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| Jacopo Amiconi Woman dressed for masked ball before 1752 drawing on blue paper Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| attributed to Jacopo Amiconi Portrait of a daughter of King George II before 1752 drawing on blue paper Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Jacopo Amiconi David and Abigail before 1752 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| François Boucher Diana and two nymphs before 1770 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
Religio Medici
God's own best will bide the test
And God's own worst will fall;
But, best or worst or last or first,
He ordereth it all.
For all is good, if understood,
(Ah, could we understand!)
And right and ill are tools of skill
Held in His either hand.
The harlot and the anchorite,
The martyr and the rake,
Deftly He fashions each aright,
Its vital part to take.
Wisdom He makes to form the fruit
Where the high blossoms be;
And Lust to kill the weaker shoot,
And Drink to trim the tree.
And Holiness that so the bole
Be solid at the core;
And Plague and Fever, that the whole
Be changing evermore.
He chokes the infant throat with slime,
He sets the ferment free;
He builds the tiny tube of lime
That blocks the artery.
He lets the youthful dreamer store
Great projects in his brain,
Until He drops the fungus spore
That smears them out again.
He stores the milk that feeds the babe,
He dulls the tortured nerve;
He gives a hundred joys to sense
Where few or none might serve.
And still He trains the branch of good
Where the high blossoms be,
And wieldeth still the sheers of ill
To prune and prune His tree.
– Arthur Conan Doyle, from Songs of the Road (London: Smith, Elder, 1911)
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| Giovanni Domenico Campiglia Medici Venus ca. 1730 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| John Flaxman Massacre of the Britons at Stonehenge 1783 drawing (design for sculpted frieze) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| John Flaxman Massacre of the Britons at Stonehenge 1783 drawing (design for sculpted frieze) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| John Hamilton Mortimer Apollo embracing a bust of author John Gay (design for frontispiece to Bell's British Theatre) ca. 1777 drawing Morgan Library, New York |
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| Hubert Robert Traveler gazing at a monumental vase in the garden of the Maronite Convent in Rome 1764 drawing National Gallery of Canada |
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| George Romney Flaxman modelling the bust of Hayley 1795 drawing Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Gabriel de Saint-Aubin Interior of the artist's studio 1780 drawing British Museum |
"E. Dacier quotes M.A. Staring's view of this drawing [directly above], which sees it as symbolic of the artist's approaching death, with the lamp reversed, the inscription below the crucified Christ, the Magdalen (symbol of repentance), and the artist's mannequin in the attitude of death. Saint Aubin died in February 1780 in extreme poverty and dissolution. His studio (of which a corner is shown here) was spectacularly filthy and disorganised."
– curator's notes from the British Museum
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| Sir Stuart Threipland Académie ca. 1740 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Sir Stuart Threipland Académie ca. 1740 drawing National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Carle Vanloo Agony in the Garden 1760 drawing Getty Museum, Los Angeles |