A selection of drawings from the museum’s collection are shown in the Depot of Museum Boijmans van Beuningen. The drawings were made in Italy between 1400 and 1600, a flourishing period known as the Renaissance. Italian artists took inspiration from classical antiquity and intensely studied the human body. Drawing became the foundation of activity in the artist’s workshop. Artists made preparatory studies for their own paintings and copied those of others. Each workshop developed a distinctive style.
In 2024 the museum finished a six-year project to catalogue the Italian Renaissance drawings in the collection, and all these drawings are now available online. Some of the drawings had rarely been studied before. In order to catalogue these drawings, the most basic research questions were asked: What materials did the artist use? What does the drawing depict? How can we interpret the marks, stains, numbers and letters that we find on each drawing? And especially: Who might the artist be?
The exhibition invites the visitor to join the curators as a researcher working on the drawings collection. Explore how they were able to answer some key questions, and which ones remain tantalisingly open.