The Courtauld Institute has one of the most important collections of drawings in Britain. A set that is rarely shown and can now be seen in its minimal essence with this exhibition organized in collaboration with the Frick Collection of New York. The exhibition opens with a group of fifteenth-century works – like an exquisite and rare Flemish picture of a saint from 1475-1485 -, in the precise point in the History of Art where design assumes new significance in the artistic process. For Renaissance artists, the disegno becomes the fundamental basis of the arts as an expression not only manual dexterity but intellectual.

The nature of the design reaches its full expression in geniuses like Leonardo and Michelangelo, whose masterful work The Dream (circa 1533), present in this exhibition, is a clear demonstration of drawing as an independent work of art. Despite the prominent role school, many of these works transcend the artist's sketchbook and workshop to become objects of aesthetic pleasure and collecting per se. The magnificent portrait by Peter Paul Rubens of his own wife, the young and beautiful Helena Fourment, is a good example. But the Courtauld collection is much more. It reaches from the fourteenth century to the twentieth - Goya, Ingres, Turner, Reynolds ... - and has an excellent selection of Impressionist and Post-Impressionist watercolors.

The English collection is the result of a series of remarkable contributions of great collectors. After Samuel Courtauld, the legacy of Sir Robert Witt – with some 3,000 drawings in 1952 - and Count Antoine Seilern in 1978, conferred a whole new dimension. From Mantegna to Matisse: Master Drawings from the Courtauld Gallery is organized under the auspices of the IMAF Center and the Frick Collection, and can be seen until September 9. Alejandro Martínez

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