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| Domenico Ghirlandaio Head of an Old Man ca. 1490 drawing Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Pisanello Allegory of Luxuria ca. 1426 drawing Albertina, Vienna |
"Eyes, nose, mouth, ears and hands are primarily means of representing distinct human features, but they are also the fictitious organs by means of which figures are represented interacting. One can observe another convergence between the rudiments of early modern figural representation and the medieval and Renaissance iconography of the five senses in which these five organs symbolize each sense."
"After the organs comes the body. Very much like the Christ of late medieval meditation literature, the human figure that Renaissance painters learned to imagine and depict is a sensitive animate entity made of imaginary bones, muscles and flesh. The earliest written accounts of this practice go back to the Della Pittura of the humanist Leon Battista Alberti (1436), the first modern theoretical text on painting. Here Alberti describes how to imagine the human figure, starting from the skeleton, gradually adding layers of muscles, skin and clothes. . . . For apprentices it is a means towards acquiring a fluent figural vocabulary. For this purpose, to quote Vasari, 'the best thing is to draw men and women from the nude and thus fix in the memory by constant exercise, the muscles of the torso, back, legs, arms and knees, and the bones underneath. Then one may be sure that through much study attitudes in any position can be drawn by help of the imagination without one's having the living forms in view.'"
– from The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art by François Quiviger (Reaktion Books, 2010)
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| attributed to Alessandro Allori Three Anatomical Studies of the Foot ca. 1550-1600 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Filippino Lippi Youth and Apostle 1480-82 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Dresden |
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| Pisanello Two male figure-studies and St Peter ca. 1430-35 drawing on vellum Kupferstichkabinett,Berlin |
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| Filippino Lippi Kneeling Magdalene and standing Christ ca. 1499 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Michelangelo Three standing men in wide cloaks ca. 1492-96 drawing Albertina, Vienna |
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| Antonio del Pollaiuolo Study for equestrian monument to Francesco Sforza ca. 1480-85 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Donato Bramante St Christopher with Christ Child ca. 1490 drawing Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| Raphael Prophets Hosea and Jonah with Angel ca. 1510 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Kneeling Angel (pricked for transfer to wall) ca. 1510-1525 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Leonardo da Vinci Head of the Madonna ca. 1510-15 drawing Royal Collection, Windsor |
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| Fra Bartolomeo Drapery study of kneeling woman before 1517 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
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| Jacopo Pontormo Nude figures gazing into a mirror ca. 1515-20 drawing Städelsches Kunstinstitut, Frankfurt |
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| Giovanni Antonio Sogliani St John the Baptist ca. 1515-20 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin |
"The demands of late medieval religion, centered as it was on a suffering human god, undoubtedly inspired this emphasis on the human figure in art, but the impact spilled beyond the field of religion. Renaissance artists and their public increasingly considered the human figure the principal element of art and consequently the focal point for display and appreciation of artistic skill, regardless of the subject illustrated. Of this we find economic evidence in the fact that artists were often remunerated according to the number of figures a picture contained."
– from The Sensory World of Italian Renaissance Art by François Quiviger (Reaktion Books, 2010)
". . . we must record the uncompromising rigidity with which Guercino enforced his own practice of charging a certain sum for every figure painted: 'As my ordinary price for each figure is 125 ducats,' he wrote to one of his most enthusiastic patrons, 'and as Your Excellency has restricted Yourself to 80 ducats, you will have just a bit more than half of one figure.'"
– from Patrons and Painters by Francis Haskell (Yale University Press, 1980)