Monday, October 27, 2025

Ornamental

attributed to Bernardino Luini
Sheet of Studies with Figures in Lunettes
before 1533
drawing
British Museum


Monogrammist I.Q.V. (Italian printmaker)
Ornamental Frame around Coastal View
(School of Fontainebleau)
ca. 1543-44
etching
British Museum

Monogrammist I.Q.V. (Italian printmaker)
Ornamental Frame around Seascape
(School of Fontainebleau)
ca. 1543-44
etching
British Museum

Monogrammist I.Q.V. (Italian printmaker)
Ornamental Frame around Seascape in Roundel
(School of Fontainebleau)
ca. 1543-44
etching
British Museum

Melchior Lorck
Tortoise above Fortified Town
(illustration of motto for an emblem book)
before 1588
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Maria van Oosterwyck
Flowers and Grapes suspended from a Ring
ca. 1670-90
oil on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Fountain
ca. 1690-1700
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Isaac de Moucheron
Twin Fountains with Sphinxes
before 1744
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Giuseppe Galli-Bibiena
Fantastic Arcade with Figures
before 1757
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pietro Antonio Novelli
Dancers
ca. 1775
drawing
(design for book illustration)
British Museum

Daniel Garber
Orchard Hill
1910
oil on canvas
Payne Gallery, Moravian University,
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania

George Laurence Nelson
From the June Garden
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Elizabeth Olds
Burlesque
ca. 1935-40
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Victor Joseph Gatto
Tightrope Walker
after 1938
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Justin O'Brien
Still LIfe
ca. 1956-59
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Richard Lowell Neas
Bibliothèque
1989
screenprinted wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

LeRoy Neiman
Piazza San Marco
2001
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from On the Morning of Christ's Nativity

So when the sun in bed,
Curtained with cloudy red,
    Pillows his chin upon an orient wave,
The flocking shadows pale
Troop to th' infernal jail,
    Each fettered ghost slips to his several grave,
And the yellow-skirted fays
Fly after the night-steeds, leaving their moon-loved maze. 

But see, the Virgin blest
Hath laid her Babe to rest:
    Time is our tedious song should here have ending,
Heaven's youngest teemed star,
Hath fixed her polished car,
    Her sleeping Lord with handmaid lamp attending:
And all about the courtly stable
Bright-harnessed angels sit in order serviceable. 

– John Milton (1629)