
WORKING WATTEAU
AT THE LOUVRE, STANDING in front of one of Watteau’s working drawings, Deux études de corps nus (Two studies of nude bodies, ca. 1715–16), I notice that over a reclining male nude the artist has lightly sketched, sideways on the page, a standing female nude. I’m looking at a picture of opposite sexes joined at the crotch, their flesh responding to gravity from different directions, and I think, This seems modern.
I’ve never cared for Watteau’s paintings; they share a place in my heart with wedding cake. In his drawings, however, cloying 18th-century mannerisms are secondary to knowledge of anatomy,