The King owns a lot of Renaissance drawings. The hundred and sixty currently on show at his own Picture Gallery so barely scratch the surface that the Royal Collection Trust have still managed concurrent loans to the Royal Academy and the National Gallery amongst others. This embarrassment of riches must make life difficult for curators spoilt for choice, but in the case of Drawing in the Italian Renaissance it also seems to have led to a certain complacency. There is a 'let's just put it out there' excess which makes it difficult for anyone but the most dedicated enthusiast to keep their focus and interest alive. A smaller, tighter show might ultimately have been more effective.
The exhibition eschews chronology for a thematic approach. You can be too slavish about dates but equally, drawing develops so dramatically over the hundred or so years covered here, that it makes sense to clarify how and why that happens. The other contextual omission is geographic - Italy at this point is not a unified whole and regional stylistic variations are not only key to getting a grip on any art of the period, but intrinsically interesting in themselves. Equally, there are beautiful vitrine displays of materials and a good summary of the link between drawing and increased paper production, but these seemed strangely detached from the images of the walls. I would have loved a comparative line of red chalk drawings, or of different coloured papers. Instead, the themes which are chosen are broad and diffuse - the emphasis always on the range of the collection rather than an analysis of it. Exhausting and frustrating rather than illuminating.
But, but, but, the drawings themselves (mostly) are incredible. And the sheer number and range on show dispel many of the myths of the Renaissance. Yes, there is Leonardo's anatomical precision but you also get a wonderfully loose landscape sketch and a page of his playful cats. Male nudes too beautiful to have been drawn from life hang alongside grotesque heads. Figures and poses generated with an immediacy which seems to belong in the nineteenth not the sixteenth century. There is humour - Lelio Orsi's design for a crossbowman in action destined for the front of a house - and absurdity in the form of an ostrich which may or may not be by Titian and a surreal lobster landscape by Annibale Carracci. There is excess: Giovanni Stradavus throws everything into his Alchemist's Laboratory and understatement. Whether Fra Angelico produced the ethereal metalpoint and white highlighted head or not, it is a thing of divine perfection. Of course there are lesser works, less artists, but what comes across here is the centrality of drawing, the imperative of it to plan, record, practise, and impress. And equally, the incredible survival of works which were rarely intended for preservation, rarely valued in their own right but somehow have made it down the centuries to be incongruously paraded on the King's walls today.
Drawing in the Italian Renaissance has been widely applauded, possibly overrated. It is one of those exhibitions in which curatorial missteps are magnified at the time, only to fade as memories of the art take over. It could have been smaller. It could have been better structured. Wall texts which include low-hung, postcard sized reproductions of relevant paintings are tokenist and annoying. Encouraging visitors to draw seems like an engaging idea but when you want to get up close to a small artwork, people busy on stools simply get in the way. And the cavernous, bombastically decorated rooms of the King's Picture Gallery are an unsympathetic environment for pale, small, quiet works. Despite all that, it is a privilege and a joy to see the works themselves. On a blue background a young man focuses on the paper on his knee, whilst a dog sleeps in peaceful curl. You can hear the silence, imagine the motes of dust in the raking light, feel the concentration. We know nothing of the artist, of the sitter, of the occasion. Simple, fragile, momentary and yet arrestingly powerful. Less but so much more.
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