Fra Angelico To Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings

Fra Angelico to Leonardo: Italian Renaissance Drawings is a collaboration between the Uffizi and the British Museum featuring 100 exquisite drawings by Italian artists during the critical period of the Renaissance, from 1400 to 1510. This major exhibition brings together the finest group of Italian Renaissance drawings to be seen in this country for over seventy years, including sketches so fragile that they are rarely on public view. In 15th-century Italy there was a fundamental shift in style and artistic thinking in the use of preparatory drawings and this display, in the museum's magnificent Round Reading Room, shows the increasing importance of drawing during this period. Featuring works by old masters Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Angelico, Michelangelo, and Titian, and using infrared technology and other conservation techniques, this "once in a lifetime" exhibition (The Guardian) provides fresh insights into how drawing allowed painters to experiment and explore with a freedom not always reflected in their finished works. At the same time, you can see the museum's 'Kingdom Of Ife: Sculptures From West Africa' exhibition (from 4th March to 6th June), which shows comparable artistic developments within a cosmopolitan city state in what is now Nigeria during the 12th to the 15th centuries.