The little-known is also the theme of The Spanish Line at the Courtauld Gallery. This is a choice selection of 40 drawings from the gallery's important holdings and while it includes examples from masters such as Ribera, Goya and Picasso the real surprises lurk among unfamiliar Golden Age names such as Antonio García Reinoso, Vicente Carducho, Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra.

"Spanish school" has long been a dumping-ground term for 17th-century drawings of uncertain provenance (often from Italy) but this exhibition sets out to prove that Spain has its own distinct tradition of draughtsmanship. The Spanish line of the title was essentially a magpie one, with artists taking inspiration from Low Countries prints and Italian Renaissance masterpieces such as Michelangelo's Last Judgment. 

There are some exquisite works here, from the Four Studies of a Young Man by Antonio del Castillo y Saavedra (1616-68) to Goya's typically unsettling Singing and Dancing, c.1819, and a charming and refreshingly non-show-off drawing of five pigs by Picasso, c.1906. Taken together, the drawings trace Spain's often uncertain passage from Renaissance through Counter-Reformation to the stirrings of Modernism. This is a quiet and quietly satisfying exhibition of the sort the Courtauld does so well.

Another piece of imaginative curating is on display at the National Portrait Gallery in its exhibition The First Actresses: Nell Gwyn to Sarah Siddons. The period covered, therefore, is from the early 1660s when, during the Restoration, women were first permitted to perform on stage, to the late 1780s when figures such as Mrs Siddons and Perdita Robinson had become powerful influences on fashionable society. The moral transition of actresses from prostitutes to the ton was never a concern of the artists and the paintings here are from Simon Verelst (a favourite of Charles II's brother the Duke of York) and later royal portraitists such as Reynolds and Gainsborough.