ANCIENT TEXTS, NEW ART — The Practice of Drawing

Although scholars in different parts of Europe had been studying ancient texts from Greek, Latin and Arabic since at least the 12th century, there was a flurry of translation and ‘re-discovery’ of lost texts in Italy in the 14th and early 15th centuries. This work was carried out by of learned men known as humanists on account of their wish to promote the study of the humanities and moral philosophers such as Plato and Aristotle. Even though they were devout Christians, they placed man, God’s supreme creation, at the centre of the Universe, responsible for his own actions and measure of all things. This, and growing interest in naturalistic depiction, led to a new emphasis on drawing human figures and demonstrating man’s potential to imitate, and even improve upon, nature.

PROPORTION & PERSPECTIVE

NATURALISTIC DEPICTION IN ITALY

AND IN THE NORTH

Professor Catherine Whistler, Keeper of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.

PROPORTION & PERSPECTIVE

In 1416 Poggio Bracciolini (1380-1459) brought back to Florence a manuscript of De Architectura by the ancient Roman architect Vitruvius, discussing the ideal proportions of the human body. A few years later, the architect Filippo Brunelleschi (1377-1446) made a panel painting of the Baptistery in Florence with a hole through its centre with which he illustrated one-point linear perspective. Written in the 1430s, Leon Battista Alberti’s influential Della Pittura (On Painting) referred to both proportion and perspective, establishing for the first time the principles of art as an intellectual discipline. Tuscan artists such as Paulo Ucello (1397-1475) and Piero de la Francesca (1416-1492) explored these new ideas in drawings of objects and heads, and Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), a few decades later, produced his famous Vitruvian Man. The search for correct proportions in drawings of the human body continued to preoccupy artists in later centuries, and is still taught in some art schools today.

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Filippo Brunelleschi, Perspectival Drawing of the Church of Santo Spirito, ink on paper (?), ca. 1428, unknown location.

Church of Santo Spirito, Florence.

Comparison with a photograph of the same interior demonstrates how effective Brunelleschi’s method was at depicting space.

Leon Battista Alberti, Diagram Demonstrating One-Point Linear Perspective, from Della Pittura (1804 edition), first published in 1450.

Piero de la Francesca, Elevations and Horizontal Outlines of the Human Head, ca. 1472-82, ink on paper, Milan, Biblioteca Ambrosiana.

This drawing comes from a manuscript by Piero entitled De Prospectiva Pingendi (On Perspective for Painting) written between 1474 and 1482. Here he establishes the ideal proportions of the human head by referring to significant geometrical and cosmological numbers.

Paolo Ucello, Vase in Perspective, ink on paper, mid-15th century, Florence, Gallerie delle Uffizzi.

Leonardo da Vinci, Vitruvian Man, ca. 1490, ink on paper, Venice, Gallerie dell'Accademia.

As well as demonstrating Leonardo’s interest in Vitriuvian proportions, the image was designed as an analogy for man’s place at the centre of the Universe.

Leonardo da Vinci, Detail from The Proportions of the Head, ca. 1490, metalpoint, pen and ink, on blue-grey prepared paper, Windsor, The Royal Collection.

At around the same time he produced this drawing, Leonardo illustrated De divina proportione (Divine Proportion), a book on mathematics written by Luca Pacioli .

IMITATING NATURE IN ITALY

Another theme taken over from the ancients was the imitation of nature. The 1st century Roman author Valerius Maximus had taught that “art wishes to follow nature”, and the Greek Pliny the Elder’s Natural History told the story of the painter Xeuxis whose painted grapes were so life-like that birds tried to eat them. Perspective and relief - the illusion of the three-dimensions created by means of light and shadow on the flat surface of the sheet or panel - were the keys to achieving this. Leonardo da Vinci produced one of the first pure landscapes in European art history. Most of his contemporaries, such as Antonio Pollaiuolo (1429-1498) and Andrea Mantegna (ca. 1431-1506), were primarily interested in naturalistic depiction of the human body and head. These depictions were often integrated into Christian subjects such as the Ascension and the Nativity, which continued to be much in demand.

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Andrea Mantegna, Two Studies for Christ at the Column, early 1460s, pen and brown ink, London, Samuel Courtauld Trust.

Andrea Mantegna, Apostles Watching the Ascension of Christ, mid-15th century, brown ink & brown wash, white gouache on gray-green prepared paper, Cambridge MA., Harvard Art Museums.

Whereas Florentine drawing was based on line, in Venice and Padua (where Mantegna originated) more emphasis was given to the play of light and colour to model the forms.

Leonardo da Vinci, Study of a Tuscan Landscape, 1473, Florence, Gallerie delle Uffizi.

Giovanni Bellini (attributed), The Nativity, ca. 1480, pen, brush and brown ink, London, Samuel Courtauld Trust.

Sandro Botticelli, Allegory of Abundance, 1480-1485, pen, brown ink, brown wash and chalk on pink paper, London, British Museum.

In this elegant scene, relief or rilievo is achieved by the over-laying of pencil, pen and brush on pink paper.

Antonio Pollaiuolo, Study for the Equestrian Monument to Francesco Sforza, early to mid-1480s, pen and brown ink, light and dark brown wash, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

The painter, sculptor, engraver, and goldsmith Antonio Pollaiuolo was one of the most groundbreaking artists of the early Renaissance. This drawing was a design for a bronze monument commissioned by Ludovico Sforza, ruler of Milan, in honour of his father, Francesco Sforza. The task was eventually given to Leonardo da Vinci who never completed the monument. Giorgio Vasari, who owned the sheet, may have added the brown wash around the figures.

