Secrets of Italian Drawings

What secrets are hidden in the drawings made during the Italian Renaissance? What stories can they tell us? What do we know about them, and what may we never know? Over the last six years, curators from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen have been researching these questions. In the exhibition Secrets of Italian Drawings the curators take you on a voyage of discovery through the world of Italian Renaissance drawings.

The Renaissance, a thriving cultural period between 1400 and 1600
Italian artists such as Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Jacopo Tintoretto intensely studied the human body and were inspired by the example of ancient Greece and Rome. Every region, city or even artist’s workshop developed its own unique style. Drawing was the foundation of all artistic activity, with artists making drawings to prepare their paintings, altarpieces and frescoes and to capture the human figure in different poses. Drawings often carry the traces of their use in the workshop, such as splashes of paint or oil, or squared lines that helped the artist to enlarge a figure for a fresco directly onto the wall. Renaissance drawings were treasured by later collectors, who wanted to have works by the most important artists in their collections.

Looking over the shoulder of the researcher
What does the process of researching a drawing actually look like? In this exhibition we invite visitors to discover some of the important clues that help us to find out where and when the drawing was made, and most importantly of all, who the artist might be. Find out why blue paper is mostly associated with artists from Venice, while artists in Florence preferred to draw with red chalk. Learn how to recognise a left-handed drawing, and how to interpret the stamps, letters and stains that tell a rich story of the drawing’s life over the last 500 years. And find out how to identify the ultimate artistic sleight of hand, a forgery.

Drawings available online
In 2018 the museum was awarded funding from the Getty Foundation’s Getty Paper Project initiative, which allowed us to research the rich collection of Italian Renaissance drawings and put them online for the first time. In 2024 we completed the catalogue, which you can browse on the museum’s website. Also available in the Depot Store is the exhibition catalogue Italian Renaissance Drawings from Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen. Read more about the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci, Raphael, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Fra Bartolommeo and Tintoretto which are a highlight of the museum’s collection. This catalogue was published to accompany a touring exhibition at Fondation Custodia, Paris until January 12, 2025, and the Morgan Library & Museum in New York, January 23–May 3, 2026.