Charles I assembled one of the greatest collections of Renaissance art that has ever been seen.  Assembled here are some of the paintings, drawings and books that form part of the present Royal Collection.

Drawings

Drawing was central to the practice of almost all Italian Renaissance artists. This exhibition featured compositional sketches, life studies, portraits, designs for altarpieces, frescoes, prints, tapestries and woodwork, models for the approval of patrons, and drawings produced as works of art in their own right.

The most common drawing materials of the fifteenth century had been metalpoint (a silver stylus on prepared paper) and pen and ink. Metalpoint was supplanted around 1500 by natural red and black chalks, and over the next century artists frequently used combinations of coloured grounds, chalk, pen and ink, washes of dilute ink, and white highlights to create drawings of great sophistication and beauty.

The majority of the Italian Renaissance drawings now in the Royal Collection seem to have been acquired by Charles II (reg. 1660–85). Some, including an album of 600 drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, had formerly been in the great collection of Thomas Howard, 2nd Earl of Arundel (d. 1646), while others had passed through the hands of English art dealers. But Charles II’s acquisitions are undocumented, and we will probably never know how he assembled such a fine collection.

The drawings are grouped here broadly by region: Florence and Rome; Venice and its hinterland; and other cities of northern Italy, such as Bologna, Parma and Cremona. Also featured are some of the Royal Library’s notable books and bindings of the period.