Sketches of Virgin and Child

About this artwork

This sheet of sketches was drawn from imagination in preparation for a painting. Here, the artist explored five different ways to capture the motion of a restless child enfolded in its mother’s embrace. Blue-gray papers like this were made from indigo-dyed rags and typically used for drawings by 16th-century Venetian artists such as Giulio Campi to study the painterly effects of light and shade.