Now, for the first time, an artist could plan a complex composition in detail before he even picked up his brush. Perugino, for example, used pen and ink in his compositional study for his painting of the Adoration of the Magi, both because the medium allowed his hand to move over the page faster than it could using chalk, and because he wasn’t worried about achieving a high degree of finish. You can almost feel his pen flying over the page as he sketches in dozens of tiny figures and animals, a fantastic palace and a distant landscape. Only on close examination (or by reading the label) do you realise that this tour de force isn’t quite as spontaneous as you first imagined – because the artist’s hand was guided by faint under-drawing in lead pencil.