Most artists of the seventeenth century worked in well-regulated studios, employing assistants and apprentices, and large projects involved many different specialist craftsmen. Drawing was central to this activity, and displayed here are compositional sketches, life studies, drawings of antiquities, designs for frescoes, altarpieces, fountains, architecture and prints, models for the approval of patrons, and drawings produced as works of art in their own right.

Paper was made from pulped clothing rags (rather than wood pulp, as today). The most common drawing materials of the period were natural red and black chalks and pen and ink, with highlights of lead white and shadows of dilute ink applied with a brush. Artists experimented with combinations of these media, and with the effects obtained by drawing in oil paint on paper. Drawings of the seventeenth century are typically larger than in previous periods, allowing artists to explore the boldness and exuberance of effect characteristic of the Baroque.

Almost all the Italian Baroque drawings now in the Royal Collection were purchased by George III in the space of a few years around 1760, most notably from the collection of Cardinal Alessandro Albani in Rome. Many of these came in large groups that had been kept together since the artists’ deaths, including thousands of drawings by the Carracci, Domenichino, Guercino, Poussin, Bernini, Maratti and other leading artists of the period.