The Florentines established the primacy of draftsmanship, elevating drawing to an art form in its own right. Michelangelo is supposed to have said, “painting, sculpture, and architecture culminate in drawing. It is the primary source, and the soul of all kinds of painting, and the root of every science.” By the time the locus of artistic theory shifted to France in the seventeenth century, two camps had formed: artists who emphasized draftsmanship and those who favored colorism. Poussin was probably the first French artist to see drawing and color as antithetical. Le Brun preached the rationality of drawing against drowning in an “ocean of color.” “Renaissance to Revolution” seeks to reconcile these two camps, finding in three centuries of French drawing an argument for line, color, and, above all, virtuosity.
The exhibition opens with a group of didactic works intended for the education of François d’Angoulême (the future François I). Depicting various ancient and modern aphorisms, these witty drawings form a bridge between medieval illuminations, emblem books, and later book illustrations. The young princeling probably never forgot the figure of Pythagoras warily skirting the bean plants in Do Not Eat Beans (1512/1514). Lagneau’s Bust of an Old Woman Wearing a Head Scarf (c. 1625) is a striking warts-and-all portrait in colored chalks. We know almost nothing about the highly individualistic artist (not even his full name), but this work with its sympathetic realism clearly owes much to Flemish portraiture.
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