Sketchy red figures tumble across fragments of great paintings: they slip down the frets of the lute in Holbein’s The Ambassadors; where Wright of Derby’s lecturer experiments on a cockatoo with an air pump, threatening to suffocate it, they blow the breath of life into the instrument.
The drawings take on a life of their own – they give new limbs to Susannah in Guido Reni’s painting, so that she is ready to fight back against her molesters, the Elders. They draw our attention to the mourners around the Deposition by the Master of the Saint Bartholomew Altarpiece, echoing in scarlet lines the fringe of blood that pours from Christ’s head.
