The Ashmolean Museum and the Albertina are collaborating on a two-part exhibition project that will examine anew the role and the significance of drawing in Raphael's career. The Ashmolean holds the greatest collection of Raphael drawings in the world, and the Albertina is the custodian of a major collection including some of the most beautiful and important of the artist's sketches. Taken together, the two collections provide extraordinary resources that, amplified by carefully-selected international loans, will allow us to transform our understanding of the art of Raphael. The Oxford exhibition is based on new research by Dr Catherine Whistler of the Ashmolean Museum and Dr Ben Thomas from the University of Kent, in collaboration with Dr Achim Gnann of the Albertina. It will take Raphael's art of drawing as its focus, with the concept of eloquence as its underlying structure. Oratory runs as a linking thread in Raphael's drawings, which stand out for the importance given to the study of gestures, facial expressions, and drapery.Moreover, Raphael treated the expressive figure of the orator - poet, philosopher, muse, apostle, saint or sibyl - in fascinating and significant ways throughout his life. This selection of drawings demonstrates how Raphael created a specific mode of visual invention and persuasive communication through drawing. He used drawing both as conceptual art (including brainstorming sheets) and as a practice based on attentive observation (such as drawing from the posed model). Yet Raphael's drawings also reveal how the process of drawing in itself, with its gestural rhythms and spontaneity, can be a form of thought, generating new ideas. The Oxford exhibition will present drawings that span Raphael's entire career, encompassing many of his major projects and exploring his visual language from inventive ideas to full compositions. The extraordinary range of drawings by Raphael in the Ashmolean and the Albertina, enhanced by appropriate loans, will enable this exhibition to cast new light on this familiar artist, transforming our understanding of Raphael's art.

An authoritative and comprehensive celebration of the life and work of one of the most prominent artists of the Venetian Renaissance Meticulously researched and luxuriously illustrated, this volume offers a comprehensive view of Vittore Carpaccio (c. 1460/1466–1525/1526), whose work has been admired for centuries for its fantastical settings enriched with contemporary incident and detail. Capturing the sanctity and splendor of Venice at the turn of the sixteenth century, when the city controlled a vast maritime empire, Carpaccio combined careful observation of the urban environment with a taste for the poetic in his beloved narrative cycles and altarpieces. Providing a new lens through which to understand Carpaccio’s work, a team of distinguished scholars explores various aspects of his art, including his achievement as a draftsman. In addition to emphasizing the artist’s innovative techniques and contributions to the development of Venetian Renaissance painting, this study includes an in-depth consideration of the fluctuations in the reception of Carpaccio’s work in the five hundred years since the artist’s death. Published in association with the National Gallery of Art, Washington Exhibition Schedule: National Gallery of Art, Washington (November 20, 2022–February 12, 2023) Palazzo Ducale, Venice (March 18–June 18, 2023)

The collection of drawings in the Ashmolean is one of the greatest treasures of the University of Oxford. It began spectacularly in 1843 when a group of drawings by Raphael and Michelangelo that had previously belonged to the portrait painter, Sir Thomas Lawrence, was bought by subscription. Lawrence's collection was one of the greatest collections of Old Master drawings ever assembled and its dispersal was much regretted. The Raphaels and Michelangelos, however, were the jewels in its crown. Following their arrival in Oxford, their fame attracted a number of gifts and bequests of drawings and watercolours by Durer, Claude Lorraine, Brueghel, J. M. W Turner, Henry Moore and many others. This is a story not only of Old Masters but of benefactors - Francis Douce, Chambers Hall, John Ruskin and their successors - whose different tastes account for the variety of the drawings in the modern Print Room. It is a story also of the curators who bought them. In particular, it is the story of Sir Karl Parker who arrived at the museum in 1934 and left a collection when he retired in 1962 that comprehensively covered the history of the art of drawing in Europe from its origins to the present day. The exhibition, Master Drawings: Michelangelo to Moore, celebrates this history. It includes many of the finest drawings in Oxford, representing the work of many different artists: Raphael and Michelangelo; Durer and the artists of the Northern Renaissance; Guercino and Rubens; Boucher and Tiepolo; German Romantics; J. M. W. Turner; Degas and Pissarro; the artists of the Ballets Russes; British twentieth-century artists from Gwen John to Hockney; and much else.