Italian Renaissance drawing: design, form and function

Behind every great Renaissance painting is an equally astounding, some would say greater, drawing. Indeed, artists were judged firstly not by the quality of their paintings, but by their grasp of and skill in drawing. But although there are some extraordinary examples that survive, many did not.

This course will bring together some of those paintings with their accompanying surviving drawings to demonstrate that the importance of drawing upon the very fabric of the Renaissance cannot be underestimated, because without drawings there could be no Italian Renaissance. By examining how this, at first, purely functional object was developed, made and used, we will discover how they would eventually come to be regarded as works of art in their own right.
What previous students liked most about this course:

“Greatly improved my knowledge of the Renaissance period and techniques of drawing.”