The article attempts to chronicle that illustrious art historian’s particular evolution as an ever-provocative investigator of the meaning of drawings. In particular, it tracks his development in his teaching career in America, beginning with his highly instructive and important publications on early Italian prints and drawings for the National Gallery in 1973, and moving through his many different seminars devoted to exhibitions of drawing collections at the Fogg Art Museum, Harvard University. In a methodical way, he continued to expand the questions he asked of drawings, ever anxious to excavate the myriad messages these documents could convey. Such was the magic of his message.