Recto and verso of a study sheet

For complex reasons, from the fifteenth century much more of the painters’ preparatory thought about shadow has been in the form of drawing. But graphic media are no more neutral than conceptual media, and drawing in general is a tendentious vehicle for thought about appearance. Because it dramatises the case, the episode to scrutinise here is a proliferation in the years 1465–85 of a type of drawing of single figures in two tones on paper of intermediate tone, but much of what will be said of …