly like to thank Rachel Leach and Francesca ESET for work on the publicity and technical support of these lectures.
And as they used to say in my youth. If you're all sitting comfortably,
please welcome David Exergen to give the first of this year's Slaid lectures entitled Drawing in Italy Before Fifteen Hundred.
Well, I must begin by thanking Craig and the electors for placing that trust in me.
And before launching into my lecture, I just wanted to say one other thing,
which is that I suspect there must have been people standing where I'm standing
who said something along the lines of I never dreamt this would happen to me.
I had three years as an undergraduate in Cambridge.
I had three years as a junior research fellow at Bay Lil and four years at something called the Slade Fellow at Corpus.
And I suspect, especially towards the end of all of that, I dreamt about this possibility quite a lot.
So I can't claim never to have dreamt at all.
Now, I hope everyone can draw, lest we should forget that simple truth, this enchanting portrait.
By the early 16th century Veronese artist driven Franchesco character may serve as an amusing reminder of what is more.
And in spite of its subjects beaming pride in his creation, it also underlines the fact that some people are better at it than others.
For the seven remaining weeks of this series of lectures,
I will be exploring the achievements of what Miss Jean Brody would have called the crammed black firm of Italian 16th century draughtsman,
starting with Michelangelo and ending with an Ebola and Dagostino Karachi.
And in each case, focussing on a single project and endeavouring to reconstruct its evolution,
and in particular, the way in which the artists in question use drawings to make their paintings.
One of the purposes of this introductory lecture is to explain the reasons why it is virtually impossible to start such a survey any earlier.
In a sense, after all, drawing has always existed and anyone in possession of a stick or even a finger can make a drawing of a kind.
I need hardly add that the ephemeral examples I'm showing you do not date from before the dawn of time, but are instead, respectively by Max Arnst,
photographed by Brassai and by Goya in his portrait of the Duchess of Alba in the Hispanic Society in New York,
where the conceit is that he signed in the sand.
Intriguingly,
the contract of the thirty first of January fifteen forty seven for the fur union artist Pomponio Maltravers signed and dated Altarpiece.
Fifteen forty nine in the Paris Church at San Martino.
I'll tell you, I meant top and that's what you see on the left required him to execute the
work in conformity with the drawing he had made on the pavement of the church,
and that on the right for Felicia Anjani followed the account and clearly the youngest natural history in
order to reconstruct a different and only marginally more sophisticated dimensioning of the birth of art.
As a rule, and not unreasonably, we associate drawing with paper and paper only came to be manufactured in Italy in the late 13th century.
A mill was established in Fabiano in twelve seventy six,
and the city and the market remains a noted centre of high quality paper production to this day.
On the other hand, the history of drawing, or at the very least the history of line starts far, far earlier,
especially if our understanding of what constitutes a drawing is not restrictively based upon the media employed to make the image and thus limited
above all to productions in Inken Chalk and number of what are usually referred to as cave paintings might just as easily be called cave drawings.
This one in the Chauvet Cave is dated to around thirty thousand to twenty eight thousand B.C. and Greek ceramics,
such as these examples of black and red figure where by Zech Yes,
on the left and Euphronios on the right are amongst the finest linear compositions ever created.
Later on in antiquity, the Etruscans decorated both bronze cheese stare and showing the figure Greenley Treaster in the villa,
Juliar in Rome and mirrors indeed with exquisite.
Narrative designs at the same time, it's important to note that the almost miraculous survival of the ultimate Dorce Papyrus,
only fully published as recently as 2006, which was written in the first century B.C., possibly in Alexandria,
proves that the ancients also produced works corresponding to our standard conception of drawings.
If one fast forwards the Middle Ages, yet more media come into play when it comes to enamelled,
nothing can rival the myriad scenes on Nicholas of our does close to Nyberg Alter of around eleven eighty,
in which I cannot resist pointing out should you go? There are a short train ride from Vienna.
Nothing in the technique of their Igla. Musea can quite compete.
