The lumps of black lead wrapped in sheepskin which artists hoarded in the sixteenth century, have long since been distended, stretched and sharpened all out of recognition. Yet although the pencil does not resemble the lumbago stump in appearance, it is made of the same stuff – and as such performs the same tripartite function now as then: muse, whore… belovéd.

It is this medium, graphite, that has finally been given some due appreciation by the Fitzwilliam in its new survey exhibit Grey Matters. Having thus far almost entirely avoided showing the secret, shy sketches from which its luscious collection of paintings was born, the Fitzwilliam has now outdone itself in leeching the Shiba Gallery of colour. Even though you might be uncertain where to begin when you enter, one thing will be blindingly evident: This. Exhibit. Is. About. Graphite.

Okay. But so what? What has the interplay between graphite and other media been? Why should we be interested in one of William Blake’s less-interesting sketches? As ever, the potential of the Fitzwilliam’s exhibit (with some fantastic pieces by L.S. Lowry, Alessandro Maganza and George Romney) is unbalanced by a blandness of organisation and supplement that is damaging to a curious viewer without an art history degree behind them.

That being said, the exhibit does do a good job in covering lots of ground. The regional and temporal variations in the use of graphite is convincingly represented, and there are a couple of contemporary pieces by Christopher Cook and Christopher le Brun – although finding them where they have been hidden away (being as they are, strange and modern) requires a military set of orientation skills. There is even a screen showing James Eden and Olly Rooks’ performance video Burst in which they pop a graphite-filled balloon and demonstrate the power of graphite when left to its own devices. The vast divergence between the video and the meticulous pencil-manship of the seventeenth century miniatures by David Loggan and Thomas Forster in themselves say a lot about graphite. And perhaps the humbleness of the exhibit is appropriate for a medium that even Van Gogh could afford.