Day 0016

It was the last day of the Andrea del Sarto drawings exhibition at the Frick Collection today, so I hopped on a bus and spent the afternoon there. Before getting down to a copy of one of his drawings I spent some time with the permanent collection. I was particularly drawn to Jan van Eyck's Virgin and Child with Saints and Donor. It is rich with the most delicate details, from pearls embroidered on fabric to swans in the distant river to the individually-painted fronds of the rug. You can lose yourself in it and constantly discover something new. Why the curators have decided to place a table in front of their collection's most minutely detailed work is beyond me. It needs close inspection to enjoy properly.

I worked in front of Andrea del Sarto's Studies of the Head of an Infant (which was on loan from the Uffizi) for about an hour and a half to do today's drawing. I was gratified to receive lots of compliments and an offer to buy it. The grave risk of this is that I get so excited over such minor success that I forgive myself all of the errors and begin to think it is good. I had to stop and actually just look at the original to see how unapproachable it is from mine. All of the softness and sweetness of expression is lost in my attempt, and the technique is crude to say the least. His marks are so fluent, unerring. One of the big benefits of copying a master is you gain a first-hand knowledge of how hard the problems he solved were, and through the labour you gain a new type of respect for his genius.