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| Adolph Menzel Man fallen out of Bed ca. 1843 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Man fallen out of Bed ca. 1843 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Unmade Bed ca. 1846 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Cast Collection, Altes Museum, Berlin 1848 watercolor on paper Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel The 1000-year-old Linden Tree at Lorch Abbey ca. 1860 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Portrait Studies of Dr van Zander and Graf zu Dohna-Schlodien 1863 watercolor on paper Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Moritzhof Garden Restaurant 1864 watercolor and gouache on paper Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Seated Officer in Historic Garb ca. 1870 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel The Barberini Faun (in Munich) 1874 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Model in Renaissance Clothing ca. 1875 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Models in Renaissance Clothing ca. 1875 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Judge Walther Enters (illustration to The Broken Jug by Heinrich von Kleist) 1877 wood-engraving Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Madonna in the Theatine Church in Munich ca. 1880 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Market Umbrellas in Piazza delle Erbe, Verona ca. 1881-83 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Adolph Menzel Figure Study for Neptune 1888 drawing Hamburger Kunsthalle |
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| Adolph Menzel Entrance Steps, Maria Magdalenen Kirche, Karlsbad 1894 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
We have seen before that science is always a double-edged weapon to defend or attack any artistic procedure. It can probe a little into the mysteries of vision; it cannot tell the artist what conclusions to draw from his findings. And so the observable fact that looking at the elements in our field of vision will result in a picture which will not create an illusion can be adduced to prove that traditional methods are false or, conversely, that they are indispensable.
We have no right to assume that the upholders of the academic tradition were ignorant of this dilemma. It is formulated quite explicitly in the charter of academic theory, Idée de la perfection de la peinture by Roland Fréart de Chambray, one of the patrons of Poussin, published in Le Mans in 1662: "Whenever the painter claims that he imitates things as he sees them he is sure to see them wrongly. He will represent them according to his faulty imagination and produce a bad painting. Before he takes up his pencil or brush he must therefore adjust his eye to reasoning according to the principles of art which teach how to see things not only as they are in themselves but also how they should be represented. For it would often be a grave mistake to paint them exactly as the eye sees them, however much this may look like a paradox."
It is this paradox, I believe, which accounts for the fact that illusionist art grew out of a long tradition and that it collapsed as soon as the value of this tradition was questioned by those who relied on the innocent eye. . . . In fact, the achievement of the innocent eye, what modern authorities call "stimulus concentration," turned out to be not only psychologically difficult but logically impossible. The stimulus, as we know, is of infinite ambiguity, and ambiguity as such, to return to the theme song of this book, cannot be seen – it can only be inferred by trying different readings that fit the same configuration. I believe, indeed, that the artist's gift is of this order. He is the man who has learned to look critically, to probe his perceptions by trying alternative interpretations both in play and in earnest. Long before painting achieved the means of illusion, man was aware of ambiguities in the visual field and had learned to describe them in language. Similes, metaphors, the stuff of poetry no less than of myth, testify to the powers of the creative mind to create and dissolve new classifications.
– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)