A dazzling collection of old master drawings, originally assembled by the Ashmolean museum in Oxford to compensate for some distinctly second rate paintings, is going on display to celebrate the 330th birthday of one of the oldest public museums in the world.
The exhibition includes a wall of drawings by Michelangelo, a 15th century sketch by Durer, which is the oldest known example of an artist recording his travels in watercolour, and two tiny gems by Leonardo da Vinci.
The star is a staggering drawing of the Transfiguration, made within weeks, if not days of the death of Raphael, which the museum director, Christopher Brown, and the chief curator, Jon Whiteley, called "the greatest old master drawing in the world". The artist made subtle changes to his designs for the faces of a beautiful young and an elderly bearded apostle, but the changes were never made in the painting in the Vatican, because Raphael died of fever – and according to the gossipy art historian Vasari, of being worn out from too much sex – at the age of 37. The painting was finished by his pupils.
The drawings, including works by Titian, Rembrandt, Rubens, Turner, Ingres, Degas, right up to a 1973 drawing by David Hockney and a 1993 drawing by Antony Gormley, normally live in the quiet darkness of the print room where, although anyone can ask to see them, they are among the museum's least visited treasures. The exhibition was described as a once in a lifetime chance to see them all on the walls together, until mid August.
Whiteley said that when the Ashmolean moved into its present handsome building in 1846, the Bodleian library's painting collection was transferred into grand new galleries – and a problem instantly became apparent: "We had a spectacular building, and objects barely worthy of exhibiting".
The comparison with the magnificent painting collection of Oxford's great rival, Cambridge's Fitzwilliam, was particularly mortifying. The Ashmolean couldn't afford to buy comparable paintings – though it now has a fine collection – and so bought fabulous but comparatively cheap drawings, including what became among the greatest Michelangelo and Raphael drawing collections in the world.
The 71 on display are a fraction of the 27,000-strong and still growing collection, but are described by Brown as "a star-studded line up".
There's as much emotion and tragedy in the exhibition as in a Hollywood blockbuster: a little sketch by Rembrandt, in a few flicks of brown ink, is his beloved wife, Saskia, asleep in bed – or more probably, given the date, dying of plague.
It includes a record of a surprising friendship, between the rumbustious Edwardian artist who lived long into the 20th century, Augustus John, and T E Lawrence, Lawrence of Arabia, whose career as an archaeologist and Arabist was shaped by visits to the Ashmolean. They met at the Paris peace conference at the end of the first world war, and became firm if improbable friends. John drew Lawrence in uniform in 1935, when Lawrence had enlisted in the Royal Air Force under the assumed name John Hume Ross. Lawrence loved the drawing so much – "striking, but not John at his best", Whiteley judged sternly – that he announced it would be the frontispiece of his new book. It never happened: within a few weeks Lawrence was dead in a motorbike crash, still argued over as accident or suicide.
Master Drawings, Ashmolean Oxford, until 18 August.