Figure, Memorie, Spazio: disegni da Fra’Angelico a Leonardo, by Daniel B. Gallagher
Figure, Memorie, Spazio: disegni da Fra’Angelico a Leonardo (Sala delle Reali Poste, Galleria degli Uffizi) and La Grafica del Quattrocento: appunti di teoria, conoscenza e gusto (Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe degli Uffizi), Florence. Closed June 12th.
The first step towards understanding Renaissance drawing is to take stock of the plethora of reasons for its existence, ranging from doodles to elaborate studies in human anatomy. What started as a design for sculpture may well have evolved into a preparatory sketch for painting. Drawing was the artist’s way of jotting down an idea before losing it and before knowing precisely what, if anything, it might develop into later. Artists are even more likely than composers and writers to be driven to insanity without a sketchbook nearby. Precisely because drawing was considered an indispensable daily discipline, it became the privileged means of unlocking the cognitive processes that led masters to produce their greatest work. Whereas we tend to approach sketchbooks as modern-day detectives, at the time they were produced, budding apprentices knew full well that they were the most reliable entryway into the minds of their teachers. In the fifteenth century, they were also considered the most convenient way of experimenting with new styles and recording the results of studies of the human figure, nature, and the art of the ancients.

