Monday, April 3, 2023

Anatomical Investigation (Figures Fragmented)

François Lemoyne
Study of Arm
ca. 1727
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François Lemoyne
Study of Arms
ca. 1727
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François Lemoyne
Study of Arm and Hand
ca. 1727
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Study of Legs
ca. 1665
drawing (colored chalks)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Study of Arm
before 1690
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Donato Creti
Study of Eight Heads
before 1749
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Donato Creti
Study of Eight Heads
before 1749
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Michel Corneille the Younger
Sheet of Head and Hand Studies
before 1708
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Study of Heads from Trajan's Column, Rome
ca. 1755-56
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Study for Bust of a Prelate (Arm and Shoulders)
before 1755
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Study of Raised Arm
before 1755
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Henri Deshays
Study of Model - Shoulder and Neck
ca. 1750
drawing
Musée du Louvre

follower of Leonardo da Vinci
Studies of Right Leg
ca. 1490-1520
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Alphonse Legros
Torso Studies
before 1896
drawing
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Angela Grauerholz
Lessing
1992
C-print
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Stephen Rhodes
Vacant Portrait
2011
oil and acrylic on canvas
private collection

"Further, I will consider to what end a profound knowledge of anatomy is useful.  A good grasp of anatomy gives us the advantage that we learn from it the knowledge of muscles, where they originate and where they end, how they move and how they change in their movements, how they recede and protrude again, and how a body should be divided so as to be well proportioned.  Knowledge of anatomy shows us the difference between the bodies of a man and a woman, and the difference in proportion between children and adults.  Moreover, we learn from it how always to find a straight perpendicular or plumb line in the figure of a human being, and also an isosceles triangle, a square, a perfect circle, and many other useful things.  To acquire this knowledge, Michelangelo and many other excellent men dissected several bodies, and split muscles apart to learn about them.  I often regret that in this city the artists are not given so much freedom, and that they do not have at their disposal a freely accessible dissecting room which could further this useful science.  By contrast, all the other arts, even including the school for marital arts, maintain their position.  But our art, which gives to Leyden (the birthplace of all great minds) greater renown than any other art, is not given any freedom for further expansion."

– Philips Angel, from In Praise of Painting (1642), translated by Hester Ysseling (2000)