When does a drawing become a work of art? Renaissance treasures from the Royal Collection

Artists of the Renaissance would find it remarkable that we now frame their drawings and hang them in museums and galleries. Renaissance drawings were primarily working studies, made for the artists' own use or for another artist to work from. Any residual value was as a source of motifs – figures, animals, landscapes and so on – for the artist to use in future compositions, and for pupils to draw from as part of their training. The survival of such drawings was largely down to chance.

c.1500, pen & ink with bodycolour by an unidentified Marchigian artist

But as early as the fifteenth century, a few drawings were made intentionally as works of art. In some cases, paper was simply a cheaper substitute for another support, such as wood or parchment. A rare survival is a votive image made in thanks for a miracle, probably in the Marche of eastern Italy around 1500. The inscription reads: 'Oh amazing miracle wrought for Ierardina Dallumote of Santa Maria di Casciano upon one of her daughters Genevra, who was found on the ground faint and contorted by a fright; on making a vow she was released by the blessed Camilla.'

This work must have been on open display, perhaps attached to a panel and hung in a chapel – there are wormholes, graffiti and damage from candle flames. Such ex-votos may have been produced in large numbers, but paper is of course vulnerable to the effects of time, and few such works are known today.

While Giovanni Bellini's The head of an old man is a much more sophisticated drawing than the ex-voto, it may have served a similar devotional function. The facial type is that of Saint Anthony as seen in Bellini's early paintings, but this careful brush drawing – larger and more carefully finished than his preparatory drawings – seems to have been an independent work. The blue paper has faded from exposure to light, except at the edges where a frame must have protected it. Most remarkably, the uneven brown discolouration is the result of a coat of varnish, demonstrating that the drawing was treated exactly as if it were a painting.

Indeed, it was in the wider circle of the Bellini family, in Venice and across northern Italy, that drawings first attained the status of independent works of art. Many of these early works were portraits – though it may seem perverse that a work intended to record an individual's features for posterity should be produced on a support as vulnerable as paper. This drawing, attributed to Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo, illustrates the contradiction – a wonderfully evocative portrait that has been damaged by damp, insects and abrasion.

The draftsman is uncertain, and an early collector wrote candidly on the drawing (in Italian): 'This head is very good but I'm not able judge it, unless it's by a great hand of the great Florentine school.' The technique of black chalk on blue paper was more commonly used by artists in the north of Italy than in Florence, and which is why it has been possibly attributed to Giovanni Girolamo Savoldo from Brescia, who specialised in large black-chalk head studies of this type. But a convincing attribution remains elusive.

Such portrait heads were presumably valued primarily for their subject matter. But gradually, collectors began to see drawings as evidence of an artist's creative 'genius,' irrespective of the subject. This reflected the growing acknowledgement during the Renaissance that painters, sculptors and so on were not mere craftsmen, but artists, on a par with poets and other exponents of the liberal arts. The Renaissance drawings that survive today do so because they were valued by collectors at an early date, once their practical usefulness within the workshop had passed.

Soon, however, artists seem to have realised that they could produce drawings directly for such collectors. This must explain the significant number of careful drawings from the period that have no apparent preparatory function. Bartolomeo Montagna's drawing of Christ enthroned is in pristine condition and has evidently been looked after since the moment it was made. It is meticulously drawn with a fine brush, and there is no searching for form: Montagna must have made it as a finished exemplar of his draughtsmanship, with a note of exoticism in the sphinx throne on which the wild-haired Christ sits.

Drawings of this kind were only a sideline for a painter like Montagna; a generation later, his fellow Venetian Domenico Campagnola specialised in finished drawings, mostly of landscapes, and presumably for sale to collectors. He may even have employed assistants to replicate his compositions and satisfy the evident demand for such works: a drawing of Saint Jerome in the Wilderness is fully in Campagnola's style but is rather formulaic in its details and may well be by a studio assistant. Like many such drawings, it has an ostensible figural subject – the fourth-century saint during his time as a hermit – but the main interest is clearly the landscape, with a fanciful rock arch framing a view of trees.

c.1580, pen & ink over black chalk by Bartolomeo Passarotti (1529–1592)

Bartolomeo Passarotti's Saint Jerome depicts the same saint, but here the focus is entirely on the figure. Passarotti made many elaborate pen drawings of this kind for a burgeoning collectors' market in Bologna. The pen style emulates the effect of an engraving: the improbably muscular limbs and torso of the aged saint are modelled with areas of parallel hatching and cross-hatching, each line swelling and tapering in exactly the manner of an engraved line on a copper plate. It is a tour de force of penmanship, showing off Passarotti's skill as a draftsman above all else.

Such drawings were, it seems, simply a lucrative product for an established audience. The most extraordinary drawings of the Renaissance were those made for more personal reasons, for a patron or a friend, and beginning with the portrait heads mentioned above. Around 1504, Leonardo da Vinci made a celebrated drawing of Neptune for his friend Antonio Segni. It was described in Giorgio Vasari's life of the artist but has long since disappeared.

Its level of finish may be gauged from An allegory with a dog and an eagle that Leonardo made a few years later, when working for the occupying French court in Milan. It is an allegory of devotion to the king of France, who is depicted as a glorious eagle bestriding the earth; the dog represents faithfulness, in turbulent waters but fixing his compass on the eagle. Only the tree-mast is mysterious: perhaps a personal device of the unknown patron.

But the most extraordinary drawings of the period are the so-called 'presentation drawings' of Michelangelo, a series of highly finished drawings made for his closest friends, of Christian, mythological and philosophical subjects. The recipient is not always known: the context of his Risen Christ remains mysterious, but it is clear that it was not a preparatory drawing. Michelangelo drew Christ's muscular torso with tiny strokes of chalk that merge into a continuous surface, modelled like carved marble against the plane of the paper.

c.1532, black chalk on paper by Michelangelo (1475–1564)

The finest of all Michelangelo's presentation drawings were the sheets made as gifts for the young Tommaso de' Cavalieri, with whom the artist fell in love in 1532. A Children's Bacchanal is a reflection on the nature of the soul, in Michelangelo's Neoplatonic philosophy: the children represent the lowest form of human existence, without reason or divine love to guide them, and driven solely by animal urges.

1533, red chalk by Michelangelo (1475–1564)

A Children's Bacchanal is in perfect condition, and we can see it exactly as Michelangelo intended. Such sheets, made as finished works of art, form only a small proportion of the Renaissance drawings known to us; but besides their beauty, they provide an important insight into the period, showcasing the skill and ingenuity of draftsmen at a time when such qualities were increasingly valued.

Martin Clayton, Head of Prints and Drawings, Royal Collection Trust

This content was funded by the Bridget Riley Art Foundation

The drawings discussed here are featured in the exhibition 'Drawing the Italian Renaissance', on display at The King's Gallery, Buckingham Palace, until 9th March 2025. All the Renaissance works in the Royal Collection can be explored on the Royal Collection Trust website.

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