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| Simon Fokke after Aert Schouman Model on Dais, Drawing Academy, Hague Artists' Guild 1751 etching and engraving Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Johann Georg Wille after Carle Vanloo Académie ca. 1770-80 engraving National Museum, Warsaw |
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| Johann Eleazar Schenau Académie ca. 1779-81 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| John Flaxman Figure Study - Nymph with Putto ca. 1780-1820 drawing Tate Britain |
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| Jean-Baptiste Lucien after Pierre-Thomas Le Clerc Two Figure Studies 1798 engraving Wellcome Collection, London |
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| Alessandro Gherardini Figure Studies for Putti before 1723 drawing British Museum |
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| Francesco Fontebasso Figure Study of Old Man before 1769 drawing British Museum |
-Mus%C3%A9e-Bonnat-Helleu-Bayonne.jpg) |
| Jacques-Louis David Study of Figures for Le Serment du Jeu de Paume 1791 drawing Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne |
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| Daniel Seiter Figure Study ca. 1680 drawing Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel |
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| Johannes van Dregt Académie 1773 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Hubert Maurer Académie ca. 1799 drawing Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna |
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| Hubert Maurer Académie ca. 1790 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Georg Martin Preissler Académie 1731 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| Louis Lafitte Académie 1793 drawing Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh |
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| Johann Christian Reinhart Sketchbook Opening with Farm Building and Académie 1793 drawings Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin |
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| Louis Fabritius Dubourg Académie ca. 1724 drawing Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Bernard Picart Académie before 1733 etching Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
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| Paolo Pagani Study of Figures for The Temptation of St Anthony before 1716 drawing British Museum |
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| Giuseppe Cades Figure Study for Achilles 1793 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
The Cruise
Poor little Agnes cried when she saw the iceberg.
We smiled and went on with our talk, careless
Of its brilliant fraction and, watchful beneath,
That law of which nine-tenths is a possession
By powers we do not ourselves possess.
Some cold tide nudged us into sunny gales
With our money and our medications. No,
Later in shops I thought again of the iceberg,
Mild faces turned aside to let us fondle
Monsters in crystal, tame and small, fawning
On lengths of ocean-green brocade.
"These once were nightmares," the Professor said,
"That set aswirl the mind of China. Now,
They are belittled, to whom craftsmen fed
The drug of Form, their fingers cold with dread,
Famine and Pestilence, into souvenirs."
"Well I'm still famished," said a woman in red
From Philadelphia. I wondered then:
Are we less monstrous when our motive slumbers
Drugged by a perfection of our form?
The bargain struck, a thin child parted curtains.
We took to lunch our monsters wrapped in silk.
They have become our own. Beneath them stretch
Dim shelves adrowse, our hungers and the dread
That, civilizing into cunning shapes,
Briefly appeased what it could not oppose.
– James Merrill (1959)