Master Drawings of the Italian Renaissance

Description

This book features masterpieces of Italian Renaissance drawings from the British Museum, the Louvre and other French public collections in Lille, Rennes and Montpellier. Beginning with an examination of drawing as part of the creative process, showing how it reveals the artist's mind at work, it explains the materials and techniques used in Renaissance drawings. It also considers how drawings were used, how they changed stylistically through the period and how they varied in different regions of Italy. It concludes with a brief look at connoisseurship and collecting. The main body of the book showcases 120 of the finest drawings by more than 40 Italian Renaissance masters, accompanied by a brief biography and introduction to the drawings of each artist.

Claire Van Cleave is a writer and lecturer on Old Master drawings and Renaissance art and a specialist on the work of Luca Signorelli. She is currently researching a book on Americans living in Florence in the late 19th and 20th century.

The delicate reproductions are exquisite and fulsome, and Van Cleave's short bios of each of the great draughtsman are extremely cogent and lively.--Michael Coffey"Publishers Weekly" (09/17/2007) This is an exquisite book of thumbnail biographies and drawings of some of the best-known Renaissance masters, but also many of the lesser known. The drawings are arresting for their beauty.