Raphael and Drawing

With the eloquence of drawing in mind – its immediacy as well as its expressiveness – this lecture will explore Raphael’s approach to drawing and his sense of its inventive and rhetorical possibilities.  Using drawing as a mode of reflection and exploration, Raphael shaped a powerful visual language of persuasive communication. Dr Catherine Whistler is Keeper of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum, and curator of Italian, French and Spanish art.  She collaborated with the Uffizi on the exhibition, Titian to Canaletto: Drawing in Venice, 2015-16, while she explored its themes in depth in her book, Venice and Drawing 1500-1800: Theory, Practice and Collecting (Yale University Press, 2016).  Her current research project with Dr Ben Thomas on Raphael and the Eloquence of Drawing is supported by the Leverhulme Trust.  A major exhibition, Raphael: The Drawings, will be held at the Ashmolean, 1 Jun – 3 Sept 2017.