Drawing In Early Renaissance Italy

Through the works of the major fifteenth-century draughtsmen - Pisanello, Jacopo Bellini, Pollaiuolo, Ghirlandaio, Carpaccio and Leonardo da Vinci - Francis Ames-Lewis then explores new types of drawing evolved during the century: the free sketch contrasting with the frozen control of the model-book, the exploratory study of the nude, the preparatory compositional sketch and the cartoon.

An Exhibition of Early Renaissance Drawings from Collections in Great Britain held at the University Art Gallery, Nottingham, 12 February to 15 May 1983 - Techniques - Modelbooks & sketchbooks - The draped figure - The nude figure - Biographies include: Gozzoli, Leonardo da Vinci, Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Bellini etc.

"Beginning with an examination of drawing as part of the creative process, and showing how it reveals the artist's mind at work, the author explains in detail the materials and techniques used in Renaissance drawings. It also considers how drawings were used, how they changed stylistically through the period and how they varied in different regions of Italy. It concludes with a brief look at connoisseurship and collecting."--Amazon.

The first catalogue to survey the Morgan?s collection of Italian Renaissance drawings, this monumental study also constitutes an introduction to Italian Renaissance draftsmanship for students and enthusiasts. It includes introductory essays on drawing in Renaissance Italy and on the formation of the Morgan?s collection. More than 120 detailed catalogue entries offer highly focused explorations of individual sheets, but these are grouped into chapters with introductory essays that provide context on key moments in the evolution of Renaissance drawing and on the distinct characteristics of different regional schools.00The related exhibition 'Invention and Design: Early Italian Drawings at the Morgan', organized by John Marciari, is on view February 15 through May 19, 2019. While the newly published catalogue covers drawings from around 1350?1600, the exhibition focuses on the earlier material, illuminating the origins and evolution of Italian drawing by artists born before 1500.00Exhibition: Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, USA (15.02.-193.05.2019).

This sumptuously illustrated catalogue charts the history of drawing in Italy from 1400, just prior to the emergence in Florence of the classically inspired naturalism of the Renaissance style, to around 1510 when Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian were on the verge of taking the innovations of earlier masters, such as Leonardo and Pollaiuolo, in a new direction. The book highlights the key role played by drawing in artistic teaching and in how artists studied the human body and the natural world. Aspects of regional difference, the development of new drawing techniques and classes of graphic work, such as finished presentation pieces to impress patrons, are also explored. An extended introduction focusing on how and why artists made drawings, with a special emphasis on the pivotal role of Leonardo, is richly illustrated with examples from the two collections that elucidate the technique and function of the works. This is followed by catalogue entries for just over 100 drawings where discussion of their function and significance is supported by comparative illustrations of related works, such as paintings.

Essays on both newly discovered and famous drawings that reveal aspects of the Renaissance and how artists thought.

At the beginning of the fifteenth century, painters and sculptors were seldom regarded as more than artisans and craftsmen, but within little more than a hundred years they had risen to the status of "artist." This book explores how early Renaissance artists gained recognition for the intellectual foundations of their activities and achieved artistic autonomy from enlightened patrons. A leading authority on Renaissance art, Francis Ames-Lewis traces the ways in which the social and intellectual concerns of painters and sculptors brought about the acceptance of their work as a liberal art, alongside other arts like poetry. He charts the development of the idea of the artist as a creative genius with a distinct identity and individuality. Ames-Lewis examines the various ways that Renaissance artists like Mantegna, Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, and Dürer, as well as many other less well known painters and sculptors, pressed for intellectual independence. By writing treatises, biographies, poetry, and other literary works, by seeking contacts with humanists and literary men, and by investigating the arts of the classical past, Renaissance artists honed their social graces and broadened their intellectual horizons. They also experienced a growing creative confidence and self-awareness that was expressed in novel self-portraits, works created solely to demonstrate pictorial skills, and monuments to commemorate themselves after death.