But here to the best pieces such as these examples from the Victorian down.
But Museum and the Metropolitan in New York are very fine.
I've tried to stress the linear force of these inventions,
but it would be a mistake to think that the defining feature of Italian renaissance
drawings is the fact that they are monochrome until the later part of the 16th century.
Coloured drawings. Rare indeed. However, this example by Bartolomeo Mantan.
Yeah. Which was sold at Christie's to whom I am most grateful for these images last summer,
is a very finished compositional study for Fresco by him, which you see here of the martyrdom of Saint Blaise in Verona.
Conversely, by the last quarter of the 16th century, Federico Barratry,
whom I will be discussing in my seventh lecture, routinely made colour drawings in any event.
It was always, of course, possible to add colour notes to such preliminary sheets as Danniella Darvel Terror did in
a study in Black Chalk for his fresco of the assumption of the Virgin in Santorini today.
Monte in Rome, where the colours and initials for standing for the colours are inscribed in pen.
An altogether more detailed approach was adopted by Benedito Calegari in the Double-Sided Sheet, representing the continents of Scipio,
where the main study is on the Recto and the colour notes or on the tracing of it on the VASSO, which explains the flipping of the image.
One of the most thrilling innovations of the Italian renaissance was the
virtual invention of what might be described as the thinking out loud drawing.
By this, I mean those sheets where the artist is not only in power claeys memorable phrase, taking a line for a walk,
but also exploring the possibilities of a given subject or motif, often at speed over time.
This also led to the practise. I will be investigating in my subsequent lectures of executing whole sequences of drawings,
above all for major projects and giving oneself the freedom to change one's mind.
Contemporary commentators such a judge, Vasari and Geovanni under Julio,
were both very aware of the importance of these related developments in the
introductory section of the second fifteen sixty eight edition of the series Lives,
which is not always included in translations.
It begins by stating that DNA, which in Italian means both are words drawing and design is the father of architecture, sculpture, painting,
and a few pages later goes on to explain that and I quote,
We called sketches of first sort of drawing made to find the manner of the poses and the first composition of the work.
And they are made in the form of a mark and represent a single draught of the whole.
And because they are such swift expressions of the frenzy for raw is his word of the artist, whether in pen,
charcoal or any other medium created simply in order to try to capture the spirit of his idea.
We call them Skeets see sketches in the same spirit and is somewhat later treatise on sacred painting of 16 24 Federico Borromeo.
Observe that and I quote again, colours are like words. Once the eyes see them, they sink into the mind, just as do words heard by the years.
Correspondingly, making an initial sketch of a subject to be painted is like formulating the preliminary thoughts and arguments in the speech.
Conversely, in his dialogue on the errors and abuses of paint.
As of 50 and 64, Geo stresses the vital importance of artists making their cartoons.
The term used for drawings executed on a scale of one to one for paintings,
which derives from the Italian Carstone is implementing big piece of paper.
They're cartoon sketches or models should be made well in advance in order to have time to review them 100 times, not as their father,
but as their judge before going on to add that to that, before going on to add to them, subtract from them, amend and correct them.
I could show you any number of examples of these practises from the 16th century.
By which time it was fully established.
But it seems to make sense to choose two groups of related sheets that are not only masterpieces by artists who will reappear in later weeks,
but also respectively represent the two main purposes of such thinking out loud, namely thinking about content.
What my two kinds introduced, Craig Clunies is called writing the idea and thinking about form before going any further.
However, I must of course add that many such drawings combine both these strands to begin with content.
The first two sheets I'm showing you both by Rafil and the first ideas for an altarpiece.
One is an appropriately local drawing in the Ashmolean.
While the other is in the loof, they represent two variations on the theme of the lamentation over the dead Christ.
And their common source is a signed and dated altarpiece of fourteen ninety five by Raffles Master Perugino.
