NORTHERN FIGURES PAGE — The Practice of Drawing

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.

Featured

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.