Two drawings have stuck in my mind since seeing The Spanish Line: Drawings from Ribera to Picasso exhibition at the Courtauld Gallery, London.

The Courtauld has around a hundred Spanish drawings from the 16th to the 20th centuries in its collections; one of the most important outside Spain, they say. Forty of the finest are in this show. It includes some of Spain’s greatest artists, well-known names such as Ribera, Murillo, Goya and Picasso, and lesser-known such as Francisco Pacheco, Antonio Garcia Reinoso and Alonso Cano (1601-67).

It is Cano’s lively little sketch of Saint Bernardino and Saint Juan of Capistrano that mostly impressed itself on me. This rapid, expressive, seeming effortless study in pen and brown ink (above) captures in a brilliant scratchy way the monks seen talking. It is a rare sketch, made for a painting that originally was part of an altarpiece in a Franciscan monastery in Granada, and today is in the city’s Museo de Bellas Artes.

Cano’s teacher, Pacheco, who was both master and father-in-law to Velasquez, is represented by a highly finished Saint Mark showing the saint in devotion. The work reflects the importance of the cult of saints in Spain.

Picasso’s Seated Woman (1923) also made great impact that day. Partly perhaps because the two Picassos are displayed among mainly devotional and religious images — a common theme, of course, in Spanish art.

Picasso suggests her square strong form by a handful of supremely confident lines. A second Picasso drawing on show, Pigs, was dashed off as a gift to Gertrude Stein in 1906. My one disappointment was to find only one Goya. I learn later that Cantar y Bailar (Singing and Dancing) is their sole Goya drawing. It comes from one of his famous private albums, the Witches and Old Women Album of around 1819-23, and mischievously shows a levitating guitar-playing crone bawling out a song while a second figure seemingly holds her nose and peers under her skirts. A further exhibition shows drawings from Naples, including several by Salvator Rosa. These are small focused exhibitions that be readily enjoyed, perhaps as I did, on the back of some other trip to the city. They certainly repay the time. On until January 15, 2012.