Many of the most beautiful Renaissance portraits, botanical illustrations and landscape paintings are watercolours. Spanning the period 1450-1640, this book considers these diverse artworks together for the first time, it brings together 150 paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Albrecht Dürer, Hans Holbein, Nicholas Hilliard and Anthony Van Dyck, as well as exquisite works by less well-known figures such as Giulio Clovio, Joris Hoefnagel, Jacopo Ligozzi and Jacques le Moyne. It highlights the intellectual breadth and artistic quality of the Renaissance watercolour, a major art form which reached as far afield as the New World and the court of the Mughal emperor.