Spencer Alley: Roman Figure Studies by Jean Grandjean

Monday, August 8, 2016

Roman Figure Studies by Jean Grandjean

Jean Grandjean
Corpse-bearers
1770s
drawing
Rijksmuseum

Jean Grandjean
Corpse-bearer
1770s
drawing
Rijksmuseum

When Jean Grandjean arrived in Rome from his native Amsterdam in 1779 he was 27 years old. At home he had already mastered the prevailing standards for academic figure-drawing, but the examples he executed in the south were incomparably finer. Grandjean's sense of liberation and fulfillment can be read as explicitly in these Roman drawings as if the message were written across them in words. Beyond that overriding, atmospheric fact was the advantage he gained from exposure to the splendid professional models of Rome, long acknowledged the best in the world for deportment and beauty.