Sketches of Virgin and Child
1574
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
1574
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
You see five quick pencil sketches of a mother holding a wriggling baby on one sheet of blue-gray paper. Campi was testing poses—how the light would fall on the child’s kicking legs or the mother’s bent neck. The paper itself is special: Venetian artists dyed it with indigo so they could practice shading before touching the final canvas. To see how other 16th-century Italians used the same blue paper, look up sfumato.
![Studies of Figures [verso]](https://pub-3a17a9933ad74fb28aa30fa758592f23.r2.dev/artworks/2ae0ee2ea775e42c/thumb.webp)
