Tentoonstelling 'Secrets of Italian Drawings'

What secrets lie behind the drawings made in the Italian Renaissance? What stories can they tell us? What do we know about them? And what not? Over the past six years, curators at Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen have been investigating these questions. In the exhibition, the curators take you on a journey of discovery through the world of Italian drawings from the Renaissance. Find out more about these drawings and join us in investigating the secrets and mysteries that have yet to be unraveled.

The Renaissance, a period of cultural flourishing between 1400 and 1600

Italian artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Jacopo Tintoretto delved into the study of the human body and were inspired by examples from ancient Greece and Rome. Each region, city or even artist's workshop created its own unique style. Drawing was the basis of all artistic activities, with artists making drawings to prepare their paintings, altarpieces and frescoes and to capture the human figure in various poses. Drawings often show traces of their use in the studio, such as splashes of paint or oil, or square lines that helped the artist to enlarge a figure for a fresco directly on the wall. Later, drawings from the Renaissance became very valuable to collectors, everyone wanted to have works by the most prominent artists in their collection.

Looking over the researcher's shoulder

What does the process of examining a drawing actually look like? In this exhibition, we invite you to discover some key clues that help us to determine where and when the drawing was made, and perhaps most importantly, who is the artist? Find out why blue paper is often associated with artists from Venice, while artists from Florence preferred to draw with red chalk. Learn how to recognise a drawing made by a left-handed artist and discover how stamps, letters and stains can reveal the stories of drawings from the last 500 years. And how can you recognise the ultimate trick: a forgery? Discover this and much more in Secrets of Italian Drawings.