Domenico Ghirlandaio, Head of an Old man, ca. 1490, silverpoint on pink prepared paper, Stockholm, National Museum of Sweden.

This drawing is striking for the uncompromising and apparently realistic depiction of the figure’s mis-shapen nose. It was also owned by Vasari who reduced the original sheet to an oval and framed it, perhaps ironically, with adoring females.

Giovanni Bellini, Lamentation over the Body of Christ, before 1510, pen and sepia ink on paper, Paris, Musée du Louvre.

Giovanni was the brother of Gentile and brother-in-law of Mantegna. He made many drawings of the Lamentation; in this one, strongly-defined hatching emphasises the pathos and drama of the subject.

AND IN THE NORTH

Northern Europe experienced its own Renaissance, developing a new technique in oil painting which revolutionised depiction of man and nature, along with intimate compositions which humanised the sacred. Although fewer 15th-century drawings from northern Europe have survived, their extraordinary quality is evident from works such as the Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati by Jan van Eyck (before 1390-1441) and a Virgin and Child by Rogier van der Weyden (ca. 1400-1464) . Preliminary drawings can also be seen with infra-red reflectography underneath the layers of many panel paintings from northern and southern Europe. These underdrawings are an important source of knowledge about the working methods of 15th-century artists and reveal the particular styles of drawing associated with different masters.

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Jan van Eyck, Portrait of Cardinal Niccolò Albergati, ca. 1435, silverpoint and goldpoint on prepared paper, Dresden, Kupferstich-Kabinett.

Jan van Eyck, Saint Barbara, 1437, black liquid material with metalpoints, heightened with oil (?), on wood, Antwerp, Royal Museum of Fine Arts.

Circle of Rogier van der Weyden, Men Shoveling Chairs (Scupstoel), ca. 1445-50, pen and brown ink over traces of black chalk, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This remarkable drawing – among the few extant fifteenth-century designs for representational sculpture – is a study for one of three narrative capitals carved for Brussels Town Hall between 1444 and 1450.

Rogier van der Weyden, Virgin and Child, ca. 1450-55, metalpoint on white paper mounted on pink-coloured sheet, Rotterdam, Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen.

Copies of this drawing and Van der Weyden’s Studies of St John the Baptist were owned by various artists and used as models or part models for many paintings.

After Rogier van der Weyden, Studies of St John the Baptist, after 1455, metalpoint on gray prepared paper, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Martin Schongauer, Studies of Peonies, ca. 1472-73, gouache and watercolour on paper, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum.

Drawing these peonies from life, Schongauer rendered their subtle colours by laying in the basic forms in semi-transparent colours and then describing the details with the point of the brush. Though an outstanding example of a highly finished drawing, it was made as a study for the painting, The Madonna of the Rose Garden , produced in 1473 for the Dominican church in Colmar.

After The Master of the Housebook, Details from Design for a Quatrefoil , ca. 1475–1490, pen and black ink, Los Angeles, J. Paul Getty Museum.

This anonymous master active in Germany about 1470 - 1500) is, like Schongauer, mainly known for his prints. His notname (the name by which we refer to him) derives from a Hausbuch, or sketchbook in Schloss Wolfegg in the Bodensee region. The Hausbuch drawings and his 89 known prints are whimsical and sometimes satirical observations of the world. This drawing is a detail from a larger diamond-shaped sheet entitled Design for a Quatrefoil with a Castle, Two Lovers, a Maiden Tempted by a Fool, a Couple Seated by a Trough, and a Knight and His Lover Mounted on a Horse.

Albrecht Dürer, Self-Portrait, 1484, silverpoint on paper, Vienna, Albertina.

Martin Schongauer, Bust of Monk Assisting a Communion, date unknown, pen and brown ink on laid paper, Washington D.C., National Gallery of Art.

Albrecht Dürer, Great Piece of Turf, 1503, watercolour, pen and ink, Vienna, Albertina.

Albrecht Dürer, Wing of a Blue Roller, ca. 1500, watercolour and body colour, heightened with white body colour, Vienna, Albertina.

Albrecht Dürer, Mary among a Multitude of Animals, ca. 1503, pen and blackish-brown ink, watercolour, Vienna, Albertina.

Albrecht Dürer, Head of an African, 1508, charcoal, Vienna, Albertina.

Posthumous Workshop Copy after Dieric Bouts, The Mourning Virgin (infra-red reflectogram), ca. 1525, pen and ink, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This infra-red reflectogram reveals the underdrawing beneath the paint layers on the panel of The Mourning Virgin, part of a copy of a diptych by Dierec Bouts, made in the master’s workshop after his death. The reflectogram reveals that the drawing, executed in pen and ink, was produced from a tracing of Bouts’ original: the dots on some of the lines are the result of a process known as pouncing, where powdered charcoal is applied to a new panel through tiny holes pricked into a tracing; the dots can then be joined up to produce a quick copy of the original design.

Albrecht Dürer, Study of Katharina, 1521, metalpoint on prepared light pink paper, Florence, Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi.

Professor Catherine Whistler, Keeper of Western Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.