Rafael's conception, which must date from a little over a decade later,
is far from being a mere clone of para genos that the similarities between them are
very considerable and might even have been legally imposed upon him by his patrons,
not least since such modo art form, manner and form clauses are a common feature of contracts for works of art in this period.
Be that as it may, Rafaelle elected to rethink the subject dynamically.
One result is a drawing in the British Museum on the left where the dead Christ is shown,
lifted up and about to be transported to the tomb, which was further refined in a squared sheet in the FT.
Even this, however, was not his last word in terms of the details.
Since the final altarpiece of the entombment of 15 and seven, which you see turns, the figure of Mary Magdalene out of pure profile,
removes her female companion and rejuvenates the now beardless courter at Christ's feet.
A double sided sheet in the metropolitan dating from the 15th thirties is a good example of an artist in this case,
Pamoja Neno, exploring different formal approaches without modifying the iconography of its conception.
On one side of the sheet are no fewer than nine studies of Moses back to smash the tablets of the
law matched on the other side by nine EBAs in the main reaching up for the apple of the temptation.
None of them quite identical to the final solutions in the frescoes they prepare in the Church of Santa Maria Della Stark character in Parmer.
On occasion, artists followed the same general procedure but concentrated on details.
In connexion with his work on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, Michelangelo produced numerous studies of arms and hands,
some of virtual variations on the same theme that could end up in different compositions.
Thus, the arms and the black chalk sheet on the left for two of the sons in the drunkenness of Noah.
Whereas on the right I'm showing a near twin in red chalk, which is for God, creating Adam elsewhere.
As, for instance, in another somewhat later drawing, Michelangelo explores various possibilities on a single sheet.
They are preparatory studies, grieving Virgin in an altarpiece of the piazza in the TABO, which was shown at the National Gallery last year.
The fact that the finished work is by Michelangelo is associate Sebastiano Del Pombo may serve
as a useful reminder that the authors of drawings need not be responsible for related paintings.
It's no coincidence, incidentally, that the close ups in this sequence were executed in chalk,
whereas Penn was generally employed for first ideas and studies of whole compositions.
As has been indicated by the first decades of the 16th century, such practises were fairly standard in most but not all parts of Italy.
Yet it was not ever thus. The idea of making drawings in order to make paintings had to come into being,
and I will be devoting most of the rest of my lecture to outlining its gradual emergence,
according Sujan Pope Hennessy, a former occupant of this chair, in provocatively reductionist vein.
The study of Omarska drawings is a means to an end.
Enthralling as the individual feats may be, their importance resides in what they tell us about the creative procedure of an artist.
However, even he admitted they could be enthralling, which is presumably why he collected them.
Moreover, for all the fascination of the palimpsest like manuscript [INAUDIBLE] typescript
of the Wasteland or indeed the most impassioned of Beethoven's autograph scores,
it cannot begin to compare with sheets such as these.
One of the major problems about trying to understand such creative procedures is that only a lamentably
small percentage of Renaissance drawings have survived and that they were demonstrate blee once many,
many more to borrow the title of an article I recently published on the subject.
What is left is the tip of the iceberg. It is pretty scant consolation that a number of sea not peer under drawings
for frescoes such as this one dating from the fourteen twenties by Mazzilli,
know his martyrdom of Saint Catherine in San Clemente and Rome have been uncovered in recent decades.
There also exist some drawings on the reverse of panels which were never intended to be seen,
such as this marginally earlier, Madonna and Child by an associate of Spinello, Aria Teno.
There was at Christie's in London last July. One way to prove how much has gone missing is by looking at the documentary evidence,
not least in the form of wills to 15th century wills of painters so utterly obscure
that no works by them are known to survive were both drawn up in ordinaire.
On the fourth of September 14 36, the will of one man could do.
Daniela leaves his drawings to his pupil. Familiarity is the word Georgia and everything else to his wife.
Similarly, on the 21st of August 14 43, the will of Master Antonia, the painter, the son of Master Leonardo, the painter, requires that his heirs,
namely his wife and two sons,
cannot and must neither sell nor distribute either the drawings of his art or anything else relating to that art, but must retain them.
