The Performance of Drawing in Renaissance Italy

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 up a workshop purely to produce drawings.

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