Boucher, The Invention of Drawing (18th century)

In this brown chalk drawing on paper Boucher takes up the subject of a story recounted by Pliny the Elder that attributes the invention of drawing to the daughter of Butades, a Corinthian potter, who had fallen deeply in love with a young man. The youth was set to leave Corinth, and the young maiden drew the outline of his shadow, cast by a lamp on a wall, to preserve his memory during his absence. In the drawing we see the young woman (the standing figure), with her arm outstretched, drawing implement in hand, tracing the outline of the shadow of the young man seated in front of her, who is conversing with another figure, perhaps the young girl’s father. Her face is turned completely away from them and towards the shadow she is outlining. She is not looking at the subject of her drawing. Or is she? Is the subject of her drawing the flesh and blood figure in front of her, or is it in fact the shadow that she is tracing that is the subject? In a crystalline echo of the Platonic idea that painters and poets are imitators of shadows, that they are twice removed from the truth of the world of Forms, the drawing is perhaps saying that drawing only represents shadows of the world that we know, momentary aspects of outward experience.