OBERLIN, OH.- The Allen Memorial Art Museum at Oberlin College presents On Line: European Drawings, 16th–19th Centuries, an exhibition of Old Master drawings from all of the major European schools and dating from the Renaissance to the dawn of the 20th century. On Line: European Drawings will be on view in the museum's Ripin Gallery.

Selected from the Allen’s outstanding permanent collection, the exhibition includes works by Filippino Lippi, Peter Paul Rubens, Guercino, Giambattista and Giandomenico Tiepolo, Anthony Frederick Sandys, Edgar Degas and Georges Seurat.

Of particular note is a meticulously-drawn portrait by Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, showing Elise Dosne, the 15-year-old bride of the recently-appointed Minister of the Interior of France, Louis-Adolphe Thiers.

The drawing may show great unhappiness. Elise was the daughter of a rich financier whose wife was assumed by contemporaries to have been Thiers’s mistress. The union between Elise and the much older Thiers was no marriage of love; it appears to have been arranged to fulfill a contract between him and her parents.

Another highlight is Filippino Lippi's "Lamentation of Christ at the Tomb," drawn in about 1500 with pen and brown ink, with additions of brown wash and white heightening over black chalk. Resembling a painting in its effect, the drawing shows the dead Christ supported on the edge of his tomb by Nicodemus or Joseph of Arimathaea with angels to either side holding Christ's arms.

The exhibition was organized by Andria Derstine, Curator of Western Art at the AMAM.

"The Allen's collection of European drawings is very strong, containing superb examples of many different types," Derstine says. "There are compositional studies for larger works, quick sketches to capture a pose, architectural plans, and finished works in their own right."

"Because drawings are fragile and cannot be exhibited for long periods of time due to their sensitivity to light, the opportunity to view a large selection of the Allen's drawings is exciting."