old master drawings - Museum of Fine Arts - Florida State University

The History of DrawingFebruary/March2009Raphael, Study for TheAlba Madonna, 1505-08,pen and red chalk, Museesd’Art et d’ Historie, Lille,France.Giovanni Battista Tiepolo,1696-1770, Seated RiverGod, Nymph with Oar, andPutto, pen and brown ink,brush with pale and darkbrown wash, over blackchalk, The MetropolitanMuseum of Art, New York.The revival of interest in classical art and science, whichwe term the Renaissance, first appeared in fourteenth centuryItaly. In this period human anatomy was systematicallystudied and perspective was developed as part of theexpanding fields of science and art. Drawing becamevolumetric thanks to the new techniques of coloring. The useof light and shade, together with perspective, brought realismto drawing. The High Renaissance style of the late fifteenth andearly sixteenth century represented the culmination of theRenaissance period. In the High Renaissancethe forms became heavier and broadlymassed. Tones of dark and light replace theearlier more linear manner. Renaissance stylereceived its fullest expression in such mastersas Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael,and Titian. In Germany, Albrecht Dürer wasthe first artist who began to view drawing asan independent art work.The Baroque stretched from theRenaissance to the 17th century. Itexaggeratedly used all the resourcescontributed by the Renaissance to express aAlberecht Dϋrer, BabaraDϋrer, 1514, pen and inkon paper, Erlangen,University Library.wide range of attitudes, from the calamity of poverty to thesplendor of wealth. Uniformity was broken in Baroque pictorialrepresentations to maximize attraction of the spectator.From the 20th century onwards the continual line ofdevelopment that had followed the history of drawing wasbroken. Drawing forked into a multitude of styles:romanticism, realism, impressionism, expressionism, fauvism, cubism,futurism, and surrealism. Nevertheless, all these styles made use of what hadbeen contributed in the past to now express new approaches.Vincent Van Gogh, StarryNight, 1889, pen drawing,Museum of Architecture,Moscow.Henri Matisse, SleepingWoman, 1942, Besançon'sMuseum of Fine Arts andArcheology, France.Pablo Picasso,Igor Stravinsky,1917, TheGrangerCollection, NewYork.Fedor Rusetsky,Give Us Our DailyBread…, 1931,watercolor, ink,photomontage.Eolo Pons, Espana Tell,1939, pencil drawing.BackBackground Information Page 5-6