Renaissance Pen and Ink Drawings

Renaissance Pen and Ink Drawings
During the Renaissance era, stylus, metalpoint and pen with ink were considered as fine line media as opposed to the broad line of charcoal and chalks. The precise effect of pen and ink is exemplified by the virtuoso draughtsman Leonardo Da Vinci in his work Five Grotesque Heads (Royal Library, windsor Castle).
According to the Libro dell'Arte, the practical manual written by the early Renaissance master Cennino Cennini (c.1370-1440), apprentice artists (garzone) progressed to drawing with pen and ink on paper after a year of practising on tablets with stylus, leadpoint or metalpoint. Ink was permanent once applied to paper so errors could not be erased, except by careful scraping.
The most common ink in High Renaissance Italy was made from iron gall. It's principal components, gall nuts, were rich in resin and tannic acid. When soaked in water or wine, strained, and then mixed with iron sulphates and gum arabic, the result was a liquid black ink ideal for drawing. However, over time, iron gall ink fades so that although the ink in most Renaissance drawings is now brown it would originally have been much blacker.
Ink was generally applied to paper with a quill pen. The resulting line could be anything from very thin to very broad. This line spectrum is illustrated by comparing drawings by the brothers Gentile Bellini and Giovanni Bellini. Gentile's Turkish Man (c.1479) and Turkish Woman (c.1480) were drawn with incredibly fine strokes with a thin pen. By contrast, Giovanni's Pieta (c.1480) was executed with broader strokes of a thicker pen. For more about sketching in Venice, see: Venetian Drawing (c.1500-1600). Leonardo Di Vinci's Virgin and Child with a Cat (c.1470s), Madonna with Many Animals by Albrecht Durer (1503) and The Sacrifice of Isaac by Albrecht Altdorfer reveal other effects achievable with pen and ink.
Ink remained popular throughout the Renaissance for a wide variety of drawings from rapid sketches to detailed compositions. Wash and highlighting provided additional effects. However, despite the fluid nature of ink, the need to dip the quill repeatedly made it unsuitable for large scale drawings. These were normally drawn in chalk or charcoal, not ink. For more examples, see: Best Drawings of the Renaissance (c.1400-1550).
Diluted ink could be applied by brush in order to shade an ink drawing. This was often done with the same iron gall ink that was used in pens, but it could also be done with Bistre, a material obtained by soaking wood soot in water. The result was a brown wash that was not viscous enough for use with a pen but ideal for use with a brush. The application of wash to a pen drawing enhanced the three-D effect of the image. Examples include Benozzo Gozzoli's Studies of a Hand, Three Angels and Christ (1447); The Triumph of St Thomas Aquinas (c.1487) by Filippino Lippi, and Shallow Vessel (1524-46) by Giulio Romano.
Artists occasionally made brush drawings in ink or bistre without a pen; examples include Head Of A Middle-Aged Man (c.1507) by Vittore Carpaccio and Raphael's Drapery Study For Christ in the Disputa (1508). Pen and ink was also used in combination with other media, an example being St Hubert by Jacopo Bellini, a pen and ink drawing over chalk and leadpoint.