Through the bequest by Richard Jung in 1986, 226 Italian drawings were acquired, among them works by Luca Signorelli and Annibale Carracci. Moreover, since 1976, the Department of Prints, Drawings and Photographs has been in possession of the Schloss Fachsenfeld Collection, containing drawings primarily of Italian origin, particularly by Bolognese artists - for instance Francesco del Cossa - and a number of unusual studies of garments by Giovanni Francesco Barbieri, called Guercino, as well as works from France, the Netherlands and Germany. Purchases of the past decades have served to augment the special sub-categories of this part of the collection, for example with drawings by Guercino, Alessandro Magnasco and, most recently, Raphael.

The same is true of the acquisitions of more recent decades, and the result is a treasure chamber of the dialogue on art: Until the invention of photography in the mid nineteenth century and of modern printing techniques in the twentieth, it was above all woodcuts, engravings, etchings and lithographs which bore the function of circulating art and thus making it known to a wide public. No matter how far away from the original, they provided beholders a means of delighting in art and discussing it – a tradition elucidated, for example, by the exhibition »Raphael and the Consequences« (26 May – 22 July 2001).