This landmark publication celebrates one of the most exciting periods in European art. It brings together 93 paintings and 85 drawings from the Royal Collection and accompanies an exhibition of international importance.

The earliest paintings in the book date from the beginning of the sixteenth century and include Giovanni Bellini’s Portrait of a Young Man, Lorenzo Costa’s Portrait of a Lady with a Lapdog, and the Portrait of a Man, which has previously been attributed to Raphael. From the end of the seventeenth century is the series of twelve paintings on copper by Luca Giordano, illustrating the story of Cupid and Psyche. In between are works by Andrea del Sarto, Bronzino, Caravaggio, Correggio, Titian, Giulio Romano, Jacopa Bassano, Lorenzo Lotto, Palma Vecchio, Veronese, Parmigianino, Tintoretto, Annibale Carracci, Domenichino, Domenico Fetti, Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi, Guido Reni, and Guercino; ranging in scale from small devotional paintings to large altarpieces, and from religious narratives to mythological subjects and portraiture.

The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries also saw some of the richest and most dynamic developments in Italian drawing, and this book includes some of the finest drawings by many of the greatest artists of the period – from the achievements of the High Renaissance (including works by Leonardo, Raphael, Michelangelo, Andrea del Sarto and Parmigianino), through the later Renaissance in northern Italy (Barocci, Tintoretto, the Carracci), to the Baroque in Rome (Domenichino, Bernini, Maratti), Bologna (Reni, Guercino) and beyond. Several of the drawings are published under new attributions, and all the entries reflect recent developments in this field.

Scholarly thinking on a number of the paintings is also reassessed, in some cases for the first time since John Shearman’s The Early Italian Paintings in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (1983) and Michael Levey’s The Later Italian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen (2nd edn 1991). Fresh insights are drawn from the latest research, and from recent cleaning and conservation, which has transformed critical opinion on a number of the paintings, in particular The Calling of Saints Peter and Andrew, a painting that is now firmly attributed to Caravaggio himself, rather than a follower. There are also further fascinating works by artists rarely encountered in British collections, such as Polidoro da Caravaggio, Francesco Salviati, Federico Zuccaro, Cristofano Allori and Guido Cagnacci.

Lucy Whitaker is Assistant Surveyor of The Queen’s Pictures. She has lectured and written widely on the paintings in the Royal Collection.

Martin Clayton is Deputy Curator of the Print Room at Windsor Castle, and is well known as an authority on Italian drawings.