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.