It seems important to underline that both artists were active in northern Italy,
where it is widely assumed the practise of drawing was altogether less common than in central Italy,
especially in the 15th century, and that their wills prove they must have had numbers of drawings and not just a handful.
This desire to preserve drawings within the workshop explicitly as tools of the trade ultimately led to them being collected.
Thus, Marcantonio Mikael's notebooks record no fewer than 11 books of drawings in the possession of Gabrielle vendor Amien,
the owner amongst other treasures of George Jonas Tempest in fifteen 30.
Tellingly, only one book of drawings by Jacobo Bellini, now in the British Museum,
which is described as the big book of drawings on Bomb Bazine, which is a kind of fabric paper in LED Point still exists.
All the others have perished self.
Evidently, the habit of keeping drawings together, especially in books, resulted in survival's being a matter of all or nothing with nothing.
Alas. Usually trouncing.
Artists also learnt both from original drawings by their fellow artists and from copies after paintings in other cities drawing copies.
Thus, a beautiful early Leonardo drawing of a lady with a unicorn.
This one near me here in the smolan, which evolved from a more summery study in the British Museum, inspired at least to later 16th century works.
In spite of the fact that it was executed almost before Leonardo had achieved a signature style,
the earlier of the two is an engraving from the Circle of Raffles associate Mark and Turn Your Eye.
Mondy here reversed for ease of comparison. Well, The Later is a painting by Luke Long.
In the Castle, Sant'Angelo and Red. Only marginally less unexpected is the use of one of Leonardo's studies of horses for his abandoned mural.
The Battle of Anghiari, which was borrowed by Bernardino Lamina for his fresco of St.
George and the Dragon in Sandhamn Bridge in Milan. In both instances, there are differences between the models and their emulations,
which may suggest that the once existed more resolved versions of these inventions by Leonardo.
But what is clear is that neither ever became a finished painting turnings the request for copy
drawings and now lost letter written to a correspondent in Rome on the twenty ninth of November 15.
Fifty nine by Lélia off C came from novel Larra in northern Italy,
asked him to send drawings after Michelangelo's frescoes in the Capella Pollina in the Vatican.
No doubt, in connexion with his own plans for what appears to have been projected but never completed altarpiece of the conversion of St.
Paul, for which there survived two highly evolved but very different compositional studies respectively in the Ashmolean here and in the Loof.
In an autobiographical fragment, Rafaelle of Delmonte, Lupo relates that he lost all the drawings he had made of the antiquities of the
Eternal City during the sack of Rome in fifteen twenty seven care or No Assai,
of which there were many. And as will be discussed next week, Michelangelo made bonfires of hundreds of his drawings.
Five hundred years is a long time for a bit of paper to survive.
The other crucial factor before around fifteen hundred is likely to have been a lack of interest on the
part of collectors who in all probability regarded drawings as means to an end and not as works of art.
In his conversations with Picasso of nineteen sixty four,
Brassai quotes Picasso as pronouncing that when it comes to drawing, nothing is better than the first sketch.
But such an idea would not have occurred to anyone in the Kwacha chanter.
If we go all the way back to the first half of the 14th century,
the number of extant drawings is startlingly few, but provided there is a related painting.
It does sometimes seem impossible to establish whether they are preliminary studies or subsequent derivations.
In the case of a drawing in the Ft.
Sea of the Visitacion, the links with the fresco in the lower church to C.C. from the school of Jotter, a plain enough.
And the differences between them are so minimal that it seems reasonable to suppose that the drawing derives from the fresco.
Conversely, when the drawing of the presentation of the Virgin is compared with the celebrated fresco
of the same subject in the Baron Celli Chapel in Santa Croce in Florence by today,
Gaddi, it's apparent that for all the general similarities, there are significant changes of mind here, too.
It is impossible to speak of absolute proof concerning which came first.
But this change is frankly a subtle improvement. Just the kind and artists of today of stature might have made.
