"The Nativity" and "Saint James,"
+ Zoom "Saint James," French & Latin. Horae ad usum Romanum. [Paris: Jean Du Pré or Chablis: Jean Le Rouge] for Antoine Vérard, 2 Sept. 1485. PML 129974; ChL1447C. Purchased as the gift of the B. H. Breslauer Foundation and on the B. H. Breslauer Foundation Fund, the Curt F. Bühler Fund, the Lathrop C. Harper Fund, and the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2007.

This is the earliest illustrated book of hours printed in France and also the first known publication of Antoine Vérard, who would go on to produce many other editions of this perennial bestseller. It is possible that he published earlier editions that have disappeared entirely, but this one has all the marks of a pioneering venture in its tentative typography and archaic woodcuts (the origins of which have yet to be established). Following his example, other printers and booksellers would develop new and more sophisticated styles of decorating and illustrating this devotional text, which had been a staple of the Paris book trade even before the invention of printing, but which would reach an entirely new reading public in consequence of the publishing innovations evident in this sole surviving copy, unknown to bibliographical scholarship until 1966.

Binding. Francisco de Vargas Mejia (1484–1560). Lettres et memoires de François de Vargas, de Pierre de Malvenda, et de quelques evêques d'Espagne touchant le concile de Trente. Translated and edited by Michel Le Vassor. Amsterdam: Chez Pierre Brunel, 1699. PML 195033. Purchased on the Gordon N. Ray Fund, 2008.

Le Vassor dedicated his translation of Vargas's Lettres et mémoires to the English statesman William Trumbull, who had allowed him to consult manuscripts about the Council of Trent in the Trumbull family library. This is the dedication copy in an elegant gold-tooled red morocco presentation binding by the Double Drawer Handle Bindery, thought to have been the "most important Amsterdam workshop of the eighteenth century." Since Le Vassor would have sent Trumbull this copy as soon as the book was published, he must have commissioned the binding in or soon after 1699, just a year or two after this workshop had been established.

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(American, born in Fort Wayne, Indiana, 1941)
Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II), 1975
Graphite on paper
30 5/8 x 39 7/8 inches (778 x 1013 mm)
Inscription: Diamond Mind/Circle of Tears/Fallen All Around me/Fallen Mind/Mindless Tears/Cut like a Diamond/Layout -/12 pc. stone 7 1/2º Rhomboids/Granite 15" on a side.
Gift of the Modern and Contemporary Collectors' Committee; 2008.10

Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.
© 2008 Bruce Nauman / Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

One of the most influential American artists of the Post-Minimalist generation that gained prominence in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Nauman produced sculpture, performance, video, photography, and film. A superb draftsman, he created a large body of drawings that reveal the creative process behind his works in other mediums. Untitled (Study for Diamond Mind II)is a preliminary drawing for a sculpture composed of twelve rhomboid blocks distributed in concentric circles, now in the collection of the Kröller-Müller Museum in Otterlo, The Netherlands. In the drawing, Nauman worked out the placement of the blocks. Arrows, corrections, and erasures show the artist thinking his way through the particular space of the installation. Inscriptions on the sheet include not only practical instructions and dimensions, but also a poetic text, that recalls Nauman's interest in language and play on words.

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(American, born in Denver, Colorado, 1960)
Untitled, 2007
Colored pencil on paper
30 1/4 x 22 3/4 inches (768 x 578 mm)
Purchased as the gift of Whitney B. Armstrong and on the Young Associates Fund for Twentieth-Century Acquisitions; 2008.40

Photography by Kevin Noble, courtesy of David Nolan Gallery, NY.

Alexander Ross established his reputation in the 1990s with paintings and drawings of fanciful images derived from microscopic visions of cellular organisms, merging references to Surrealism, Philip Guston, and science fiction. In this recent drawing, the artist's close observation of nature generates an imaginary landscape made of strange, interlocking forms delicately rendered with colored pencils. Combining volume and flatness, nature and artifice, abstraction and representation, Ross proposes a contemporary vision of nature at once playful and disquieting. This is the first work by this artist to enter the Morgan, where it joins a small but growing collection of twenty-first-century drawings.

