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drawingDrawing is the act of making a mark by pulling a medium across a surface. It is the oldest and mostwidespread art form since it is the mode of (non-performance) artistic expression that requires theleast preparation and the simplest materials. Cave paintings (or rather, drawings) are the earliestexamples of fine art of which we have a substantial corpus, and their reductive vocabulary—theoutline and the profile—recurs throughout human visual expression.

A drawn line, of finite width, is usually the representation of the infinitesimally narrow boundarybetween surfaces, tones, or colours, and is thus abstract to some degree. Nonetheless ourcontinual exposure to such representations at every level of schematization allows us to interpretinstantly drawings of a remarkable range of complexities: an Egyptian pictogram, a figurated Greekvase, a Chinese scroll painting, and a MATISSE line drawing are all equally, immediately legiblewithout the need to learn a visual-cultural language. Further, some drawings we react toinstinctively: a baby will smile at a ‘face’ comprised merely of two circles and a line; fledglings cowerbelow the silhouette of a hawk.

This sensitization to linear structure is central to our visual perceptions, and in the RENAISSANCEdrawing became fundamental to the creative processes of the visual arts, both practically andtheoretically (the Italian disegno, ‘design’ as well as ‘drawing’, is applied to all aspects ofrepresentation, including the three-dimensional). Prior to the Renaissance the principal design toolhad been the pattern book, a collection of careful drawings of heads, figures, animals, and so on.Artists could combine these standard images into a composition as required (with appropriateimprovisation), allowing the workshop assistant to know what to paint, in the required style, and thepatron to know what to expect. But during the 15th century developing humanistic attitudes amongpatrons increasingly esteemed the creative contribution of the individual artist, and the emphasis ofcontracts shifted from those skills necessary to construct the artefact, to those necessary to devisethe composition.

The PATTERN BOOK tradition thus gradually gave way to a method whereby the elements of acomposition were devised for one specific commission, and this required more preparatory work inthe form of drawings. The supply of PAPER rapidly increased during the 15th century and its costdropped; whether this was a consequence of artists drawing more, or merely a coincidence, papersoon became the favoured support for drawing, supplanting both parchment (expensive) andwooden tablets coated with a renewable preparation (ephemeral).

The free sketch allowed an artist to evolve an image in an individual and semi-automatic way, eachnew line a largely instinctive response to the patterns already present on the paper. But despite thispersonalization of the planning of a composition, the artefact itself continued to be a complexphysical product. Assistants remained essential for all large-scale projects, and the working drawingbecame the medium for controlling and harmonizing the members of the studio. This regulation ofthe creative process through drawings can be seen developing in the larger workshops of the later15th century (such as that of GHIRLANDAIO), though the very poor survival rate of drawings from thisperiod makes generalization hazardous, especially outside Italy.

Around 1500 the range of drawing seems to have expanded dramatically. This was partly due to

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technical advances, in particular the exploitation of natural CHALKS, simple to use and versatile incharacter, which rapidly displaced the labour-intensive and exacting METALPOINT. More profoundly,two highly influential individuals, ALBRECHT DÜRER in Germany and LEONARDO DA VINCI in Italy,realized the potential of drawing for all aspects of visual research. Hammering out a composition ina tangle of lines; studying the nude model or the fall of drapery; recording the finest details ofanimals and plants; codifying human proportion or anatomy, military fortification, or the movement ofwater; capturing a personal impression of a landscape or the memory of a dream; producing adrawing to be appreciated as an independent work of art: almost all the modes of draughtsmanshipof subsequent centuries were prefigured in their works.

Both artists were gregarious, generous, and itinerant. Personal contact and the dispersal of theirdrawings (and, crucially, Dürer's prints, which captured the vitality and range of his drawings)disseminated their innovations throughout Europe. Leonardo's years in Florence after 1500revolutionized the artistic scene there, and his example was fundamental to the development of histwo great successors, MICHELANGELO and RAPHAEL.

Raphael's pragmatic use of drawings allowed him to cope with a deluge of work in his later careerand direct a large and changing band of assistants. A distillation of current practices yet alsoendlessly innovative, his workshop methods were reduced by later generations to a formula:compositional sketches to determine the general form of the work; the elaboration of individualfigures, usually from the model; and their subsequent integration and enlargement to the scale ofthe finished work. This essentially mechanical task could be delegated to assistants, an increasinglyprevalent practice in BAROQUE art as the scale of major commissions increased and expectations ofmeticulous finish declined.

