Portions

Andrea del Sarto (Andrea d'Agnolo)
Arms with Clasped Hands
ca. 1519-27
drawing (study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

George Romney
Half-Length Sketch of a Woman
before 1790
drawing
British Museum

Pier Francesco Mola
Half-Length Study of Figure
before 1666
drawing
British Museum

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Study of Arm
before 1592
drawing
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Alfred George Stevens
Half-Length Figure Study
before 1875
drawing
British Museum

Alfred George Stevens
Half-Length Figure Study
before 1875
drawing
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Joan Brown
Untitled (Reclining Torso)
ca. 1975
mixed media on paper
private collection

Leon Golub
Torso III
1960
oil and lacquer on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Hale Woodruff
Two Torsos
ca. 1977
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Léon Riesener
Study of Arm and Hand
before 1878
drawing
British Museum

Francis Augustus Lathrop
Study of Arms
ca. 1895
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Adolph Tidemand
Study of a Woman's Arm
ca. 1840
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Co Westerik
Nocturnal Scene with Arm and Hand
1992
tempera and oil on panel
private collection

Henry Ossawa Tanner
Half-Length Study of Youth
ca. 1885
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Henry Ossawa Tanner
Half-Length Study of Woman
ca. 1885
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Robert Mapplethorpe
Thomas (Back)
1986
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Irving Penn
Model, New York
1961
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from On a Dead Child

Ah! little at best can all our hopes avail us

    To lift this sorrow, or cheer us, when in the dark,

            Unwilling, alone we embark,

And the things we have seen and have known and have heard of, fail us.

– Robert Bridges (1880)