The Menil Collection | Saskia Verlaan: Menil Drawing Institute Pre-Doctoral Fellow Lecture

In the winters of 1968 and 1971, Cy Twombly created a series of works on paper incorporating reproductions of drawings by Leonardo da Vinci. While Twombly regularly alluded to famous works of art, direct visual citations of this kind rarely feature in his output.

Although occasionally mentioned in broader discussions on the artist, this series has never received sustained scholarly attention.

In this lecture, Verlaan explores Twombly’s critical engagement with the work of da Vinci both in terms of his practice of drawing and his identity as an American artist living in Italy.