Reproduction Drawing IV (after the Leonardo Cartoon) 2010

Curator: This is Jenny Saville’s "Reproduction Drawing IV (after the Leonardo Cartoon)," created in 2010. It's a large-scale pencil drawing. What's your first impression? Editor: Chaotic, almost violently tender. Look at the pressure of the pencil, the way lines swarm around those figures. It's like she’s trying to capture the fleeting, messy reality of motherhood. Curator: Saville engages directly with art history here, reworking Leonardo's Burlington House Cartoon. Her choice to reproduce it in such a raw, immediate medium—pencil—highlights the physical act of drawing and its connection to the body. It definitely deviates from traditional drawing. Editor: Absolutely. It feels very deliberately *un*finished, even confrontational. I mean, you can practically feel the graphite dust clinging to the paper. Considering the monumental scale of Saville’s drawings, the sheer labour involved is quite visible, it also speaks volumes about how artistic work is assessed. Curator: I agree. The rawness amplifies the image's emotional intensity. Saville is known for challenging idealized representations of the human body, particularly the female form. Here, she subverts the traditional Madonna and Child motif, presenting a more visceral, less sentimental vision of maternity. How the gallery displays or curators approach artworks matters for cultural appreciation too. Editor: Yes, it forces us to confront the reality of bodies—the weight, the folds, the constant motion, with an emphasis on how that is achieved through materiality and process. I see this drawing as pushing boundaries around the perceived "feminine" art, and labour as an activity. Curator: I think that Saville challenges established power structures within the art world through her subject matter and the imposing scale of her work, as you say. Editor: The drawing asks questions not just about the human body, but the bodies that make art, that are consumed by it, as the final touches rest in a contemporary and traditional form, making us engage differently with similar material of the past. Curator: I see your point about the active audience as something to consider too when engaging with materials! Editor: That's what speaks to me here, too. I leave with a sense that I could feel it with my fingers, and that means success in its ability to capture attention. Curator: I agree. She takes this image from art history and brings it right into our physical space with the visceral quality of the marks on a gigantic surface, not confined to the standard way of thinking.