In both cases, the degree of finish of the sheets means that they have on occasion been presumed to be what are known as contract drawings.
The fact that such drawings existed as well attested for the simple reason that they are not infrequently referred to in legal contracts.
But the number of unimpeachable survivors is tragically small, and they all most all day from well after fifteen hundred.
One example, which was published in nineteen oh eight within the activity Statter in Panama and was exhibited in 1935 but is now lost.
If anybody knows where it is. See me afterwards. Nevertheless, a faithful copy of it was made in 1883 by somebody called Dominico Mooty.
And that's the sort of bottom centre one.
It relates to frescoes by Jerusalem Mazzarella Badali for the vault of the choir of the city's cathedral and is highly finished.
But even so, not absolutely followed on the road, in spite of the fact that the contract of the 5th of April 15th,
38 requires that I quote within the compartments of triangular form,
this painting has to do everything contained in the drawing given by him and included here
in in the event the notion of including trumpet playing angels must have evolved later on.
Sorry. And the existing drawings for them must have been executed after and seemingly in defiance of the contract.
Intriguingly, the copy is accompanied by two additional pages with unexpectedly free sketches for the vault and the apps even on the left,
which it is tempting to imagine the artist scribbling down during the course of a meeting with his patrons.
There is nothing especially surprising about these changes,
since it seems obvious that only the most stubborn of patrons would have refused to countenance what the artist regarded as improvement.
Another similar sorry, another incontrovertible contract drawing from towards the end of the century reveals similar divergences from the end product.
And in this instance, the possibility of such changes of mind is built into the contract.
The drawing in question, which is by Francesco Vampi, is connected with his old piece of St.
And same as baptising the people of Siena for Siena Cathedral.
Now in the Church of Santa Maria, assuming that the drawing has an autograph declaration written by Vanny and countersigned
by a cathedral official on its VASSO that refers to the contract for the altar piece,
which was drawn up on the 15th of June. Fifteen ninety three.
And Vanney is required to execute the altarpiece and I quote in which is to be painted in
the lower half the story of when Saint and Saints baptised Siena and in the upper half,
the Virgin recommending the city to God, her son, in accordance with the drawing by his hand,
which he has left in the cathedral works which drawing he may improve or expand upon in accordance with the good rules of his art.
Here again, the differences are so numerous. I do not have time to chronicle them.
But one of the emissions from the painting is of particular interest in the drawing.
The kneeling by in the left foreground represents a hitherto unrecognised quotation from an engraving by Augustine of Karachi.
After all, that's your summer. Keane is altarpiece of the presentation and the temple in the Basilica of San Giacomo Majaw in Bologna.
But the boy was subsequently dropped. Then is Altarpiece was one of a pair with an activity by Alesandro Calves or Lannie.
It was given a similarly free hand to adapt the now lost drawing he had provided.
The phrase in the contract is that it should be in conformity with the sketch.
He has brought to his most excellent reverence, which may be made better, but not worse.
I should hope so. A very different contract drawing by look at can be AASA.
Now in Berlin, which you see on the right, is an altogether more schematic effort,
which includes the design for the altar pieces frame and a scratchy inscription penned by the artist it reads.
This is the sketch which I look at can be Alzado have made for you.
Mr Antonio Rossow. And I promise to make the altarpiece in conformity with it.
I look at Cambie Asa Set Against the drawing by Vanny.
It serves to underline the range of possible approaches that might be adopted and
demonstrates once and for all that not all contract drawings were highly finished.
Drawings must also, on occasion, have served the purpose of demonstrating the artistic competence of the painter in question,
as well as the suitability of their invention. Few patrons, however, can have been as exacting as the authorities at some Mikail evolved terror.
On the 19th of May 14 42, the Sudanese painter Primo Dellacqua Jr. was commissioned to paint the high altarpiece of their church.
But and I quote And because in Volterra, nothing is known except by repute of his mastery,
said M. Primo is content before starting to paint, said panel to make and paint on the panel one or more figures.
