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Within the section on Drawing Manuals, the most interesting example
is a copy of The Principles for studying the most noble and royal Art of Painting by José García Hidalgo.
José García Hidalgo was a painter and printmaker who worked in Madrid at the end of the 17th and beginning of the 18th centuries.
This manual is probably his most interesting work and is almost legendary
as so few copies survive and all differ from each other. The Museo del Prado has three copies that were formerly in the libraries
of José María Cervelló and José de Madrazo. The one on display was formerly in the Madrazo library.
Drawing manuals all contain a series of prints that were used by apprentice painters to learn to draw and to acquire the rudiments of their art.
Their illustrations showed separated elements of the human body – eyes, noses, mouths, ears – in different positions and of different types
so that painters learned to create images using all these elements in any context.
In addition, García Hidalgo’s manual includes various particularly interesting prints such as this one of a Life Drawing Academy,
which is the only image of apprentice artists to have survived from 17th-century Spain.