Reading Drawings

Interesting exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery looking at drawings with inscriptions or writing on them.

The commentary gives a good overview of why there might be writing from simply the artist’s signature possibly with a date, through colour notations, collector’s stamps, adding a narrative or writing unrelated to the picture and there were good examples of all these reasons.

There was a nice sketch by Rubens for the Creation of the Animals of a swooping God and expressive lions with a gamp in the middle in which he’d written “creation of man” which was going to be a different sketch to work up the detail but he’d indicated where that motif would fit.

I loved Juan de Juanes study of an altarpiece with two different versions for the patron to choose from and calculations of the cost and a recipe for gilding glue on the back. It gave a real sense of a working artist. Similarly there was a drawing by the school of Raphael with a list of food for the week on it! As it’s Sunday today it would have been sausage, bread and salad!

A Canaletto drawing of the church at the Rialto was included as it was signed by him but as “del” for designed which implied it might have been for a print design.

There was also a charming drawing of a monument to a donkey on which the artist had written the story of the donkey which had worked for many years carrying baskets alone between Rome and the family villa

Closes on 4 June 2017

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