Italian Renaissance Drawings catalogue

Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings offers a unique insight into the creativity of the greatest painters of the Italian Renaissance, shown through the intimate, private medium of their drawings.

This sumptuously illustrated catalogue charts the extraordinary development of drawing in Italy from 1400 through to 1510: a time when Michelangelo, Raphael and Titian were on the verge of taking the innovations of earlier masters, such as Leonardo and Pollaiuolo, in a daring new direction.

Published to complement the landmark exhibition held at the British Museum in 2010, Fra Angelico to Leonardo comprises just over a hundred key works from the period. This unique collaboration between the British Museum and the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, arguably the two best holdings of 15th century Italian drawings, brings together drawings of unprecedented quality including ten by Leonardo. The combination of these two collections allows the history and development of Italian quattrocento drawings to be told with unusual completeness and features key works by nearly fifty artists, including Filippo and Filippino Lippi, Botticelli, Mantegna, Verrocchio and Carpaccio.

This beautiful book highlights the vital role that drawing played in artistic teaching, and in studying the human body and the natural world. The engaging narrative explores aspects of regional difference and the development of new drawing techniques with unprecedented expressive qualities.