Unsurprisingly for an artist whose career spanned seven decades, hundreds of paintings by Titian survive. Yet the same cannot be said for his drawings. On the contrary, fewer than forty known sheets have a reasonable claim to being by Titian – a tiny number compared to the tallies for Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael – and even then the authorship of some of these works is fiercely contested. This startling discrepancy, combined with dismissive comments by Vasari about Titian’s indifference to drawing, have led some to assume that the latter simply did not draw regularly. 

Few though they are, however,  the varied, arresting sheets that do survive leave little doubt that the opposite is true, and that Titian was a prolific, habitual draughtsman. What, then, did drawing mean to Titian, and what became of his drawings? Join Grant Lewis as he sheds light on Titian’s artistic personality through his drawings and explores how the circumstances of the master’s death probably denied posterity a large, important corpus of drawings.

This will be an informal lecture over a drink, where questions and exchange with Grant are warmly encouraged. A ‘pay bar’ [card only] will be open before and after the lecture for drinks and conversation.