Cathy's Art Diary

Useful online lecture from the London Art History Society looking at the different reasons artists drew in the Renaissance. Grant Lewis from the British Museum proposed that as well as drawing being a way of working out compositions and for use within the studio as artists tried to enhance their prestige they became collectable by patrons. He outlined Vasari’s principle of disegno or design and how being able to see the intellectual thought behind a work became important in raising the status of artists. Lewis showed us how some artists, including Raphael, made works which looked like spontaneous preparatory work but were actually   constructed with underdrawings which were rubbed out. They were playing with these ideals and using the drawings as an act of performance. He also talked about how a market developed for finished drawings with some by Michelangelo talking up to 6 months to produce although he also told us about Luca Cambiaso whose drawings were so popular he set ...

Fascinating online discussion from the British Museum looking in detail at Michelangelo’s Epifania cartoon. Sarah Vowels and Grant Lewis, curators of the excellent exhibition “Michelangelo: The Last Decades” at the museum, introduced us to the cartoon dated from around 1550-3 and its possible iconography. They also talked about the painting based on it by Condivi which was also in the show. Art historian Daniel Godfrey then took us through the history of the cartoon after Michelangelo’s death and how it got to be in the museum’s collection. Finally conservator, Emma Turner led us through the six year conservation project with some great pictures of all the processes and explained what had been discovered during the project. All the talks added to a more rounded view of the picture and its history.