Monday, July 10, 2023

European Drawings at the Louvre (1655-1818)

attributed to Eustache Le Sueur
Study of Kneeling Youth
before 1655
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Louis XIV and Two Cupids
ca. 1665
drawing
(study for tapestry)
Musée du Louvre

Carlo Maratti
Standing Figure
ca. 1675
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giulio Carpioni
Pastoral Scene among Ruins
before 1678
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Subleyras
Study of Model wearing Cuirass
before 1749
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Hubert Robert
The Villa Medici and Chiesa della Trinità dei Monti, Rome
ca. 1755-65
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Hubert Robert
The Dome of St Peter's from the Janiculum, Rome
ca. 1755-65
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Canaletto
Piazza San Marco, Venice
before 1768
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Augustin Pajou
Design for a Statue of Comedy
ca. 1768-70
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Louis-Claude Vassé
Woman holding a Child
before 1772
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Vivant-Denon
Writers and Lookers-on gathered around a Table
ca. 1775
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Carlo Marchionni
Sheet of Compositional Studies
before 1786
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anne-Louis Girodet
Sheet of Figure Studies
ca. 1790-95
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Anne-Louis Girodet
Study of Seated Woman
ca. 1790-95
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Vivant-Denon
Portraits of Revolutionaries
1794
drawings (mounted together)
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Appiani the Elder
Apotheosis of Napoleon
ca. 1804
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Achille-Etna Michallon after Michelangelo
Ignudo from the Sistine Ceiling
ca. 1817-18
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Apotheosis of the Garbagemen

And they come back in the night through alleys to find us
By the clashing of raised lids,
By garage doors' lifted heads, the swung gates, the bottomless
Galvanized cans on their shoulders,
In luminous coveralls
They follow the easy directions on boxes, scattering
Bushels of brown grass and apple cores,
Old candy wrappers folded around sweet nothings,
And sacks with their stains on fire,
They are coming through hedges, dragging geometry
In a dark clutch of rainbows,
See, the smashed jars
Prinked out with light, and the vacuum bags
Bursting their dust in the night like the phantasms of horseflies,
Through the burning bacon fat
Their baseball caps go flying, their feet
As solid as six-packs on the lawn, the slam-bang of their coming
Sending the lettuce leaves against our windows
Like luna moths, the marrow whistling
Out of the wishbones of turkeys, the husks and rinds,
The lost-wax castings of corncobs and teabags,
The burnt-out lightbulbs pulsing in midair,
The coupons filled out
With our last names for all the startling offers,
Oh see, their hands are lifted by the gloves,
Untying the knots in plastic bags, to catch
The half-burnt ashes raining around their heads,
The crusts and empties,
As the skeletons of lampshades catch at the first light,
They are going back in their empty trucks and singing
To the dump, to the steaming rust
In the rolling, hunch-backed, beckoning earth,
The sea of decay where our foundering fathers
Rubbled their lives,
They have found the way
Back to God's plenty, to rags and riches,
But will come back to us with all we could wish for
In the darkness, singing love and wild appetite,
The good rats and roaches,
The beautiful hogs and billygoats around them.

                                                                                     – David Wagoner (1968)