The head of a sleeping baby boy, en face 1520 - 1525

This delicate drawing of a sleeping baby was made by Hans Baldung with graphite on paper sometime in the early 16th century. It's a common enough medium, of course, but look closely and you can see the particular qualities of graphite coming to the fore. The softness of the material allows for subtle gradations of tone, capturing the baby’s rounded features with a gentle touch. Baldung coaxes the most of those inherent qualities, using a technique called silverpoint, that requires an especially high level of skill and control. The fine lines and hatched shading create a sense of volume, while the slightly grainy texture gives the drawing a soft, ethereal quality. But in the end, the drawing's intimacy surely stems from the immense time involved in rendering the head so realistically. The careful handling of material, and the labor-intensive process, seem especially appropriate when depicting a tiny child, newly arrived in the world. It's an act of care, mirrored in the image itself.