Venus and Cupid 

Adam Elsheimer made this drawing, Venus and Cupid, using pen and brown ink, likely in the early 17th century. It’s a quick, fluid sketch, not labored-over in the way that paintings of the period tended to be. The artist has captured a sense of immediacy and intimacy using the bare minimum of materials. The brown ink allowed Elsheimer to create tonal variation through hatching and cross-hatching, and also provided the means for him to outline his forms. The drawing’s raw quality, coupled with the erotic subject matter, creates an interesting tension. This use of drawing as a means of direct expression would increase over the next centuries. It set the stage for the dematerialized aesthetic that became so dominant in modern art. What might seem like a simple drawing, actually signals a profound shift in the artist’s relationship to the means of production.