At the instance of those who require it, or indeed for himself to give visible proof of his mastery.
Moreover, a document of the 5th of September fifteen ten reveals Perugino was one of the most celebrated painters in all Italy by that date,
having to go through an arbitration process over his Nativity of the Virgin altarpiece for San Francesco in Siena,
which, alas, was lost in a fire in sixteen fifty five.
So I contracted in the event four of his fellow artists found for him against his patrons,
but only having, quote, seen the contract for the painting and the timeframe given in it.
Having seen the cartoon and the CalFed on Chino, the little girl took notice and the finished painting.
A further insight into the commissioning process is afforded by a document of the 2nd of February 16,
03 see style in which two members of the confraternity of son got Tandoor together with the Camerlengo,
the steward, a given authority to be able to make to be made various sorts of drawings and
inventions from various painters in order to have made the painting for our chapel.
This accords with the reference made to his drawings in the plural in the contract of the 11th April 15 73 for Bernardino,
Gatti's assumption of the Virgin Altarpiece in Cremona Cathedral to return at last request for thinking out loud drawings.
It has to be admitted. The first half of the 15th century is not that much more fertile territory than the 14th.
There is a magnificent drawing in the Fitzwilliam in Cambridge connected with Franjieh Alekos,
the position at Sammarco in Florence, whose status has been much debated.
However, and in spite of its closeness to the painting and the touches of Red and Christ's halo and the blood issuing from his wounds.
I am convinced it was part of the artist's preparatory process as opposed to some species of repeat.
On the other hand, it is absolutely plain that Peter Mallows chilling drawings of hanged man are first ideas, not afterthoughts.
And indeed one of them, the one on the left,
gives every indication of having been studied from a workshop assistant posed in the attitude of one of the unfortunates.
The artist had previously observed dangling from a gibbet.
In this instance, the sole complication is the probability that he drew them almost to the sheer macabre joy of it,
and only then inserted them into the background of his fresco of St George and the princess in Verona.
In any event, the fact that on occasion, PE's Anello also drew even more spontaneous.
When preparing pictures is proved by his wonderfully bindery Penn study for the eponymous hero of his St. Eustace in the National Gallery,
another blatantly exploratory sequence of studies from the first half of the 15th century is found on Ghiberti Sheet in
the Outback Teener in Vienna for the scene of the flagellation on the earlier of his two baptistery doors in Florence,
which was installed in 14 24 but had in all likelihood been completed.
Apart from the amazingly lengthy process of gilding by fourteen fifteen.
Not only are all five studies of the two flatulence rendered with a quivering exploratory line,
but moreover only the middle figure of the upper registe really even close to his counterpart on the actual door.
By the second half the 15th century, this kind of drawing was becoming increasingly common.
But it will only be with Leonardo,
with whom I will conclude that it is possible to begin to follow the evolution of a single work across a substantial group of drawings.
Nevertheless, in the case of at least one artist of the previous generation and Dramane tenure,
there are two projects which are exist, multiple studies to begin with.
I'm showing to Sheet seemingly intended to prepare a composition which either
never led to a painting or were first ideas for one that has not survived.
It involved a row of saints possibly intended to flank or surround a virgin and child.
Turning to the second project, it's now generally agreed that two Double-Sided drawings with studies of the entombment of Christ
are both by man tenure and our preparations for his engraving of the entombment with two birds.
Sorry. With Terry intimate with Fort Hood.
Between them, they include three studies of the dead Christ. And one for the entire group around the two to them may now be added,
another double sided drawing which was sold at auction in Prato in November 2013.
It adds another three studies of remarkable intensity.
But one of the most striking aspects of the whole series is that the attitudes of only one or two of the figures in them,
even allowing for changes of identity and gender, truly foreshadow their equivalence in the print.
Another North Italian artist active in the second half of the 15th century by whom a number of drawings are known, is Victoria Patcher.
