Figure of Young Man or Woman in Bust-length, in Three-Quarter View 1700 - 1713

This drawing was made by Carlo Maratti, sometime in the 17th or early 18th century. Look closely, and you can see it’s made with black chalk on grey paper. Now, chalk is an interesting material. We think of it as commonplace, something used on a blackboard, but in fact, it’s a very refined, friable stone, which crumbles easily and therefore encourages the creation of subtle gradations of tone. Here, Maratti takes full advantage of that quality. You can see how he uses the chalk almost like drypoint, building up tone with closely hatched parallel lines. It’s an inherently laborious process, and you can see the investment of time it implies, particularly in the shadowed area to the left of the figure’s face. Maratti used a very common material with a highly refined, skilled technique. It's an image about focused, skilled work, an aesthetic that persists across artistic disciplines.