Ovid's "The Art of Love" ("L'art d'aimer" d'Ovide) 1935

Aristide Maillol made this drawing, inspired by Ovid’s “The Art of Love,” probably with conté crayon or sanguine. Can’t you just feel the scratching on the page? I wonder what Maillol was thinking, making this. What was on his mind? The figure has a certain kind of heft, doesn’t she? She seems so grounded in herself, like a tree. And I love the way he used the hatching to give her form, light and shadow, the soft roundness of her back and shoulders. It reminds me a bit of some of Degas’s drawings. But Maillol also had this way of making things feel so… tactile. You want to reach out and touch her, feel the weight of her body. It’s like he’s inviting us to connect with something ancient and elemental, the art of love, you know? And that’s what keeps artists going.