They range from freely handled compositional studies such as this one for a painting in
Avignon to highly Finnish studies of individual figures and close ups of their heads,
including those on the Double-Sided Sheet in the Ashmolean for his altarpiece of the
apotheosis of Saint Ursula as the 15th century drew to a close and Reddell Iraqiya,
Domenica Guillén Dione Lucas Senior Ali. The artists who were to inspire Leonardo and Michelangelo, the titans of the next generation,
were paving the way for their innovations in drawing in the case of Iraq here.
The two most important aspects of his practise as a draughtsman for the teenage Leonardo were his flowing exploratory pen studies, notably of Puti.
I'm showing you one side of the double sided sheet in the loop here on the left and his spectacularly refined head studies in black chalk,
of which this example at Christchurch here in Oxford is surely the most irresistible.
Just how close the young Leonardo was to Iraq. Here is underlined by another drawing of a female head.
This time in Metal Point, heightened with white on rose prepared paper, which has been given to both of them.
Personally, I cannot see Leonardo's genius in it,
but it is inconceivable that it was not the point of departure for the head of the protagonist in Leonardo's early Madonna in Munich.
Domenica again, and Di was a prolific draughtsman for the period and left an unusually large number of compositional studies.
Some of these, such as this one for his birth of the Virgin in sound from a novella and Trump singly schematic, while others,
such as a sheet for the naming of the Baptist in the same fresco cycle, are altogether more resolved at the same time.
And I also produced a number of wiry crosshatch pen drawings for individual figures such as this servant girl pouring water.
Likewise for the birth of the Virgin. Not to mention exquisitely finished head studies, variously in Metal Point,
heightened with white on coloured paper and in black chalk for attendant figures in the same fresco.
If Galen diatom Michelangelo, amongst so many other things, how to plan compositions and will depen then senior Ellie was his great precursor.
In the study of muscular male anatomy and a master in the use of chalk, still something of a novelty.
Around fifteen hundred. He also evidently represented a model in the infinite capacity for taking pains stakes
in spite of the fact that he ultimately slightly changed his mind in the fresco.
It must be associated with this. Black chalk drawing is clearly a study for one of Christ's tormentors in his flagellation at Modra.
Yet when he executed a smaller scale version of the same subject on panel, he evidently really studied the figure of Christ,
reversing his prose in another black chalk drawing, which you see, and which, like the second painting, like this painting is lit from the right.
Most European art is lit from the left. Leonardo is the first artist from whose hand a genuine sequence of extant drawings for a particular painting.
The Benwell Madonna in the Hermitage in St. Petersburg, which must date from the late 14th 70s,
has survived, although bizarrely, the fact that they all belong together has not really been acknowledged.
They are very much first. Ideas are, without exception, executed either in pen and ink or pen and wash.
Some of them are double sided sheet in the British Museum and the rector of the lady with the Unicorn study I showed earlier,
as well as a page in the blues.
Bonnar at bay on comprise multiple studies of the Christ child playing with a cat on occasion in the company of his mother,
and their quicksilver touch suggests they were sketched after careful observation from the life.
Anyone who has seen a child unwittingly tormenting a cat above all by not letting it escape their clutches will instantly recognise this scenario.
Although in one vignette on the left hand side here, the cat does appear to be arching its back in delight as it is tricked.
Others are drawing in a private collection in New York on the left and another in your feet see a single studies of the virgin and child.
By this point in their evolution, the child is established on his mother's lap.
One of her arms, which is bent in at the elbow, holds him tight and she looks down protectively in a vibrant,
double sided daddy again in the British Museum.
The recto shows the virgin and child with the cat in front in front of an arched window,
and the whole composition is almost claustrophobic, enclosed within an arch in the more experimental study.
On the reverse, the design is flipped and in the top left hand corner of the sheet, the anad is drawn and impulse block as will emerge shortly.
The impulse bot block is of particular interest in terms of where this is all leading.
