Sketches and Studies - I

Leonardo da Vinci
Head of a Young Woman
ca. 1492-1501
oil on panel (grisaille sketch)
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Study for The Entombment
ca. 1530
drawing
Courtauld Gallery, London

Luca Cambiaso
Apollo slaying Python
ca. 1544
drawing
(study for spandrel decoration)
Yale University Art Gallery

Peter Paul Rubens
Marie de' Medici surrendering the Regency
(ceding the ship of state to her son Louis XIII)
1622
oil on panel (sketch)
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

workshop of Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of artist Palamedes Palamedesz
ca. 1629-34
oil on panel (grisaille sketch)
Staatsgalerie Flämische Barockmalerei im Schloss Neuburg

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1665
drawing (study for painting)
Morgan Library, New York

Gregorio de Ferrari
Study for Funerary Monument
to the Patriarch Francesco Morosini
ca. 1678-83
drawing
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Sketch of Ruins
ca. 1745-48
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jean-Baptiste-Henri Deshays
John the Baptist preaching in the Desert
ca, 1758-64
oil on canvas (sketch)
Art Institute of Chicago

Giovanni Battista Piranesi
Design Sketch for Altar at Santa Maria del Priorato, Rome
ca. 1764-65
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Anton Raphael Mengs
Ferdinand and Maria Anna of Hapsburg-Lorraine
1770
oil on canvas (sketch)
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Jean-François-Pierre Peyron
Scene from Ancient History
ca. 1775-80
tempera on cardboard
(grisaille sketch for painting)
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Jacques-Louis David
Deputies swearing Oaths
1791
drawing
(study for painting, Le Serment du Jeu de Paume)
Château de Versailles

John Constable
Dedham Church from Flatford
ca. 1810
oil on canvas (sketch)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Perseus and Andromeda
ca. 1819
oil on canvas (sketch)
Detroit Institute of Arts

Giovanni Carnovali (il Piccio)
Sketch of a Man
ca. 1830
drawing
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Let images of basalt, black, immovable,
Chiselled in Egypt, or ovoids of bright steel
Hammered and polished by Brancusi's hand,

Represent spirits. If spirits seem to stand
Before the bodily eyes, speak into the bodily ears,
They are not present but their messengers.
Of double nature these, one nature is

Compounded of accidental phantasies.
We question; it but answer what we would
Or as phantasy directs – because they have drunk the blood.  

– W.B. Yeats (1934)