Jacques-Louis David

The present work is drawn in David's characteristic combination of pen and brown ink and grey wash over a very fine black chalk outline. The brown ink inscription featured on our drawing can also be found, though in black chalk, on a sheet in the collection of the Morgan Library, New York, depicting a Banquet Scene Copied from the Grimani Altar, Museo Archeologico, Venice.¹ Like the Morgan Library sheet, our drawing shows David's interest in documenting the paintings, sculptures and antiquities he saw during his time in Italy, with the dancing Maenad depicted in the present work similarly derived from an antiquity in the Grimani collection. 

David was in Rome from 1775 to 1780, during which time he made many drawings after works of art of all periods which he studied in the city. On his return to Paris he mounted them in several albums, organized by subject. He kept the albums in his studio until his death, at which time his sons, Jules and Eugène, broke up the albums and composed them into 12 different albums, probably to make them more saleable. At this time they put their paraphes on the drawings to establish their authenticity. Although two albums went to the Louvre, the others seem to have remained in the family. For an extremely impressive and comprehensive discussion of the composition and history of the albums, see P. Rosenberg and L.-A. Prat, Jacques-Louis David 1748-1825, Catalogue raisonné des dessins, Milan 2002, vol. 1, pp. 391-407. This drawing comes from Album 10 which was dismembered in 1958 by Germain Seligman.

1. New York, The Morgan Library, inv. no. 1978.42:2