Holbein to Hockney: Drawings from the Royal Collection
Until March 6; Queen’s Gallery, Edinburgh

In 2002, a Michelangelo drawing was unearthed in Yorkshire, and Sir Timothy Clifford was desperate to bag it for the National Gallery of Scotland. Scotland didn’t have any Michelangelos of its own, he argued. Unfortunately, the Queen was concurrently building a gallery along the road, where she could show off her own Michelangelo at any time. Timothy’s plan was foiled.

Two and a half years later, the Queen’s Michelangelo has arrived. It’s a chalk drawing of The Risen Christ, his magnificent six-pack gleaming with inner strength. The shading is achieved with stipple marks so tiny that it’s hard to believe a human being made them. Christ’s hands fly about in multiple positions, as the artist tries out the best balance for the composition. Although most drawings in Michelangelo’s time were meant only as preparatory work, this one was probably a finished work of art for one of the artist’s closest friends. Lucky friend.

The Risen Christ is only one drawing among 75 on display at the Queen’s Gallery. The gallery’s very first show, of Leonardo drawings, showed off the space to best effect, and this show serves to confirm that the low, blue fabric walls are best suited to the display of drawings rather than paintings.

The wonderful thing about drawings is their directness; the artist’s unfettered spontaneity in making personal sketches can bring you right into their world. Bernini was the key artist of the Italian Baroque, his public sculptures in demand all over Rome. It’s grand to see the finished fountains, but there’s something special about seeing their creative birth. Bernini’s rapidly chalked design for a fountain is a dynamic mass of ideas, the figures worked and reworked in search of a solution.

Even when drawings are highly polished, they can exude a sense of freshness. Hans Holbein’s portrait study of Sir Thomas More was made around 1527, in preparation for the famous painting in the Frick Collection. The delicate chalk drawing is immaculately preserved (as indeed are all the drawings on show), and the outline is pricked with a series of tiny holes, by which method Holbein would have transferred the drawing to a panel. Not only do you feel the presence of the artist, but also of the man who would eight years later lose his head for disobeying Henry VIII.

Another advantage peculiar to drawings is their tendency to reveal the personal preoccupations of artists. Leonardo da Vinci is a prime example. His sheet of studies of the anatomy of the shoulder is, by itself, worth a visit to the exhibition. Much stranger, and also a must-see, is his late drawing, A Deluge. Leonardo was obsessed with the idea of a cataclysmic storm and how to represent it, and though you might imagine something Turneresque, his drawing has more in common with Russian Cubo-Futurism of the early 20th century. Swirls of geometric blocks spiral around curling waves of water, the battered horizon just visible below.

Although it’s full of such gems, taken in its entirety the show is a little odd. It may range from Holbein to Hockney but there are huge gaps in between. That’s because it’s entirely dependent on the historical tastes and diplomatic opportunities of the Royal Family since Henry VIII. Italian artists of the High Renaissance and Baroque periods are abundant, as indeed are classicising drawings from all periods. But the more down-to-earth drawings of Rembrandt and his Dutch compatriots are entirely absent; indeed each Northern European drawing comes as a surprise after a phalange of Italianate works.

The 19th century turned the Royal Collection into a stolid souvenir album, tracing the tours of Victoria and Albert in a succession of bland, commissioned watercolours. As for the 20th century, it barely features. No Pablo Picasso, no Andy Warhol, not even any Elizabeth Blackadder. David Hockney slips through the net with his unashamedly old-fashioned drawing of Lord Rothschild, whose understated simplicity makes it a perfect complement to Hans Holbein’s elegantly spartan portrait of Cicely Heron.

It’s a fact of life that exhibitions drawn from permanent collections are unlikely to be complete, but curators tend to address this by choosing their subject carefully. The Royal Collection might have been better equipped to mount a show of Baroque drawings, or one dedicated to the nude.

The benefit of spreading the show across all areas of the collection is that you quickly come to appreciate the different styles and techniques of different times and places. Passarotti’s figure drawing, with its bold, flamboyant lines, is a world away from the tight control of the Michelangelo nearby, although his style derives from the earlier artist’s.

Even more distorted is Jan Muller’s Pluto, whose lines are feathery, and whose face is a grotesque caricature. Muller was born in Amsterdam, but you’re not told that. None of the captions detail the country of origin, and it’s hugely irritating to recognise the stylistic differences in drawings without making the associated geographical connections.

There is one text panel in the show, which describes the traditional materials of metalpoint, chalk and paper. It finishes with the surprising sentiment that “In the twentieth century many new drawing media were invented, including ballpoint pen, felt-tip pen, and wax crayon, but artists have exploited these relatively little.” The curator might enjoy a trip to Glasgow where such materials are enjoying an explosion of popularity among artists. Whether he or his bosses would wish to add them to this genteel collection is another matter.

Catrìona Black, Sunday Herald 05.12.04