Drawing is at the beginning of any creation. The sketch is the first gesture, immediate and natural visual translation of the artist's ideas. The first drawings are also the first moments when the artist confronts the formal constraints that will influence the rest of his work. Seeking to achieve an ideal of narration in an image which, by nature, is fixed and two-dimensional, painters from the Renaissance to the Baroque strove to represent characters in eloquent proportions, attitudes and compositions. On paper, one sketch follows another. The artist explores the relationships between the figures; the constraint of the support that will come afterwards, depending on whether the future work is a small painting, a mural fresco or an altar painting; the first effects of light and shadow. They allow a motif to be quickly and repeatedly fixed and stimulate the imagination. A real repertory from which to draw for their paintings, the drawing finally reveals the necessary trial and error carried out by the painter before its final realization.