Thursday, August 4, 2016

18th-century European Drawings

Anonymous Italian artist
Two Easter Eggs (open and closed)
ca. 1716
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Italian artist
Pontifical ring with square-cut sapphire given by Sixtus V to St Charles Borromeo
ca. 1700-1725
drawing
British Museum

"The gifting of art in early modern Rome represented an opportunity to bestow honor and demonstrate obligation in an elaborate performance of rank and identity. In 1610, for example Francesco Maria II della Rovere, Duke of Urbino, sent Cardinal Michelangelo Tonti a diamond-encrusted cross-shaped reliquary and Cardinal Scipione Borghese a "beautifully ornamented" painting by Federico Barocci. Observers noted that the duke's lavish gift was enough to secure for his courier a guided tour through a suite within the Borghese palace. Other visitors were not as lucky, being admitted to only a single room of the palace."

:"The presentation to men of lesser rank might be performed in a display of spontaneous largesse, and the gifts might be wholly without ornament  as when Sixtus V, during a visit from Camillo Strozzi on behalf of the Duke of Mantua, Guglielmo Gonzaga, reached into a small box of ancient medals and, placing a handful of them on a paper sheet, presented them to Strozzi to give to members of the ducal family."

 from The Social Aesthetics of the Gift by Frances Gage, published in Display of Art in the Roman Palace 1550-1750, edited by Gail Feigenbaum (Getty Research Institute, 2014)

François Boucher
Profile of a girl
18th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Joshua Reynolds
Details of paintings, from Italian sketchbook
1752
drawing
British Museum

Joshua Reynolds
Drawing of sculpture, from Italian sketchbook
1752
drawing
British Museum

Louis Chéron
Académie with drawing board
early 18th century
drawing
British Museum

Ozias Humphry
Académie
late 18th century
drawing
British Museum

Joshua Reynolds
Académie
1770s
drawing
British Museum

François Boucher
Study for Sleeping Venus
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Edmé Bouchardon
Study for River God
mid-18th century
drawing
British Museum

"Why does a beautiful sketch accord greater pleasure than a beautiful painting? Because it has more life and fewer forms. The more forms one introduces, the more life disappears. In a dead animal, an object hideous to view, forms are present but life is absent. In young birds, small cats, and various other animals, the forms are still obscured but everything is full of life; thus they please us very much. Why is it that a young student incapable of making even a mediocre painting can make a marvelous sketch? Because such sketches thrive on enthusiasm and genius, while paintings demand work, patience, prolonged study, and extensive technical expertise. Who knows that of which nature herself seems to be unaware, how to introduce the forms of advanced age while conserving the liveliness of youth?"

 Denis Diderot, from the Salon of 1767, translated by John Goodman (New Haven : Yale University Press, 1995)

Anonymous Russian artist
Figure study
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Russian artist
Figures in combat
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Gian Paolo Panini
Denial of Peter
18th century
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Italian artist
Portrait of a Venetian Senator
18th century
watercolor on vellum
British Museum