 |
| attributed to Francesco Salviati Jupiter and Io ca. 1550 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Baccio Bandinelli Holy Family before 1560 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Pirro Ligorio Two Princes of the House of Este - Ernest VI and Francis II ca. 1570 drawing (study for fresco) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Carlo Dolci Portrait of the artist's daughter Agata Dolci ca. 1576-80 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| attributed to Annibale Carracci Head of a Woman ca. 1590-1600 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Francesco Vanni Standing Woman ca. 1596-98 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
"The melancholic's intensity and exhaustiveness of attention set natural limits to the length at which Benjamin could develop his ideas. His major essays seem to end just in time, before they self-destruct. His sentences do not seem to be generated in the usual way, they do not entail. Each sentence is written as if it were the first, or the last. ("A writer must stop and restart with every new sentence," he says in the Prologue to The Origin of German Trauerspiel.) . . . His style of thinking and writing, incorrectly called aphoristic, might better be called freeze-frame baroque. This style was torture to execute. It was as if each sentence had to say everything, before the inward gaze of total concentration dissolved the subject before his eyes."
– Susan Sontag, from her essay on Walter Benjamin, Under the Sign of Saturn (1978)
 |
| Niccolò Circignani Design for wall decoration with two female figures in niches before 1597 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Jacopo Ligozzi Allegory of Gluttony 1590 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
 |
| Jacopo Ligozzi La Verna - The Chapel of the Blessed Giovanni della Verna 1607 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
 |
| Palma il Giovane Studies for four figures ca. 1600-1614 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Peter Candid Two studies for Alexander the Great ca. 1601 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Bernardino Poccetti Studies for seated figure with shovel ca. 1603 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Giulio Cesare Procaccini Study for Pietà 1604 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
 |
| Cigoli Study for figure lowered into grave ca. 1607-1613 drawing on blue paper Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
""The amount of meaning is in exact proportion to the presence of death and the power of decay," Benjamin writes in the Trauerspiel book. This is what makes it possible to find meaning in one's own life, in "the dead occurrences of the past which are euphemistically known as experience." Only because the past is dead is one able to read it. Only because history is fetishized in physical objects can one understand it."
– Susan Sontag, from her essay on Walter Benjamin, Under the Sign of Saturn (1978)