No one paints the unstudied, unglamorous human figure with quite the visceral intensity of Lucian Freud. His incisive strokes carve out volumes with such vivid plasticity that skin can seem as viscous as paint itself, almost unbearably organic. His nudes seem truly, flinchingly, naked. His images would seem savagely indulgent, were it not for his virtuosic powers of observation and modeling.

Mr. Freud’s thick colors are so integral to this effect that you might expect his graphic work to be comparatively tame. But this is hardly the case, as a small but elegant exhibition at Faggionato demonstrates. Mr. Freud has produced 50 etchings since he first began exploring the medium in the 1940s, and these nine prints from 1990-96 show that his line has considerable power in its own right.

Mr. Freud’s acidic temperament acquires a focused leanness in such prints as “Woman With an Arm Tattoo” (1996) which despite the economy of means, imparts a remarkable pictorial breadth to a heavy-set woman’s upper torso and face. A shoulder’s curve leads to the series of inverted arcs under the chin, then to a “staircase” of facets that describe facial features, and finally to the curve of a far, second shoulder. The expansive pacing of these elements brings home the figure’s massiveness in a way mere description never could.

Look closely, and you’ll see that the entire image consists of delicate lines, subtly varied in purpose. Fine parallels convey the iridescence of hair, more irregular textures construct the pleats of her garment, and patches of irregular scratchings (they might represent pores or sparse hairs) model the sitter’s fleshy volumes. Asleep or in a bored daze, the sitter leans heavily on a hand that further compresses her blunt features. She could represent the very antithesis of classical idealism. Still, Mr. Freud’s penetrating appraisal doesn’t seem cruel; There’s a measure of generosity in his urge to do pictorial justice to the totality of his subject.

“Woman Sleeping” (1995) features the same figure, again leaning on one hand, this time depicted nude and at full length. With no indication of background, she seems oddly suspended in space, as if a kind of orbiting specimen. But her gesture – with legs extending muscularly from the robust arcs of her body – has such compact force that it commands the entire sheet of paper.

The near-overhead view of a prone figure in “Head and Shoulders of a Girl” (1990) repeats a format familiar from Mr. Freud’s painted works. Here, delicate but insistent arcs establish the horizontal drive of the figure’s naked upper torso across the paper. As in some of his other portraits, the facial features are unnaturally dark, as if the artist’s fierce analysis had left them ruddied. This leaves the disquieting impression of the model serving as both catalyst and prey of the artist’s intense purposes.

Mr. Freud’s point of empathy appears to be inevitably connected to his sitter’s volumetric presence, but at moments one senses an almost wistful connection with his subject’s personality – in the sensitive modeling of features in the close-up portrait titled “Susanna” (1991), for instance, or the hint of a smile in “Bella in Her Pluto T-Shirt” (1995).

This last etching, which uses the Matissean device of a figure half-contained by the sweep of an armchair, is notable for its rich textures and tones. The darkly crosshatched background lends luminosity to the lights of skin and T-shirt, while the chair’s intricately rendered caning enhances the impression of deep containment.

Though not heightened by Mr. Freud’s astringent color, these etchings are in many ways as impressive as his paintings. In fact, they control the expanse of their surfaces with an agility not always apparent in his canvases, especially his larger paintings, in which color areas tend to compete instead of settling into a hierarchy of pictorial weights.

In Mr. Freud’s paintings you won’t find anything quite like Matisse’s or Courbet’s comprehensive, accumulating urgency of color – an arabesque, in which colors animate, say, the way a figure’s pose finds resolution in the details of a hand. In these etchings, however, you do find this effect of details working toward unique and indispensable roles.

Consider “Four Figures” (1991), an etching actually comprised of a pair of separate studies. At some point in his studio, the sight of a single reclining model, her figure foreshortened by a leaning pose, must have irresistibly tempted Mr. Freud. With graceful cross-hatching, he masterfully conveys the varieties of illumination of the figure’s rounding forms, which overlap and lead to one another with gathering intensity so that the distance from head to foot seems, finally, a momentous expansion of the sheet’s surface.

This is a concentrated, complex effort, with diverse details building toward a climactic whole – a small miracle in any artistic age. Judging by her expression, the model was mildly bored by the proceedings. But we get to see the results, and wonder, who could ask for more?

Until August 6 (42 E. 76th Street, between Park and Madison Avenues, 212-737-9761). Prices: $20,000-$65,000.