This systematization of the creative process through drawing was central to the methods of theformal ACADEMIES OF ART. These were established as the guild system declined in importance andthe status of the painter rose inexorably from craftsman to liberal artist. Beginning with the explicitlynamed Accademia del Disegno in Florence in 1563, and reaching their apogee under LE BRUN inParis in the late 17th century, the academies aimed to provide (in parallel with the practicalworkshop apprenticeship to a master) an intellectually based education, almost always based ondrawing.

The simplicity of drawing allows the pupil to concentrate on form alone, without being distracted bythe physical demands of the medium, and therefore has consistently been the basis of art training. Itteaches discipline and control, being a faithful record of the movements of the hand, and an initialemphasis on copying from other works of art inculcates an approved style in the young artist. In theacademies students usually drew first from casts of Antique sculpture or of the human body,progressing to drawing from the posed model (in time these life drawings were themselves called‘academies’), before being permitted to work on independent compositions.

This teaching method remained virtually unchanged (however outdated) in the academies until wellinto the 20th century, although few artists of any note ever adhered strictly to an orderly progressionof working drawings for their own compositions. It is true that those artists closer to a classical idealwere generally more productive and methodical draughtsmen, such as DOMENICHINO, MARATTI, andINGRES, but some artists with very strong elements of disegno in their work (CARAVAGGIO is theprime example) relied little on drawing. In the Low Countries, artists' drawing habits rarelyconformed to the academic ideal. REMBRANDT drew incessantly, and made the activity thefoundation of his pupils' tuition, yet relatively few of his sheets were in direct preparation forpaintings; RUBENS'S drawings were usually preparatory studies, but, like Raphael, he wascontinually adapting his methods to answer specific needs.

From the late 15th century onwards highly finished drawings had been produced sporadically forcollectors as objects of virtu, such as the chalk portrait heads of northern Italy, Michelangelo'spresentation drawings of the 1530s, or GOLTZIUS'S ‘pen works’ around 1600. More significant wasthe growth in the collecting of preparatory drawings, by those who were not artists themselves, aspure manifestations of artistic inspiration—a product of the increasing concern with the creativelyintellectual content of a work of art, and the use of drawing as the vehicle for this creativity. It is

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apparent (though little documented) that many types of studio drawings in the 16th century wereproduced with an eye on the collectors' market or recycled from the studio, such as BAROCCI'Spastel heads. The growth of a broad collecting class in the Netherlands during the 17th century ledto the large-scale production of explicitly independent, marketable drawings of many types,especially landscapes and genre scenes, often with the addition of watercolour to the usualpreparatory materials.

The 18th century saw the entrenchment of many of the trends of the previous 200 years, with theACADEMIES dominating most major art centres. The production of drawings for sale was a significantpart of many artists' work, especially in Venice (PIAZZETTA, TIEPOLO, CANALETTO); in England,WATERCOLOUR emerged as an autonomous activity midway between drawing and painting, andpastel portraits enjoyed a great vogue across Europe. But the tensions between the conservatism ofacademic routines and the practices of the avant-garde were becoming insuperable, and in the 19thcentury there was a marked fragmentation of graphic purpose among the artistic community—theaims and methods of TURNER, DELACROIX, INGRES, and MENZEL, for instance, were fundamentallydifferent.

Drawing was to become increasingly free of its role as a preparatory activity, a process that reachedits conclusion in the 20th century. The subservience of drawing to the more traditional finishedmedia (oil on canvas, sculpture, architecture, and so on) has disappeared, and the final blow to itsessential design role since the Renaissance has now come with the development of Computer-Aided Design programs, which have replaced manual drawing for all large-scale projects. Theversatility of drawing has made it a vital aspect of the work of nearly all experimental artists, mostnotably PICASSO, and a much higher proportion of works executed for sale (excluding prints) aremade on paper. The growth of the exhibition industry, a decline in classical and religious education,and the individualism of the latter half of the 20th century have led to an appreciation among thegeneral public of drawing as a prime expression of creative genius.

Martin Clayton

Bibliography

Meder, J. , The Mastery of Drawing, trans. and rev. W. Ames (1978).

Monnier, G. , and Rose, B. , History of an Art: Drawing (1979).

Rawson, P. , Drawing (2nd edn., 1987).Sciolla, G. C. (ed.), Drawing (1991–3).