The 13 Greatest Drawings in Art History

Chalk, silverpoint and ink on paper, which is the medium artists reach for when nobody is watching. Several of them did their best work there.

1

Vitruvian Man

Leonardo's pen study of a man inscribed in a circle and a square, held in Venice and rarely shown.

2

The Burlington House Cartoon

Leonardo's full-scale charcoal cartoon of the Virgin, Child, St Anne and the infant Baptist.

3

Studies of the Foetus in the Womb

Leonardo's red-chalk anatomical sheet, drawn from dissection around 1511.

4

Praying Hands

Dürer's brush-and-ink study on blue paper, a preparatory sheet that outlived its altarpiece.

5

Young Hare

Dürer's 1502 watercolour and bodycolour hare, painted hair by hair.

6

Studies for the Libyan Sibyl

Michelangelo's red-chalk sheet worked up for the Sistine Chapel ceiling.

7

Head of a Bear

Leonardo's tiny silverpoint bear's head, sold in 2021 for a record drawing price.

8

The Elephant

Rembrandt's black-chalk study of Hansken, a performing elephant he saw in Amsterdam.

9

Guernica sketches

Picasso's rapid preparatory sheets that show the mural assembling itself in days.

10

The Great Wave preparatory print

Hokusai's design for the wave off Kanagawa, the most reproduced image from Japan.

11

The Anatomy Studies

Vesalius's Fabrica plates of 1543, drawn in Titian's circle and still legible as anatomy.

12

Ideal City perspective study

The Renaissance perspective panel that taught European art how to build depth.

13

Self-Portrait in charcoal

Käthe Kollwitz's late charcoal self-portraits, drawing reduced to its bare force.