Renaissance Drawings at the British Museum

The British Museum's exhibition of Renaissance Drawings has been on for ages and finishes this weekend so I finally got my act together and went to see it this week. At £12 a ticket it could be considered expensive for what are, after all, some small faded drawings. But what fabulous drawings they are. And all the better when you realise that the artists who drew them were doing something new and exciting. They were drawing in ways that had never been done before. Even paper itself was a new technology at the time, which I guess might explain the small size of the drawings as the paper was probably an expensive luxury. Of course some of the drawings were faded or damaged, but even so looked pretty good for their age. The opportunity to inspect these pictures so closely was wonderful, and it is impossible to describe the beauty of some of these works by Raphael, Botticelli, Leonardo, Michelangelo and Titian. They are simply breathtaking!

The British Museum has more great things lined up this year including an exhibition based around the Egyptian Book of the Dead. It doesn't start until November so there is time to save up another £12 and it looks like it will be well worth a visit. I suppose they have to charge that kind of money to keep the rest of the museum open. It's only a matter of time before the Tories