Vernet is best known as an accomplished history painter, but like many academic artists of his day, including his teacher François -André Vincent, he also made caricatures. Among these were numerous drawings of friends and acquaintances as well as sketches of fellow Academicians during the meetings of the Institut de France. This wonderful wsh drawing most likely depicts the Romantic composer Charles-Henri Plantade. A lightly traced inscription in graphite at the bottom left appears to read "Plantade,"and the image resembles a more serious profile-portrait of Plantade, who clearly had a prominent nose, which Vernet increased considerably in size. It is a good-natured caricature that Vernet signed with a characteristic flourish at the bottom.

Jeaurat belonged to a literary society interested in social life outside aristocratic circles (the Société du Bout du Banc) and painted unidealized genre scenes of the working classes. This drawing is a study for his painting The Painter’s Move (Le déménagement du peintre, ca. 1755), which shows a wooden cart moving the artist’s family and possessions through the streets of Paris. In the finished work, the two women—one holding a large loaf of bread and the other seated, holding a small container—occupy opposite ends of the composition. On this sheet, however, they share the same attentive atmosphere. Probably sketching from life, Jeaurat used parallel hatching and white highlights to delicately suggest volume and lighting contrasts.

Jan van Orley, a distant descendent of the sixteenth-century painter and tapestry designer Bernard van Orley, produced this drawing as a design for a tapestry cycle that was woven in the Van der Borcht manufactory in Brussels in the first half of the eighteenth century.[1] The ten-part program depicts episodes from the life of the Greek hero Achilles, as related in the Homeric epic the Iliad and in other ancient texts. This highly developed preparatory drawing, which came to light in 2012, corresponds to the seventh weaving in the cycle and represents the confrontation, described in the fifth book of the Iliad, between Achilles’s compatriot Diomedes and the Trojan warrior Aeneas (better known as the hero of Virgil’s Aeneid).[2] The two appear at center: Diomedes, with the superhuman strength granted by Pallas Athena, hurls an enormous stone at Aeneas, who has descended from his chariot in order to retrieve the body of his compatriot Pandarus, slain moments earlier by Diomedes. The goddess Aphrodite, Aeneas’s mother, hovers above, veiling her son with her gown in order to protect him from further injury and, ultimately, to transport him away from the battlefield. Various other figures duel on foot and horseback amidst swirling clouds and drapery. Van Orley’s primary model for the series as a whole was the celebrated Life of Achilles tapestry cycle designed by Rubens in the 1630s, known widely through engravings produced in 1679 and 1724. This important precursor does not, however, include the skirmish between Diomedes and Aeneas, a scene that is rarely depicted in the history of art and that is indeed an unusual choice for a program dedicated to Achilles, as it is a battle in which, out of anger, he refuses to take part. His absence highlights, however, not only his temperament but also his exceptional ferocity as a warrior. Shortly after the episode depicted here, the goddess Hera, in order to rouse the Greek troops, remarks that “as long as Achilles was fighting, his spear was so deadly that the Trojans dared not show themselves outside the Dardanian gates, but now they sally far from the city and fight even at your ships” (5.907-8). This may explain Van Orley’s choice to include the episode. For this lively scene, he combined figures derived from prints after ancient statuary and contemporary French paintings.[3] The heroic subject matter, dramatic physical action, and classical types are hallmarks of neo-baroque tapestry design, a style that would give way, beginning about 1725, to the elegant scenes of everyday life that epitomize the goût moderne.[4](JSS, 8/23/2018)[1] Marthe Crick-Kuntziger, “The Tapestries in the Palace of Liège,” Burlington Magazine 50, no. 289 (April 1927), p. 178, first proposed Jan van Orley as the designer of the cycle. Support of this attribution, along with a proposal that Van Orley produced the tapestry cartoons about 1726-30, was offered by Nicole de Reyniès, “Jean van Orley Cartonnier: La Tenture d’Achille au Musée Jacquemart-André,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 125 (Feb. 1995): pp. 155-76. See the latter as well for a list of the extant weavings, particularly the set of nine in the Musée Jacquemart-Andre, Paris (one of which—the tapestry pertaining to the present drawing—was at some point cut into two pieces). [2] Nicole de Reyniès, “Jean van Orley Cartonnier: La Tenture d’Achille au Musée Jacquemart-André,” Gazette des Beaux-Arts 125 (Feb. 1995): pp. 156, 158-59, brought to light a document from the Van der Borcht manufactory that lists the titles of the ten weavings and, on the basis thereof, identified the subject of the tapestry that corresponds to the present drawing, previously known under incorrect titles including the Battle of Ajax and Hector. [3] See Nicole de Reyniès 1995, pp. 166-67.[4] See Koenraad Brosens in Tapestry in the Baroque: Threads of Splendor, ed. Thomas Campbell (New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2007), p. 452.

As court artist, Cranach often accompanied his patron, Frederick the Wise, Elector of Saxony, on hunting excursions to his numerous hunting lodges, drawing book in hand. Cranach produced a number of paintings and murals of hunts and animals, for which he received great renown in his time. This woodcut, dating from 1506, is his earliest and largest hunting print. Composed of two separate blocks, it vividly depicts the outing in narrative form. Moving clockwise from the upper left, one can follow the elector’s dogs as they give chase, culminating in a stag’s demise at the lower left, possibly by the hand of the elector himself. The lodge, probably the castle at Lochau, is seen in the distance.

A view of the facade of Kew Palace from the lawn, with figure strolling and gardeners working at center and left and a flock of sheep at right.  A line of potted line the lawn at left. This is a copy, with the printmaker and date not given, of an etching by William Woollett after Joshua Kirby titled "A VIew of the Palace at Kew, from the Lawn." The latter appears in William Chambers, "Plans, Elevations, Sections, and Perspective Views of the Gardens and Buildings at Kew in Surry," 1763 (MMA: 52.519.86) and is one of eight views of the park designed by Kirby for that volume.

The majority of autograph drawings by Michiel Coxie, who was also active as a painter and print designer, relate to prints. This sheet served as the model for the final engraving in a series of three depicting the history of Cain and Abel, of which the first plate is dated 1576. An impression of this print by Johannes I Sadeler, published in Antwerp by Gerard de Jode, is present in the Museum’s collection (acc. 53.601.17(64)). The composition and figure style, inspired by both antique and contemporary Italian models, illustrate well why Coxie, who spent the 1530s in Rome, earned the nickname of the "Netherlandish Raphael". Yet the penwork reflects the bolder style developed by the artist in his later years, as also evident in a sheet, dated 1578 and signed in the same manner as the Museum’s example, at the Crocker Art Art Gallery, Sacramento (acc. 1871.109). The subject of the first humans mourning their son killed by his brother is not found in the bible, but was inspired by the book of Genesis (chapter 4), and had been already treated in an engraving by Lucas van Leyden in 1529, and one from 1561 by Cornelis Cort after Coxie's contemporary Frans Floris.

1501 / 1525

1501 / 1525