Etude de femme drapée 

Narcisse-Virgilio Diaz created this study of a draped woman in sanguine pencil sometime in the mid-19th century. As an academic study, the image reflects the institutional training that Diaz would have undergone in Paris. Notice how he’s carefully attended to the rendering of classical drapery, the fall of the cloth across the figure’s body. This relates to the status of drawing, particularly figure drawing, within the French academy. This painstaking observation and accurate translation of the three-dimensional form onto a two-dimensional surface, was seen as fundamental to artistic practice. But it’s worth remembering that access to this kind of training was highly regulated, and for a long time, was limited to men. To fully understand the nuances of an artwork like this, we can consult archival records from the academy itself, tracing the evolving debates around artistic training and the place of women within it.