Collection: Drawings

 

Metalpoint drawings

Metalpoint, descendant of the stylus of classical times and ancestor of the modern pencil, a small, sharpened metal rod used for drawing precise compositions on paper or parchment. The metal could be lead, silver, copper, or gold, and Platinum but silverpoint was the most common.
Its stroke adhering unerasably. The metalpoint was of great value in producing the hard, clearly defined line required, for instance, by miniaturists; modelling, emphases, and light phenomena, however, had to be rendered either by means of repetitions, dense hatching, or blanks or else supplemented by other mediums.