Complete Checklist

The delicate modeling with light and shade befits the exquisite appearance of this virgin saint, who was probably intended to be Saint Catherine of Alexandria. The figure recurs frequently in early Netherlandish art. Indeed, this drawing is itself a copy of a lost original: faint marks indicate that it was made using a tracing. Clad in a flowing robe royale, the young woman points to the finger on which Christ placed a ring in her vision of their mystic marriage.

Here we are given a close view of the Holy Family, separated by a wicker fence from the sweeping landscape beyond. The drawing's technique is wide ranging, from the precise hatching employed for Joseph and Mary to the free, more loosely drawn shepherds. The artist has worked confidently, moving from left to right. He did, however, make changes as he went. For instance, the ox's tail was drawn over the dog.

Perched on a window ledge, a mother turns from her book to look at her son. Only the haloes and the crown held by the toddler indicate that this is Mary and the infant Christ. The mood is domestic and almost impromptu, as if the sitters have been captured unawares. The back of this sheet (at right) holds another study by the Venetian painter of the Virgin with the Christ Child and Saint John.

Fra Bartolommeo is one of the earliest Italian artists to have left a large group of landscape drawings, many of which were composed in preparation for his paintings. This view of Florence from the nearby Tuscan hills features small figures on the embankment of a river that leads toward the city and its prominent cathedral dome. The minimal, light pen strokes suggest that the artist created the work quickly, possibly at the location itself.

Parmigianino seems to have made this drawing of a female figure as an experiment in technique and expressive form. Rather than using white solely for highlights, he applied it extensively to the woman's face, hands, and drapery to create volume as well as detail. The contrast between white gouache and black chalk produces a subtle effect of light and dark appropriate to the figure's meditative pose and expression.

Nearly two-thirds of this stormy marine view is devoted to rows of frenetic waves. The variety of strokes, ranging from dashes and squiggles to long, straight lines, is typical of Bruegel's nuanced use of the pen. The distant city stretching along the horizon is very likely Antwerp. The diminutive island surmounted by gallows at upper left is probably imaginary.

The Colossus of Rhodes was constructed in the third century BC and represented the gilded sun god Helios. Heemskerck has followed later tradition in depicting the massive bronze figure straddling the entrance to the city's harbor. In the foreground, an architect crowned with laurels studies a sketch and supervises a team of craftsmen. This drawing was made as a design for a print.

As his biographer Carlo Ridolfi noted, Tintoretto loved to "draw from the live model in all sorts of poses, endowing them with grace." This study is executed in Tintoretto's preferred medium of black chalk on coarsely fibered paper. The model could not have held this position for long, and supports himself with a stick. He was probably also kneeling on a stool, but Tintoretto chose not to represent this prosaic prop in his dynamic drawing.

This detailed study was made in preparation for a print, published in Antwerp in 1600. It depicts fishermen hunting for pearls in the Persian Gulf. Divers are lowered from rowboats to the ocean floor in search of oysters. The collected shellfish are then shucked and evaluated. An inscription in the lower margin refers to the expedition of the Venetian merchant Gasparo Balbi, who studied local methods of pearl fishing in Persia in 1580.

This moralizing drawing, finished to a high degree with lavish washes, shows a soldier seducing a young woman. Distracted by her sensuousness, he is unaware of the skeletal legs beneath her skirt and of the figure of Death poised to strike with his arrow. A devil hovers above ready to claim his soul. The hourglass, lute, and mirror further underscore the brevity and vanity of mortal life.

The bound male figure is a recurring theme in Ribera's art. This subtle study may represent the suffering and steadfastness of an unidentified elderly saint. Extending his disproportionately long arm, he seems to address someone beyond the scene. The relationship between the saint and the hunched man at the bottom of the tree remains ambiguous, but they seem to be conceived as contrasting figures.

Saenredam planned his many paintings of church interiors in drawings, usually beginning with a freehand sketch. This characteristic example presents the south ambulatory of Haarlem's gothic church viewed from the central crossing of the nave. Using the blue paper as a midtone, the artist adds touches of white to capture the play of light on the bare stone surfaces. He includes a single figure to convey the scale of the imposing space.

Born in the French region of Lorraine, Claude established himself in Rome as a highly innovative landscape painter. His distinctive drawings are characterized by a thoughtful mixture of media. In his depiction of trees on this study sheet the contrast and variation of graphite, chalk, ink, and wash convey a sense of texture and volume as well as the interaction between light and shadow.

This signed sheet, most likely conceived as an independent work, presents a landscape typical of the environs of Haarlem. The distinctly Dutch setting is marked by a winding country road leading travelers to the nearby dunes that define the region's coastline. Combining red and black chalk with pale wash, Molyn explores the possibilities for rendering light and shadow in a limited color palette.

