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| Benozzo Gozzoli Head of a Youth ca. 1447-49 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| follower of Benozzo Gozzoli Young Man drawing and a Sleeping Dog ca. 1460-80 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| attributed to Fra Angelico Bust of a Cleric ca. 1450 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
"Metalpoint is closely related to stylus. It was held and used in the same way, but the slender point was made of a softer metal that left a visible mark on a prepared page. Silver, lead, copper and even gold could be used, but silver was the most popular choice. The preparation of the paper was key to the visibility of the line. The blank page was brushed with layers of a liquid mixture of finely ground chalk, bone gesso or lead white tinted with pigment and bound with gelatine and hide glue. Cennini recommended the use of poultry bones found under the dining table, burned until they were white and ground to a powder. In his time the pigment added to the preparation was generally green terra verde. Later, a variety of pigments became popular, including indigo, sinopia, yellow ochre and cinnabar. . . . Deposits from the soft metal point adhered to the slightly rough surface of the preparation and left a thin line that immediately oxidized and darkened. . . . Metalpoint was a rigid medium. Variation of pressure on the stylus did not increase or decrease the intensity or breadth of the line. The resulting fine line was inappropriate for loose sketches. Like tempera paint, an equally inflexible medium, metalpoint must be applied in thin strokes that cannot be blended. . . . Metalpoint cannot be erased from the page, so the artist's first marks as he set down his drawing are often still visible. . . . Because of metalpoint's limitations it was more popular with artists who painted in fresco and tempera than those who worked in oil paint. By the sixteenth century it was almost obsolete."
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| Giovanni Bellini Head of an Old Bearded Man ca. 1460-70 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Giovanni Santi Woman standing before Rocks ca. 1480 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Domenico Ghirlandaio Head of an Old Woman ca. 1485-90 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Filippino Lippi Head of a Man ca. 1496 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Filippino Lippi Virgin and Child with Angels ca. 1490-1504 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Man starting back in Terror ca. 1490-1500 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Anonymous Italian Artist Pope crowning an Emperor 16th century drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Baldassare Peruzzi Design for an Organ Case ca. 1520 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
"During the Renaissance ink was generally applied to paper with a quill pen. Cennini explained how to cut a goose feather quill to make it broad or fine according to its intended use. Quills were by nature flexible and sensitive to increased or decreased pressure by the hand as the quill was drawn across the paper. The resulting line could be thin and meticulous or broad and sweeping. . . . The adaptability of pen and ink is the opposite of the inflexibility of metalpoint. Ink remained popular throughout the Renaissance for a wide variety of drawings, from rapid sketches to detailed compositions. Its range of expression was even greater with the addition of wash and highlighting. In order to create areas of shadow, artists made repeated strokes of parallel or crossed lines to darken an area of a drawing. This hatching or cross-hatching was not unique to ink, but was a particularly effective way of producing shadow when using pen. . . . Despite the fluid nature of ink, the need to dip the quill repeatedly into it to continue a line made it unsuitable for large-scale drawings such as cartoons. These were normally drawn in chalk or charcoal, not ink."
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| Domenico Campagnola Nude Woman in a Landscape ca. 1520 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Michelangelo Anselmi Cupid throwing flowers at a Nymph ca. 1525-30 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Amico Aspertini Bearded Man carrying Two Rams (fragment of tapestry cartoon) ca. 1530 drawing Royal Collection, Great Britain |
– quoted passages from Master Drawings of the Italian Renaissance by Claire Van Cleave (Harvard University Press, 2007)