The Practice of Drawing
The Practice of Drawing
 

Those drawings that were independent of texts were mainly tools for planning works in other media or preserving models to be used at a later date. Drawings used for planning included sinopie, drawings in reddish-brown pigment on walls to be frescoed, and elevations, architectural drawings of buildings or parts of them such as façades. Drawings used to preserve and transmit models from one region to another and from one generation to the next via were sometimes collected in albums. Those albums that survive are often retouched or reinforced, suggesting long period of use. How exactly these albums and the few architectural drawings that survive were used remains to be clarified since it is difficult to match them up with finished works.

 

SINOPIE

 

Sinopia, a dark reddish-brown pigment, was widely used in Classical Antiquity and the Middle Ages for painting and for drawing on walls when producing frescoes. The term is used both for the pigment and for the preparatory drawings themselves, sinopie, which we sometimes see when frescoes are stripped from walls for transfer onto canvas. See Learn More for Cennino Cennini’s description of the technique.

 

ARCHITECTURAL DRAWINGS

 

Few architectural drawings survive and differences between them and the finished buildings they portray make them difficult to interpret. As one scholar has commented, it is as architects were determined to preserve the secrets of their workshops. Perhaps the most extraordinary architectural drawing we know today is the design for a façade for Barcelona Cathedral, produced in 1408 but not executed until the late 19th century when a new campaign of building was undertaken in the city’s Gothic Quarter.

 
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Architectural Drawing, ca. 1450, pen and brown ink over black chalk on vellum, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Architectural Drawing, ca. 1450, pen and brown ink over black chalk on vellum, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This drawing is similar to the west facade of the church of Saint-Maclou in Rouen, designed in the 1430s, but there is no evidence that it was the model for any particular building.

Maestre Carlín, Project for the Main Portal of Barcelona Cathedral, 1408, pen and ink on parchment, Archivo Capitular de la Catedral de Barcelona.
Maestre Carlín, Project for the Main Portal of Barcelona Cathedral, 1408, pen and ink on parchment, Archivo Capitular de la Catedral de Barcelona.

This huge drawing, on 12 large sheets of parchment, was produced by Maestre Carlín, an architect from Rouen, one of many northern European craftsmen to emigrate to the Iberian Peninsula in the 15th century. Bringing with him the new forms of French Flamboyant style, he was closely involved in designing portals for the cathedrals in Barcelona, Seville and other peninsular cities.

Façade of Strasbourg Cathedral, 1260s, pen and ink on parchment, Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg.
Façade of Strasbourg Cathedral, 1260s, pen and ink on parchment, Musée de l’Oeuvre Notre-Dame, Strasbourg.

One of the earliest architectural sketches to survive, this work includes fanciful elements and raises questions about how these kinds of drawing were used.

MODEL BOOKS

 

The most famous album of model drawings from the period is that of the architect and stonemason Villard de Honnecourt (ca. 1225-ca. 1250). The purpose of the album is the subject of controversy. Originally it was thought to have served as a training manual for architects, but scholars now think the models were mnemonic devices for architects to remember things they had learnt orally. Another type of model was portrait-like facial types, like the Bearded Prophet below, that could be incorporated within a variety of compositions.

 

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The Album of Villard de Honnecourt, early 13th century, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The Album of Villard de Honnecourt, early 13th century, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The Album of Villard de Honnecourt, early 13th century, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
The Album of Villard de Honnecourt, early 13th century, Paris, Bibliothèque Nationale de France.
Anonymous Bohemian artist, Head of a Bearded Man, 1360-80, pen and grey-brown ink, brush with grey-black and brown wash, traces of white gouache highlights, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Anonymous Bohemian artist, Head of a Bearded Man, 1360-80, pen and grey-brown ink, brush with grey-black and brown wash, traces of white gouache highlights, New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art.

This very refined and unusually well-preserved study may have been created by an artist in the immediate circle of the court of the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles IV (r. 1355-78) at Prague. The sheet was probably made as an exemplar in a model-book rather than as a preliminary study for a specific work.