It has been suggested that the justification for the presence of the cat was a
legend that told of a cat giving birth at the same time as the Virgin Mary.
Be that as it may. What is clear from x rays and Infra-Red is available on the Internet, but on downloadable and alas.
So you have to go and find them. Is that this painting in the Bresser in Milan by a pupil or close follower of Leonardo,
which is directly inspired by the drawing in the New York private collection?
Or some variant of it? This painting initially showed a cat which was replaced by the more conventional lamb.
We see today, it may be that in the end, the idea of including the cat was too quirky, even for Leonardo.
Although later on in the 16th century,
both Julia Romano on the left and barratry on the right included cats in Madonna pictures without getting into trouble in any event.
There follows a single sheet in which he explores the notion of showing the child stretching out his right hand
in the direction of a windmill tie on another drawing in the British Museum before flying out a solution.
Sorry, in which the Virgin appears to be popping food into her son's mouth in the form of a pair of studies on its reverse.
The more finished of which again repeats the arched framing and represents the virgin holding a flower or flowers in her left hand.
He then refines the pose both figures in a sheet in the Louv in which the child
is represented in profile and is feeding his mother fruit from the shallow bowl.
She is holding in her right hand.
These last three drawings are universally acknowledged to be studies for the Benowa Madonna, which is obviously the one you're seeing.
But it is weirdly proposed that the other sheets of preparatory studies have exactly
the same date for a now lost or conceivably never completed Madonna of the cat.
This really is one of those cases when Ockham's Razor comes into its own looking at the double sided British Museum sheet next to the Benwell Madonna.
The attitude of the Virgin, the arched format, the round topped window with impost and all,
it seems blindingly obvious that the one led directly to the other.
What makes these drawings so thrilling is that they give us a miraculous, time defying sense that we are looking over Leonardo's shoulder.
The other overwhelming feeling one has is that for Leonardo, making them was the absolute opposite of the slavery of a nine to five job.
It is no coincidence that both the rise in the status of artists and the
practise of the collecting of drawings should have come to pass in this period.
The act of drawing was part of a complex development would gradually lead to an acceptance on both sides of the divide that artists,
not patrons, might at least sometimes know best.
The extent to which artists thought about subject matter as well as form will be a major theme of these lectures,
and there is fascinating evidence in support of such an approach from contemporary sources.
In his biography of Geovanni Antonio Sol Yamli,
Fusari relates how the artist wanted to paint a fresco of the feeding of the 5000 for the Dominican friars at San Marco in Florence.
And had already made a drawing of that subject.
When he was instead forced to execute a representation of the Panis Angelique's, which he did, and I quote, most cleanly and with diligence,
and this is a drawing of that subject by Sol Yamey above in the palace, Angelica's down below the finished work, which is dated 15 and 36, survives.
So we may judge how well he coped. But Vasari adds a crucial comment, and I quote.
But it would have been a much greater success for Sol Yamey if he had executed his own design,
because painters do better by expressing their own conceptions than those of others.
Towards the end of the 15th century, the almost dementedly quirky.
But to me, irresistible Umbrian art Nikolo Folino, known as Laloux No, boldly stated his claim to be taken seriously.
In an extraordinary and as far as I can see, almost totally ignored inscription in elegiac couplets on a per Adella dated fourteen ninety two.
Whose translation I owe to my dear friend, Professor Stephen Harrison of this parish, so to speak, from Corpus Della in question is now in the loop.
While the main part of the Nativity elliptic to which it originally belonged up
above remains in the church was an Nicolau at four línea for which it was made.
And this is the bit with the inscription. The inscription translates as follows to the reader.
The late Bresee,
the pious lady has left in her will that this noble work should be painted o gift to pleasing to God if you seek the name of its artist.
It is Nikolo Luhnow, the fine crown of his native city of Folino.
Eight years had vanished from a thousand and five times a hundred when the last touch was given to it.
But who a reader deserved more in your judgement, I ask, when Brisset gave the reason he the hand.
Thank you very much.