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(Italian, Codemondo near Reggio Emilia 1550–1578 Rome)
The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, ca. 1576
Pen and brown ink and brown wash, over red chalk
15 x 11 1/8 inches (381 x 282 mm)
Inscribed at lower left, in pen and brown ink, Zuchero.
Purchased in honor of Charles E. Pierce, Jr.'s tenure as director by the Visiting Committee to the Department of Drawings and Prints through the generosity of Ildiko Butler, Diane A. Nixon, Andrea Woodner, Hamilton Robinson, Jr., Joan Taub Ades, Clement C. Moore II, Jayne Wrightsman, David M. Tobey, Eugene V. Thaw, George L.K. Frelinghuysen, Seymour and Helen Mae Askin, Catherine G. Curran, Melvin R. Seiden, Hubert and Mireille Goldschmidt, and Wheelock Whitney III; 2007.80

A native of Reggio Emilia, the Late Mannerist painter Raffaellino is said to have arrived in Rome during the pontificate of Gregory XIII (1572–85) or possibly somewhat earlier, and spent the rest of his brief career there. By the time he drew the Dream of St. Joseph, Raffaellino had worked as Giovanni de' Vecchi's assistant on the frescoes in the Villa Farnese at Caprarola (ca. 1574) and was working independently on the Loggia of Pope Gregory XIII in the Vatican Palace (1575–1577), the Oratorio del Gonfalone, and his only known oil painting, the Tobias and the Angel in the Galleria Borghese. Both Raffaellino's paintings and drawings reveal him to have been a close follower of Taddeo Zuccaro. This recent acquisition is a late compositional study for the fresco The Apparition of the Angel to St. Joseph, painted around 1576 on the vault of the Orsini (later Ghislieri) Chapel in the church of San Silvestro al Quirinale in Rome, still extant today. It differs from the fresco in minor details. In the painted version, for instance, the wings of the angel are lowered, whereas in the drawing they are upright. In addition, the secondary biblical episode of the Flight into Egypt has been moved further back in pictorial space; thus in the fresco the warning to Joseph to flee Herod, communicated by an angel appearing in a dream as recounted in the Gospel of Matthew (2:13), more emphatically dominates the composition.

Zoom+ Jean-Baptiste-Marie Pierre
(French, Paris 1714–1789 Paris)
Le Misanthrope
Pen and black ink, brush and gray wash, over black chalk, heightened with white gouache, on blue paper
8 3/4 x 11 inches (220 x 280 mm)

Purchased as the gift of Joan Taub Ades and on the Lois and Walter C. Baker Fund; 2006.5

A prolific painter of history, religious, and genre scenes, Pierre assumed the mantle of premier peintre du roi in 1770, following Boucher's death. He was named director of the Académie Royale the same year. Throughout his career Pierre enjoyed the support of royal and noble patrons and continued the elegant tradition fostered by his mentor, Charles-Joseph Natoire.

This highly finished drawing illustrates a scene from one of Molière's most famous comedies, Le Misanthrope, which was first performed in the theater of the Palais Royal on 4 June 1666. The play is set in fashionable seventeenth-century Paris. Alceste, the title character, is disgusted by humanity's hypocrisy, injustice, and corruption. Nonetheless, he is in love with Célimène, a flirtatious young widow, who surrounds herself with suitors and exemplifies the insincerity that Alceste despises in others. The drawing depicts Alceste with Célimène; her two suitors, Clitandre and Acaste; Alceste's friend Philinte; and Célimène's cousin Éliante. The inscription Non morbleu!, c'est a vous; et vos ris complaisans tirent de son esprit tous ces trais medisants [sic], which may be translated "No, gadzooks! It concerns you; for your assenting laughs draw from her wit all these slanderous remarks," is a line from act 2, scene 4, directed by Alceste to the suitors in response to Clitandre's comment. Clitandre had remarked that if Alceste was offended by what had been said, he should address his reproaches to Célimène and not to them.

This sheet, which has been dated to about 1750–55, is one of three known drawings by Pierre illustrating Molière's works; the other two represent scenes from Le Sicilien and Georges Dandin. The British Museum, London, has a fourth highly finished illustration of a theatrical scene by Pierre (inv. no. 1938-5-17-2), which depicts a scene from Paul Scarron's (1610–60) Don Japhet d'Arménie, first published in 1653. Pierre's inspiration for these theater drawings likely was the series of illustrations for the six-volume edition of Molière's plays published in Paris in 1734 with engravings after designs by Boucher. The fluid and spirited touch of the present drawing makes it a superb example of Pierre's draftsmanship.