According to Giorgio Vasari, when Michelangelo encountered the work of Titian he remarked that although his colouring was admirable, his work lacked ‘disegno’. The idea quickly developed that although Venetian painting imitated nature admirably, it lacked the intellectual rigour of Florentine art. This lecture outlines the origins of the disegno v colorito myth by considering drawings and paintings produced in Florence and Venice during the Renaissance by artists such as Domenico Ghirlandaio, Vittore Carpaccio, Titian and Michelangelo, in order to assess the development of two disparate artistic traditions and the changing role of drawings in artistic production during the period.
Caroline Brooke is Associate Lecturer at Birkbeck School of Art History. She is currently completing a PhD on Venetian painting. She lectures regularly at the National Gallery, Courtauld Institute, Carlton Club and the Academia Italiana. Her publications include articles for the Burlington Magazine, Master Drawings and book reviews for the Art Newspaper and Art Quarterly. She is author of the Universal Leonardo project website, and was script advisor for the Channel 4 documentary, Medici: Godfathers of the Renaissance (2003/4).