ABSTRACT
In 1834, the German painter Johann Erdmann Hummel devoted a drawing to the famous founding myth of fine art (fig. 1), passed down by Pliny and highly popular in the late eighteenth century. Pliny reports that the Corinthian potter Butades had invented portrait-like pictures in clay with the help of his daughter Debutadis, who “for the love of a departing young man, outlined on the wall the shadow of his profile by the light of a lamp.”. 1 While most other pictures of the subject from around 1800 concentrate on Debutadis and thus on disegno as the master art,. 2 Hummel shows us a twofold scene. 3 We see the potter's workshop, where the old Butadis is seated at a potter's wheel. While his hands form useful vessels out of formless clay, his eyes follow his daughter's drawing. In Pliny's story, Butadis thereupon filled the outline on the wall with clay and fired the likeness along with other sundry items. Clay, the “primordial material” in Gottfried Semper's terminology, serves for both common objects and for fine art, with its high aim of producing lasting memory. Thanks to the transfer of the outlined picture on the wall into clay, the image became independent of its location and could be traded and transported, like pots. Following Pliny, Hummel combined high and low– drawing and the production of useful things. Johann Erdmann Hummel, <italic>The Invention of Drawing</italic>, 1834, Berlin, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, Kupferstichkabinett An illustration depicts a pottery workshop. In the foreground, a man sits on a stool, holding a woman's hand who stands behind him and draws on a wall. Another person holds a pot, while an older man is engaged in shaping a pot. Shelves filled with pottery items line the background walls. A cat is present in the lower right corner of the scene, adding a domestic touch to the workshop environment. https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xlink:href="https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781003697329/ab8c022b-5032-48de-8c3c-c2fc60292625/content/pg31_1.jpg"/>
