Anton Løvenberg

Anton Løvenberg was a student at the Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts when he made this careful study of a plaster cast of a muscular male torso. Sketching from plaster casts has long been a step in academic art education, enabling students to study volume and the fall of light on three-dimensional objects. Løvenberg employed an intricate mesh of crosshatched lines that intersect at acute angles while following the curves of the forms they describe. This systematic graphic vocabulary is reminiscent of that found in engravings, which students were also encouraged to copy as part of their training.