Renaissance Drawing: Inspiration Needs Preparation

The head of a youth, attributed to Pietro Faccini, c.1590 King's Gallery

I recently attended a fascinating exhibition of Renaissance drawing. (‘Drawing the Italian Renaissance’ is at The King’s Gallery, London until 9 March.)

Drawing became widespread in Italy in the 1400s, as the cost of paper fell and as new materials like chalk became available. It was the basis for artistic study, a fundamental of preparatory practice and a means of exploring ideas. 

The exhibition features 160 drawings - by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, and many others. There are tender portraits of unknown sitters; fearsome sketches of imaginary grotesques; precise explorations of costume and drapery; of character, posture and attitude. There are designs for small devotional images, altarpieces and wall paintings; allegories and scenes from ancient myths. We can see Leonardo’s studies of horses, Parmigianino’s dogs and Titian’s ostrich. Here’s Michelangelo’s black chalk drawing of The Risen Christ, reaching in exultation to the sky; and Raphael’s sensitive sketch of one naked woman in three poses - preparation for a fresco of the Three Graces. He was one of the few Renaissance artists to work from female models.

We can also inspect large drawings known as cartoons (from the Italian ‘cartone’, meaning ‘large sheet of paper’), final designs to be transferred to an altarpiece or wall. This was done by pricking outlines and rubbing powdered charcoal or dust across the back of the sheet; or by working with a squared grid to enable further enlargement. Cartoons are particularly precious because they were made with poor quality paper and often discarded after use.

Leonardo da Vinci’s Studies of a horse, c 1490
ROYAL COLLECTION ENTERPRISES LIMITED 2024/ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST

I was very much taken with Leonardo’s restless, curious mind. He sketched to develop his ideas on anatomy, botany, water and avian flight. He drafted a bird’s eye view of western Tuscany; a bear’s foot; a dog captaining a sailing boat with an oak tree for a mast. He drew human and animal dissections; filled pages with sketches of vivacious domestic cats, caged lions and sinister dragons. He was constantly looking to understand the physical world, drawing for pleasure as well as for research.

We learn that early paper was made from shredded clothing rags (linen and hemp). Artists could work in metalpoint, employing a lead or silver stylus. They could draw with black, red or white chalk, cut into small pieces and wedged into the end of a split stick – sharpening the chalk to a point for fine lines. Or they could employ charcoal (carbonised wood), less precise but more durable, soaking sticks in linseed oil to produce a richer colour. There was also black ink, applied with goose feather quills or a fine brush of squirrel hair. 

Bernardino Campi, The Virgin and Child (c.1570-80), which is in the exhibition at The King’s Gallery
CREDIT: © ROYAL COLLECTION ENTERPRISES LIMITED 2024/ROYAL COLLECTION TRUST

Shortly before his death in 1564, at the age of 88, Michelangelo ordered that many of his drawings be destroyed in two bonfires. Writing a few years after, the biographer Giorgio Vasari explained that the artist didn't want people to see the labour that had gone into his art. 

We may recognise this instinct in contemporary creative professions – the desire to suggest that inspiration is effortless and instinctive; that ideas arrive magically, fully formed.

But experienced heads know that success derives from exploration and experimentation; from trial and error; from drafting, planning and plotting; from hours of deep thought and hard work.

Inspiration needs preparation.

'Intuition is given only to him who has undergone long preparation to receive it.’
Louis Pasteur

Head of a Cleric c. 1448
Metalpoint on prepared ochre surface, heightened with white, 189 x 173 mm. Royal Library, Windsor

Of course, once we’re properly primed and rigorously rehearsed, we can afford to be more cavalier in our execution. One drawing by Paolo Farinati is inscribed with instructions. The figures, when transferred to the walls of the patron’s villa, should be roughly 3 feet high, but ‘You may do as you fancy when you are on the scaffolding.’

'I been reading my old journals,
Checking to see where my head has been.
And I been apologizing to some people,
Some bridges I needed to mend.
And I been eating more greens,
Getting my body out the line.
I'm gonna be super fine.
And I been letting some old ideas go.
I'm making room for my life to grow.
I just wanna be prepared.
I just wanna be prepared.
Getting myself ready
For what's comin' for me.
I just wanna be prepared.’

Jill Scott, ‘Prepared’ (A Harris / D Farris / J Scott)

No. 505

I Kicked a Bin: Losing Your Temper in the Office

Some years ago I kicked a bin half way across the office. It tumbled gracefully through the air, discarding crumpled balls of A4, sweet wrappers and empty smoothie bottles on the way. Young account managers glanced up nervously from their screens. I knew immediately that I looked a fool. And all the more so when I reflected on what had prompted my outburst.

A courier company had failed to deliver a parcel of polyboarded creative concepts to its destination in San Francisco. I’d just heard that the boards were still sitting in a warehouse outside Heathrow.

It seemed a complete disaster at the time. Deadlines would be missed, Clients would be irate, the account would almost certainly totter. But I quickly realized that the late arrival of my polyboards wasn’t important in the grand, or even the medium-sized, scheme of things. I’d learned the first rule of losing your temper in the office: keep things in proportion.

In my time in the creative industry people have slammed doors, thrown scalpels and sworn to high heaven. They’ve walked out and walked in with breathtaking melodrama and flamboyant gestures. They’ve written admonishing letters, shouted from the desktops and adjourned to the pub. One manager swept his errant employee’s paperwork and personal effects into a black bin liner. It was a traditional way to tell someone they were fired.

Within reason and the bounds of employment law, I think a certain amount of emotion at work is appropriate. Creative people tend to be more impetuous, impassioned, impulsive. The anger shows they care. The musician and punk icon John Lydon has written in his autobiography about the positive power of anger. For Lydon ‘anger is an energy’:

‘Don’t view anger negatively, don’t deny it – use it to be creative.’

John Lydon, Anger Is an Energy: My Life Uncensored

But clearly anger is an energy that is best directed towards worthwhile goals. It’s a precious commodity that should be expended in realizing a great idea, achieving a profitable outcome; in addressing a social injustice or a loyalty betrayed. It shouldn’t be wasted on the trivial or hierarchical; on wardrobe selection or logo size.

The second rule of anger in the office is a more subjective one: only lose your cool if you look cool when doing so.

Righteous indignation suits some people. They’re more charismatic, more romantic, more truly themselves when they’re angry. They erupt like a volcano, roar like a lion. They’re Marlon Brando in A Streetcar Named Desire, Uma Thurman in Kill Bill; they’re Pete Townshend with a guitar or Beyonce with a baseball bat.

However, I realized in my bin-kicking incident that when I’m angry I look more like Norman Wisdom. My face flushed and arms flapped; my words lost their coherence and a slight lisp revealed itself.

I resolved not to lose my temper in the office again. For the rest of my career I was composed, calm and self possessed. I could be irritated but not incensed by the whims of Clients and the vagaries of my colleagues. I prided myself on my sang-froid.

I suspect in any case that some people have more richly contoured emotional lives than me. Their highs are higher and their lows are lower. Mine is a flatter sentimental landscape, and at work I became an emotional Norfolk.

Yet secretly I yearn to try kicking that bin one more time; to see if this time I can carry it off with a little more cavalier style and hot-blooded passion; to demonstrate that I too can exhibit glorious, incandescent, heartfelt office rage.

First Published: Guardian Media and Tech Network on 26 May 2016

No. 84