As the empty bag over his left shoulder suggests, this young lay brother of the Discalced Carmelite order is setting out to collect alms. Watteau first outlined the figure in red chalk before working up the contours in red and black, using both chalks as well as the neutral tone of the paper to suggest the various layers and folds of the friar's woolen habit, as well as the light falling across his downcast eyes and double chin.

This close-up view of a bearded magus and a young man reading is an example of the "character head" — a type of independent drawing pioneered by Piazzetta and prized by his early eighteenth-century collectors. The artist has aligned the boy's focused gaze with the man's pointing finger as it presses emphatically on the page.

In 1746, Canaletto traveled to England and over the following decade produced a record of mid-Georgian London. In this finished work, drawn as a collector's item, London is seen from above the terrace of Old Somerset House, designed by Inigo Jones in the 1630s (and, since 1989, home to the Courtauld Institute). Stairs lead to the Thames. In the distance at right are the arches of Old London Bridge, while St. Paul's Cathedral towers above a skyline dotted with spires.

Robert is known for his large red-chalk landscape drawings conceived as independent works. This view of an overgrown garden, populated by classical statuary and a pair of laundresses with a child, was long attributed to Robert's contemporary Jean-Honoré Fragonard; in the early 1760s both artists worked side by side in the environs of Rome.

An imposing fortress and prison on the banks of the Tiber River, the Castel Sant'Angelo was a favorite subject for artists working in Rome in the eighteenth century. Cozens has eliminated incidental detail, emphasizing instead the castle's forbidding bulk and its reflection in the water.

Taking full advantage of the translucence of watercolor, Girtin builds up the design in distinct layers, allowing each stage of the composition's development to remain visible. Girtin's approach flouted contemporary academic practice, which encouraged artists to disguise all evidence of their labor. The coarse paper imparts a grainy texture to this beach scene.

This nude is a preparatory study for Ingres's painting La Grande Odalisque, commissioned by Queen Caroline Murat of Naples for her private apartments, now in the Louvre. When the painting was exhibited in Paris in 1819, critics attacked the figure for having "neither bones, nor muscles, nor blood, nor life." In this study, however, the artist concentrated on the weight and mass of the model's back, buttocks, and thigh, creating an almost sculptural sense of volume.

This sheet of studies may have originally formed part of a sketchbook. Most of the groups, arranged in three rows, are reminiscences of military life under Napoleon. For example, the central frieze of figures at the bottom of the sheet shows a group of soldiers transporting large blocks of stone roped to a makeshift cart. This might relate to the unsuccessful storming of the citadel of Acre at the beginning of Napoleon's Egyptian campaign in 1799.

In 1825 Turner was commissioned to produce designs for a series of engravings. Colchester shows the artist grappling with the challenges of producing watercolors intended for engraving. He developed a technique of layering careful finishes of stippling over color washes. The figures chasing a hare allude to the witch hunts that took place in Colchester during the English Civil War: according to rural tradition, witches could transform themselves into hares.

The nudes juxtaposed in this study relate to different projects on which Delacroix was engaged in the late 1840s. The figure combing her hair on the left is a preparatory sketch for Le Lever, a small painting inspired by Goethe's drama Faust and exhibited at the Salon of 1850–51. Delacroix's inscription at the bottom of the sheet suggests that the figure on the right represents Eve reaching for the apple.

Manet made this drawing in preparation for an etching, reversed as part of the printing process. The central figure's contours have been incised for transfer to the copper plate. The use of red chalk — unusual by the mid-nineteenth century — and the time-honored subject of the female bather reveal Manet's engagement with predecessors such as Rembrandt, whose works he admired. This preliminary drawing shows him experimenting with the position and pose of the figure behind the bather. Traces of his initial ideas are visible at upper left.

In this pencil drawing of his companion and future wife, Cézanne explored the compositional possibilities of line and blank space. He laid in the figure with a combination of blocks of shading and blank areas. Daringly, the central section around the sitter's hands is left bare, although it is apparent that she is sewing; the viewers must therefore complete the picture in their mind's eye.

Van Gogh made this drawing of a tile factory at the edge of a plowed field during his sojourn in Arles in 1888. Using reed pens of varying thickness, he rendered the scene with a wide range of marks similar to those used in his paintings, from short flecks suggesting leaves or stubble in the foreground to thinner lines denoting the factory roof. A grid, drawn in pencil, is faintly visible underneath the ink and probably was used by the artist to establish the perspective.

This still life consists of a blue and white faience dish, filled with apples, placed at the center of the table. Five apples sit apart; a sixth seems to be about to join them. At left, a bottle with its neck truncated glows almost black; in front is a tall wine glass, painted blue to reflect the hues of the faience plate. Anchoring the composition in the background is the ornamental back of a wooden chair, which frames a view of the colored wallpaper in the background.