period of transition, however, Grassi’s revolutionary stud-
ies from life merely became models themselves for his
contemporaries to copy. It is with PISANELLOin the first
half of the 15th century that studies in motion begin. His
drawings of horses, precursors to those of LEONARDO DA
VINCI, show animals that are not only anatomically correct
but imbued with vital spirit. Pisanello was the first artist
to capture human likeness full face rather than in the cus-
tomary profile, and it is in one of Pisanello’s surviving
sketchbooks that we find the first surviving drawn study
for a major painting.
Styles in drawing varied from artist to artist.
Leonardo’s drawings are those of a painter; MICHELAN-
GELO’s those of a sculptor, and DÜRER’s those of an en-
graver. In each is reflected the techniques of the primary
discipline: the brush, the chisel, or the burin. At first
drawing on parchment or paper was done with silver-
point—a metal style tipped with silver. This was the pen-
cil before the discovery of graphite, and it required a
surface prepared with bone and gesso. It was a difficult
and merciless medium.
Cennino Cennini’s handbook Libro dell’arte (c. 1390s;
earliest known manuscript dated 1437) presents drawing
as a system of training for apprentices, the “entrance and
gateway” to painting. As Cennino advised, “start to copy
the easiest possible subjects, to get your hand in; and run
the style over the little panel so lightly that you can hardly
make out what you first start to do; strengthening your
strokes little by little, going back many times to produce
the shadows.” He describes how to draw on parchment
and paper, prepared in a simlar way to the panel, begin-
ning with the silverpoint and then fixing it with ink at the
points of accent and stress. “Then shade the folds with
washes of ink; that is, as much water as a nutshell would
hold, with two drops of ink in it; and shade with a brush
made of minever tails, rather blunt, and almost always
dry.” Lead was also used, which had the advantage of
being erasable.
From working with styles and pens, the student
moved on to drawing on paper or parchment that had
been tinted, using the techniques of tempera, the most
popular color being green. This progression from study to
finished painting mirrored the progression from appren-
tice to master painter. The artist began by making rough
outlines in chalk or charcoal, to be fixed with silverpoint;
subsequently the shadows were filled in with tonal washes
and highlights made with chalk.
In FRESCOpainting, the preparatory drawings would
be taken from full-size cartoons, the outlines of which
were pricked with pins; charcoal was pounced through the
holes to form an outline on the wall. The first outlines in
paint were made in a red ochre called sinopia.
When drawings were purely utilitarian preparations
for paintings, they tended to be made in charcoal or chalk
that could be dusted away as the study developed, with
outlines being made in ink and tonal areas with ink
washes and white highlights. This was the main technique
of the 15th century, but artists of the High Renaissance
began to explore the tonal possibilities of colored chalk on
tinted paper, a supreme example being Dürer’s Praying
Hands. Red chalk, first used by Leonardo, became a fa-
vorite medium of artists such as Michelangelo and
RAPHAEL.
The view that drawing was a preliminary to painting
prevailed until Leonardo. In his notebooks, filled with
sketches in pen and ink, he wrote of the need for a fresh
approach to drawing: what matters, he said, is not a tidy
finish but to capture the spirit of the subject. Drawing was
a medium particularly preferred by Tuscan artists but
eventually it was adopted in northern Italian schools. In
the academy of the CARRACCIdrawing was systematically
cultivated. Although it had always been used in northern
Europe as preparatory to painting, and, later, engraving, it
is with Dürer and the younger HOLBEINthat drawing
reached its full flowering in the north.
Drawing as an independent art form was not properly
established until the 16th century, when collectors pro-
vided a market. Such was Michelangelo’s fame that his ad-
mirers asked him for drawings, seeing them as works of
art in themselves. At the same time VASARIwas recom-
mending the idea of collecting drawings as a record of the
various styles of artists. Many of the collections begun in
the 16th century now reside in museums such as the Lou-
vre in Paris, the British Museum in London, and the Ash-
molean Museum in Oxford. The largest collections of
Leonardo and Holbein drawings form part of the Royal
Collection at Windsor Castle.
Further reading: David Bomford (ed.), Art in the Mak-
ing: Underdrawings in Renaissance Paintings (New Haven,
Conn.: Yale University Press, 2002).Drayton, Michael (1563–1631) English poet
Born at Hartshill, Warwickshire, Drayton spent his youth
in the household of the local Goodere family, before mov-
ing to London in about 1591. There he published the pas-
toral poems Idea, The Shepheard’s Garland (1593) and the
fine sonnet sequence Ideas Mirrour (1594). The lady cele-
brated in these poems, Anne Goodere, remained the ob-
ject of his poetic devotion for many years, though Drayton
apparently died a bachelor. Drayton was both prolific and
versatile as a poet. In 1596 he published the historical
poem Mortimeriados, which he later recast in OTTAVA RIMA
as The Barrons Warres (1603). England’s Heroical Epistles
(1597), letters in rhyming couplets between famous Eng-
lish lovers such as King Henry II and Rosamond, were
modeled on Ovid’s Heroides; they were very popular and
are among Drayton’s best work. Around this time he was
also writing for the stage, and in 1607 was associated with
the Children of the King’s Revels at the Whitefriars the-
ater. Drayton’s patriotism is stirringly expressed in his fine114488 DDrraayyttoonn,, MMiicchhaaeell