Fra Angelico to Leonardo:
Italian Renaissance drawings
The BP Special Exhibition
22 April – 25 July 2010 / Reading
Room / £12, Members free
Tickets on sale from December 2009
A unique collaboration between the Uffizi and the
British Museum.
This major exhibition features 100 exquisite drawings by Italian
artists during the critical period of the Renaissance, from 1400 to
1510.
Drawn from the two foremost collections in the
field, the display charts the increasing importance of drawing
during this period, featuring works by Leonardo da Vinci, Fra
Angelico, Jacopo and Gentile Bellini, Botticelli, Carpaccio,
Filippo Lippi, Mantegna, Michelangelo, Verrocchio and Titian.
In 15th-century Italy there was a fundamental
shift in style and artistic thinking in the use of preparatory
drawings. What began as a means of preserving artistic ideas became
the ideal way to perfect more naturalistic forms and perspective –
a new approach by painters, sculptors and architects.
Infrared and other technology used in
conservation research provide fresh insights into how drawing
allowed painters to experiment and explore with a freedom not
always reflected in their finished works. Examples in the
exhibition show the trend towards depiction of movement and
expression of emotion, often inspired by classical antiquity.
This exhibition is a unique opportunity to
discover the evolution of drawing which laid the foundations of the
High Renaissance style of Michelangelo and Raphael.
Image: Andrea del Verrocchio, Head of
a woman. Charcoal, heightened with lead white, c. 1475. © The
Trustees of the British Museum