Skulpturudkast 1731 - 1802

This is Skulpturudkast, a drawing by Johannes Wiedewelt, made sometime in the 1700s. The medium here is pen on paper, a classic combination, but one that has its own resonance. You see, the monument this drawing proposes would have been made of stone, likely marble. This material, quarried with great human effort, was the very stuff of empires. But here, it is translated into a humble, linear sketch. The ease with which the artist's pen glides across the page is a counterpoint to the immense labor required to produce a monumental sculpture. This drawing is a vital step in the process, one in which the hand and the mind come together to give form to ideas, before they are rendered in much more expensive and permanent materials. This emphasizes that while the final product is impressive, it's the initial spark of creativity, captured here on paper, that truly matters. The social context of artistic production comes alive in the contrast between the grandiosity of the sculpture and the modesty of its initial conception.