Any Excuse for a Venetian Drawing

And the excuse is that a drawing by Raphael has sold for a very high price. That kind of money is meaningless of course, but if it's going to be paid for anything, then better a Raphael drawing than, say, an Andy Warhol screen print. Raphael's drawings are among the greatest ever drawn, and, being less finished, they seem to tell us more than the paintings, under their reflective sheen of ultraperfection. It is good, then, that the worth of the drawings should be recognised in the market. An artist whose drawings were, in his lifetime, valued as highly as his paintings was the great (and underrated) Venetian, G.B. Piazzetta, who specialised in highly finished, large-scale drawings, whose delicacy of touch and tonality is quite wonderful. That's one of his above. Enjoy... And from that brief encounter with art and beauty I return to the eye of the workstorm.