Old Master Drawings are so classified primarily because of the medium and support employed and the date of the work. The designation is commonly understood to include works of the 15th through 18th centuries most often executed in chalk, or pen & ink, and/or brush and wash and usually supported by paper but sometimes vellum or parchment. Generally, their purpose is of a preliminary or preparatory nature - as designs for a frontispiece like the Errard, or an ornament on a silver soup tureen or limestone garden urn, or theatrical stage set, or costume design. Drawings which study the pose of a figure for a painting, like the Veronese or the Tocqué presented here; or of a figurative group in a fresco, like the Poccetti and the Galeotti; or of a compositional study like the dal Friso, or for a sculpture or medal, like the Hamerani - these are all preliminary in nature. A drawing is sometimes preparatory for a print, like the Preisler's. But drawings can also be autonomous works, conceived for their own sake. Examples are the Divine Heads of Michelangelo, the portraits of Bernini, the pastoral or garden landscapes of Natoire or Fragonard, the capriccios of Guardi or, as can be seen here, the mythological inventions of Mosnier, the pastel by Elizabetta Sirani, the Study of a Girl by Overlaet, or the portraits by Pitteri, as well as the Grotesque Lovers by Procaccini, or the small devotional composition by Caula. The use of one color of chalk was often augmented to include two colors, such as the combination of red & black, as in the verso study by the 17th c. Sevillian artist of a Seated Man; or black & white chalk combination - a very, though not exclusively, Venetian Renaissance concoction as can be seen in Veronse's study of a Young Black Boy - or the portrait by Mignard, or the mythological composition by Bonecchi - especially appealing when applied to blue paper, like the studies shown here by Ferrari and Sevenbom. Leonardo at the beginning of the 16th century and Barocci at the end, favored the use of multi-colored chalks, including yellows and oranges - a soft yet rich mixture that appealed as well to Mola in 17th century Rome, Castiglione (who also added vivid touches of oil paint) in 17th century Genoa, and culminating in the pastels, first of Benedetto Luti in Rome during the first two decades of the 18th century, and soon after with the portaits of Rosalba Carriere in Venice, and then with such a good number of French artists in Paris that today it is of them whom we think as the masters of the medium. Our example of pastel is by the 17th century female painter, Elizabetta Sirani; it is one of only two known pastels by her, the other being in the Uffizi.
Some Renaissance draughtsman especially in Italy and Germany composed highly finished autonomous drawings, monochromatic compositions embellished with highlights of gold or white gouache applied with the point of a brush, similar to the chiaroscuro drawing by Schmidt von Lichtenberg shown here. Often these exquisite works would have been on tinted or prepared papers like the Caula. Goltzius applied this method to a panel rather than paper and this distinction of support, regardless of the use of a pen, relegates the work to the category of painting. The use of multicolored paints when the medium is gouache or watercolor however, does not preclude us from including these works with other drawings, such as the lovely Lexmond Winter Scene shown here, and the exquisitely rendered botanical by Bessa. Their support is paper and sometimes, like with Marco Ricci's gouaches, leather or parchment.
We have touched on the topic of autonomous sheets which it should be noted also encompass works intended to record or document the completion or existence of another work of art, such as one of the many drawings after Antiquities by Pietro Testa and other artists in Rome commissioned by Cassiano dal Pozzo, the bulk of which were acquired for the library of King George III of England in the 18th century and still reside at Windsor Castle. Another example would be Claude's gorgeous landscapes populated with mythological figures that document the subject and composition of his autograph paintings. Autonomous drawings can be of a natural historical nature like the botanical by Bessa, though in this particular case an engraving was made after it. At the end of the 18th century few building projects in France were commissioned. Architects resorted to selling drawings of would-be structures such as that shown here by Thomas.
Oil sketches are akin to drawings in that they are often executed on paper. Their purpose is sometimes exploratory and sometimes they are ends in themselves. When sufficiently articulated, they can serve as "presentation pieces," enabling a patron to get an idea of what the artist's larger-scaled and more elaborate project will look like. Grisailles and brunailles in oil, monochromatic by nature, like the scene in Joseph's Workshop by Mondino shown here, are often conserved by the drawings departments of institutions, even though they are painted in oil and were often executed on linen.
It is hoped that the previously uninitiated will be intrigued by the material presented here. Our intention is to show what a rich and varied field this is, to inspire you to view the drawings displayed on this web-site, and tempt you to collect thse splendid and fascinating old master drawings.
