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| Bartolomeo Passarotti (Bologna) Two women climbing stairs ca. 1583 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Baccio Bandinelli (Florence) Allegory ca. 1550 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Francesco Salviati (Florence) Roman soldier ca. 1545-50 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Not long afterwards the elder Cardinal Salviati having requested Benvenuto della Volpaia, a master of clock-making, who was in Rome at that time, to find for him a young painter who might live with him and paint some pictures for his delight, Benvenuto proposed to him Francesco, who was his friend, and whom he knew to be the most competent of all the young painters of his acquaintance; which he did all the more willingly because the Cardinal had promised that he would give the young man every facility and all assistance to enable him to study. The Cardinal, then, liking the young Francesco's qualities, said to Benvenuto that he should send for him, and gave him money for that purpose. And so, when Francesco had arrived in Rome, the Cardinal, being pleased with his method of working, his ways, and his manners, ordained that he should have rooms in the Borgo Vecchio, and four crowns a month, with a place at the table of his gentlemen."
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| Luca Cambiaso (Genoa) Conversion of Saul ca. 1570 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Luca Cambiaso (Genoa) Lamentation ca. 1545-50 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Tobias Verhaecht (Flanders/Rome) Sant'Angelo Bridge with Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome ca. 1590 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Allegorical figure of Fame seated on a Globe ca. 1575 drawing Prado, Madrid |
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| Paris Bordone (Venice) Study of supplicant male figure ca. 1525-35 drawing Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
"And this much it must suffice to have said of Paris, who, being seventy-five years of age, lives quietly at home with his comforts, and works for pleasure at the request of certain Princes and others his friends, avoiding rivalries and certain vain ambitions, lest he should suffer some hurt and have his supreme tranquility and peace disturbed by those who walk not, as he says, in truth, but by dubious ways, malignantly and without charity; whereas he is accustomed to live simply and by a certain natural goodness, and knows nothing of subtleties or astuteness in his life. He has executed recently a most beautiful picture for the Duchess of Savoy, of a Venus and Cupid that are sleeping, guarded by a servant; all executed so well, that it is not possible to praise them enough."
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| Hans Vredeman de Vries (Netherlands) Ornamental composition with the Leap of Marcus Curtius 1565 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Parmigianino (Parma) Zeus the Thunderer 1530s drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
"Francesco [Mazzuoli, called Parmigianino] delighted to play the lute, and had a hand and a genius so well suited to it that he was no less excellent in this than in painting. It is certain that if he had not worked by caprice, and had laid aside the follies of the alchemists, he would have been without a doubt one of the rarest and most excellent painters of our age. I do not deny that working at moments of fever-heat, and when one feels inclined, may be the best plan. But I do blame a man for working little or not at all, and for wasting all his time over cogitations, seeing that the wish to arrive by trickery at a goal to which one cannot attain, often brings it about that one loses what one knows in seeking after that which it is not given to us to know. If Francesco, who had from nature a spirit of great vivacity, with a beautiful and graceful manner, had persisted in working every day, little by little he would have made such proficience in art, that, even as he gave a beautiful, gracious, and most charming expression to his heads, so he would have surpassed his own self and the others in the solidity and perfect excellence of his drawing."
– quoted passages are from the 1568 edition of Giorgio Vasari's Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects, translated by Gaston du C. de Vere and published in English in 1912
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| Lodewijk Toeput, called Il Pozzoserrato (Flanders/Venice) Hercules and the ox driver 1598 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Lodewijk Toeput, called Il Pozzoserrato (Flanders/Venice) Italian City 1580s drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean Perreal (France) Portrait of a man before 1530 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |
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| Jean Perreal (France) Portrait of François I before 1530 drawing Hermitage, Saint Petersburg |