Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo drawings in Scotland for first time

Drawings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo and Titian will be among 45 Italian Renaissance drawings going on display in Scotland for the first time.

It comes as part of an exhibition featuring more than 80 drawings by 57 artists – the most wide-ranging show of its kind in Scotland in over half a century.

The oldest drawing in the exhibition, in which an unknown artist depicts a young man sitting and drawing with a sleeping dog by his side, is around 550 years old and will be exhibited in Scotland for the first time.

Following a successful run in London, Drawing the Italian Renaissance will open at The King’s Gallery at the Palace of Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh on 17 October.

The exhibition will explore how drawing was key to artistic practice in all fields during the Italian Renaissance and will reveal how dynamic the art of drawing became during this revolutionary artistic period.

‘The Royal Collection holds one of the finest collections of Italian Renaissance drawings, many of which were acquired during the reign of Charles II,’ Lauren Porter, curator of Drawing the Italian Renaissance in Edinburgh, said.

‘The drawings cannot be on permanent display because of their sensitivity to light, so this exhibition offers a rare and exciting opportunity for visitors to see a wide variety of works from this great collection, many of which are on display in Scotland for the first time.

© Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust

‘Drawings were fundamental to the art of the Renaissance, allowing artists to conceive and explore ideas, refine their designs and to experiment. 

‘Being able to view these drawings so closely will give visitors a unique insight into the minds of these great Italian Renaissance artists.’

Most drawings from the Italian Renaissance were created as preparation for projects in a variety of media, from paintings and prints to architecture, sculpture, metalwork, tapestry and costume. 

They were often discarded after they had served their purpose, and only a small proportion have survived to the present day. 

On display for the first time in Scotland will be an elaborately worked drawing in red and black chalk on red prepared paper of the curly-haired head of a young man by Leonardo da Vinci, and Federico Barocci’s drawing of The head of the Virgin in delicately blended colourful chalks. 

The idealised features of these two head studies contrast with the distorted and tormented facial expression of the grotesque head drawn by Michelangelo which will be displayed nearby. 

Many drawings in the exhibition are religious in their subject matter, including Raphael’s Christ’s Charge to Peter, which is one of his designs for a tapestry to be hung in the Sistine Chapel, and Michelangelo’s The Virgin and Child with the young Baptist, which may have been created as a preparatory study for a sculpture or perhaps as a private act of devotion.

Raphael, Christ’s Charge to Peter, c.1514. © Royal Collection Enterprises Limited 2025 | Royal Collection Trust.

On display for the first time in Scotland, following extensive conservation work before the London exhibition, will be a cartoon for an altarpiece of the Virgin and Child by the late-Renaissance artist Bernardino Campi. 

Cartoons, which were large sheets of paper used to transfer a final design onto a painting’s surface, were often executed on poor-quality paper and were never intended to be kept – let alone displayed.

It took almost 120 hours of conservation work by Royal Collection Trust conservators to prepare the work to be exhibited, which involved painstakingly removing the drawing from its deteriorating canvas backing and supporting sections where the paper had become as delicate as lace.

Drawing the Italian Renaissance will be at The King’s Gallery, Palace of Holyroodhouse, 17 October 2025 – 1 March 2026.

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