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Zoom + Jim Dine
(American, born in Cincinnati, Ohio, 1935)
The Glyptotek Drawings, 1987–88.
Charcoal on Mylar. 17 3/4 x 15 1/2 inches (45 x 39.4 cm)
Promised gift of the artist to The Morgan Library & Museum.

Photograph courtesy of PaceWildenstein.
© 2009 Jim Dine / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

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This series of forty works on paper known as The Glyptotek Drawings* was inspired by Greek and Roman sculpture, primarily from the Glyptothek Museum in Munich.

The works combine a rich variety of media, including ink, charcoal, crayon, and paint, applied in broad gestures, resulting in a distinctive, expressive style. Occasionally the artist rubbed and spread the material with an eraser or with his fingers. The subjects include ancient busts, full-length sculptures, statuettes, fragments, and reliefs. Some, such as the Barberini Faun, the Boy with a Goose, and the Wounded Trojan from the Temple of Aphaia at Aegina, are well known.

In creating the Glyptotek series, Jim Dine says he was drawn to the imperfections of the sculptures that reveal the passage of time: chipped noses, missing limbs, irregular surfaces. Most of the drawing subjects are barely contained within the edges of the sheets, a device that underscores their monumentality. The strong interplay of light and shadow and the sweeping strokes that convey the physical engagement of the artist vests these images with a romantic feeling, making them haunting modern visions of the ancient world.

*The artist prefers this spelling for his work.

Zoom + Bruce Nauman
(American, born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941)
Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II), 1975
Graphite on paper
30 5/8 x 39 7/8 inches (778 x 1013 mm)
Inscription: Diamond Mind/Circle of Tears/Fallen All Around me/Fallen Mind/Mindless Tears/Cut like a Diamond/Layout -/12 pc. stone 7 1/2º Rhomboids/Granite 15" on a side.
Gift of the Modern and Contemporary Collectors' Committee; 2008.10

Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.
© 2008 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

One of the most influential American artists of the Post-Minimalist generation that gained prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nauman produced sculpture, performance, video, photography, and film. A superb draftsman, he created a large body of drawings that reveal the creative process behind his works in other mediums. Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II) is a preliminary drawing for a sculpture composed of twelve rhomboid blocks distributed in concentric circles, now in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands. In the drawing, Nauman worked out the placement of the blocks. Arrows, corrections, and erasures show the artist thinking his way through the particular space of the installation. Inscriptions on the sheet include not only practical instructions and dimensions, but also a poetic text, that recalls Nauman's interest in language and play on words.

Zoom + Alexander Ross
(American, born in Denver, Colorado, 1960)
Untitled, 2007
Colored pencil on paper
30 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches (768 x 578 mm)
Purchased as the gift of Whitney B. Armstrong and on the Young Associates Fund for Twentieth-Century Acquisitions; 2008.40

Photography by Kevin Noble, courtesy of David Nolan Gallery, NY.

Alexander Ross established his reputation in the 1990s with paintings and drawings of fanciful images derived from microscopic visions of cellular organisms, merging references to Surrealism, Philip Guston, and science fiction. In this recent drawing, the artist's close observation of nature generates an imaginary landscape made of strange, interlocking forms delicately rendered with colored pencils. Combining volume and flatness, nature and artifice, abstraction and representation, Ross proposes a contemporary vision of nature at once playful and disquieting. This is the first work by this artist to enter the Morgan, where it joins a small but growing collection of twenty-first-century drawings.

Zoom+ Raffaellino Motta da Reggio
(Italian, Codemondo near Reggio Emilia 1550–1578 Rome)
The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, ca. 1576
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over red chalk
15 x 11 1/8 inches (381 x 282 mm)
Inscribed at lower left, in pen and brown ink, Zuchero.
Purchased in honor of Charles E. Pierce, Jr.'s tenure as director by the Visiting Committee to the Department of Drawings and Prints through the generosity of Ildiko Butler, Diane A. Nixon, Andrea Woodner, Hamilton Robinson, Jr., Joan Taub Ades, Clement C. Moore II, Jayne Wrightsman, David M. Tobey, Eugene V. Thaw, George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Seymour and Helen Mae Askin, Catherine G. Curran, Melvin R. Seiden, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, and Wheelock Whitney III; 2007.80

A native of Reggio Emilia, the Late Mannerist painter Raffaellino is said to have arrived in Rome during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–85) or possibly somewhat earlier, and spent the rest of his brief career there. By the time he drew the Dream of St. Joseph, Raffaellino had worked as Giovanni de' Vecchi's assistant on the frescoes in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (ca. 1574) and was working independently on the Loggia of Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican Palace (1575–1577), the Oratorio del Gonfalone, and his only known oil painting, the Tobias and the Angel in the Galleria Borghese. Both Raffaellino's paintings and drawings reveal him to have been a close follower of Taddeo Zuccaro. This recent acquisition is a late compositional study for the fresco The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, painted around 1576 on the vault of the Orsini (later Ghislieri) Chapel in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale in Rome, still extant today. It differs from the fresco in minor details. In the painted version, for instance, the wings of the angel are lowered, whereas in the drawing they are upright. In addition, the secondary biblical episode of the Flight into Egypt has been moved further back in pictorial space; thus in the fresco the warning to Joseph to flee Herod, communicated by an angel appearing in a dream as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13), more emphatically dominates the composition.

Zoom+ Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre
(French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris)
Le Misanthrope
Pen and black ink, brush and gray wash, over black chalk, heightened with white gouache, on blue paper
8 3/4 x 11 inches (220 x 280 mm)

Purchased as the gift of Joan Taub Ades and on the Lois and Walter C. Baker Fund; 2006.5

A prolific painter of history, religious, and genre scenes, Pierre assumed the mantle of premier peintre du roi in 1770, following Boucher's death. He was named director of the Académie Royale the same year. Throughout his career Pierre enjoyed the support of royal and noble patrons and continued the elegant tradition fostered by his mentor, Charles-Joseph Natoire.

This highly finished drawing illustrates a scene from one of Molière's most famous comedies, Le Misanthrope, which was first performed in the theater of the Palais Royal on 4 June 1666. The play is set in fashionable seventeenth-century Paris. Alceste, the title character, is disgusted by humanity's hypocrisy, injustice, and corruption. Nonetheless, he is in love with Célimène, a flirtatious young widow, who surrounds herself with suitors and exemplifies the insincerity that Alceste despises in others. The drawing depicts Alceste with Célimène; her two suitors, Clitandre and Acaste; Alceste's friend Philinte; and Célimène's cousin Éliante. The inscription Non morbleu!, c'est a vous; et vos ris complaisans tirent de son esprit tous ces trais medisants [sic], which may be translated "No, gadzooks! It concerns you; for your assenting laughs draw from her wit all these slanderous remarks," is a line from act 2, scene 4, directed by Alceste to the suitors in response to Clitandre's comment. Clitandre had remarked that if Alceste was offended by what had been said, he should address his reproaches to Célimène and not to them.

This sheet, which has been dated to about 1750–55, is one of three known drawings by Pierre illustrating Molière's works; the other two represent scenes from Le Sicilien and Georges Dandin. The British Museum, London, has a fourth highly finished illustration of a theatrical scene by Pierre (inv. no. 1938-5-17-2), which depicts a scene from Paul Scarron's (1610–60) Don Japhet d'Arménie, first published in 1653. Pierre's inspiration for these theater drawings likely was the series of illustrations for the six-volume edition of Molière's plays published in Paris in 1734 with engravings after designs by Boucher. The fluid and spirited touch of the present drawing makes it a superb example of Pierre's draftsmanship.