A game for two

Some art can be made in solitude, straight out of the artist’s head. But portraiture is a game for two. That’s the lesson of The Encounter: Drawings from Leonardo to Rembrandt, a marvellous little exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery. It is essentially a medley of Old Master works on papers from various British collections — which might sound a little on the quiet side. But that would be the wrong conclusion: on the contrary it poses intriguing questions and is full of visual pleasures.

‘Head of an Elderly Man
Wearing a Cap, probably Mino da Fiesole’ (c.1480–3) by Filippino Lippi

Notable in the latter category is a long row of Holbein’s studies of the early Tudor court and a striking array of works by Annibale Carracci and his school. But there is much else to pore over: these are often intimate works, which take you physically close to the marks of the artist’s hand.