Sheets of sketches by Ambrogio Figino (no. 15) and Agostino Carracci (no. 16) show the artists getting down on paper their thoughts for compositions and figures in a whirlwind of inspiration. In the twentieth century Feliks Topolski (no. 74) used rapidly scribbled felt-tip pen to capture the atmosphere of ceremonial events.

Studies by Gianlorenzo Bernini for a sculpture (no. 31) and by Nicolas Poussin for a painting (no. 28) are more careful, as the artists planned the details of larger works of art. And composition drawings could be works of art in their own right, few more accomplished than Castiglione’s great Nativity (no. 30).