Traditional Study-Drawings

Ciro Ferri
Reclining Youth
ca. 1660
drawing
British Museum

Simone Pignoni
Crouching Model
ca. 1680
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

workshop of Benozzo Gozzoli
Study of Seated Model
ca. 1470-90
drawing
British Museum

Alessandro Gherardini
Figure with Raised Arm
1691
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Anonymous Flemish Artist after Anthony van Dyck
Half-Length Figure Study
ca. 1620-50
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis Boullogne the Younger
Seated Model
ca. 1680
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Domenico Cresti (il Passignano)
Half-Length Figure Study
ca. 1580-1600
drawing
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Heinrich Dittmers
Half-Length Study of Model
ca. 1650
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Tiburzio Passarotti
Figure Studies
ca. 1580
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Lucas Franchoys the Younger
Model posed as the god Mercury
before 1681
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Figure Study
ca. 1500-1550
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Agostino Carracci
Study for Pluto
ca. 1592
drawing
(design for ceiling fresco)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Carracci Academy (Bologna)
Study for Atlante
ca. 1580-1610
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Figure Study for Warrior
ca. 1535
drawing-
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

attributed to Francesco Padovanino
Study of Youth bending forward
ca. 1600
drawing
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Anton Domenico Gabbiani
Figure Study
ca. 1695
drawing
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Mirror

I grow old under an intensity

Of questioning looks. Nonsense,

I try to say, I cannot teach you children

How to live – If not you, who will?

Cries one of them aloud, grasping my gilded

Frame till the world sways. If not you, who will?

Between their visits the table, its arrangement

Of Bible, fern and Paisley, all past change,

Does very nicely. If ever I feel curious

As to what others endure,

Across the parlor you provide examples,

Wide open, sunny, of everything I am

Not. You embrace a whole world without once caring

To set it in order. That takes thought. Out there

Something is being picked. The red-and-white bandannas

Go to my heart. A fine young man

Rides by on horseback. Now the door shuts. Hester

Confides in me her first unhappiness.

This much, you see, would never have been fitted

Together, but for me. Why then is it

They more and more neglect me? Late one sleepless

Midsummer night I strained to keep

Five tapers from your breathing. No, the widowed

Cousin said, let them go out. I did.

The room brimmed with gray sound, all the instreaming

Muslin of your dream . . .

Years later now, two of the grown grandchildren

Sit with novels face-down on the sill,

Content to muse upon your tall transparence,

Your clouds, brown fields, persimmon far

And cypress near. One speaks. How superficial

Appearances are! Since then, as if a fish

Had broken the perfect silver of my reflectiveness,

I have lapses. I suspect

Looks from behind, where nothing is, cool gazes

Through the blind flaws of my mind. As days,

As decades lengthen, this vision

Spreads and blackens. I do not know whose it is,

But I think it watches for my last silver

To blister, flake, float leaf by life, each milling-

Downward dumb conceit, to a standstill

From which not even you strike any brilliant

Chord in me, and to a faceless will,

Echo of mine, I am amenable.

– James Merrill (1959)