Likeness and line: the Renaissance portrait drawing

Another lecture at the National Gallery to compliment the “Renaissance Faces” exhibition .

Given by Caroline Brook of Birkbeck College, this lecture looked at the role of drawing in Renaissance portraiture and why it rose to prominence at this time and then declines.

It looked in particular at the abstract nature of drawing, claiming that the act of drawing a line on a paper is a abstraction as it uses illusion to create reality. It also looked at the different uses of drawings : as preparatory works, as works of art in their own right, as presents for friends and as means of an artist analysing himself in self portraiture.

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