Classical Close-ups

Rosalba Carriera
Diana
before 1757
pastel on paper
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Study of Antique Head
ca. 1524-27
drawing
Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe,
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Roman Empire
Bust of Caligula
1st century AD
marble
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Anonymous French Artist
Ariadne
17th century
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Antonino Salamanca
Andromache
ca. 1540-50
etching and engraving
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

Serbaldi da Pescia Pier Maria (il Tagliacarne)
Bust of the Muse Polyhymnia
ca. 1500
porphyry
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Gustaf Magnusson
Antique Head of Apollo
ca. 1925
drawing
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Walter Hege
Head of the Bride Deidameia
West Pediment - Temple of Zeus at Olympia
1935
gelatin silver print
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Philipp Jakob Becker
Bust of Aesculapius
1783-84
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Peter Paul Rubens
Julius Caesar
ca. 1625-26
oil on panel
Leiden Collection, New York

Ancient Greece
Head of Victorious Boxer
330-320 BC
bronze
(statue fragment excavated at Olympia)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

František Tkadlík
Head of the Apollo Belvedere
1808
drawing
Národní Galerie, Prague

Pierre Philippe
Bust of Athena
1662
engraving (book illustration)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Roman Empire
Herm - Bearded Deity
1st century AD
marble
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Johannes Laurentius
Faces of the Roman Empire
(Altes Museum - Gallery View)
2010
photograph
Altes Museum, Berlin

Charley Toorop
Medusa Takes Sea
1939-41
oil on panel
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

"The reader will here find no regions cursed with irremediable barrenness, or blessed with spontaneous fecundity, no perpetual gloom or unceasing sunshine; nor are the nations here described either devoid of all sense of humanity or consummate in all private and social virtues.  . . .  He will discover, what will always be discovered by a diligent and impartial inquirer, that wherever human nature is to be found there is a mixture of vice and virtue, a contest of passion and reason, and that the Creator doth not appear partial in his distributions, but has balanced in most countries their particular inconveniences by particular favours." 

– Samuel Johnson, from the preface to his English translation of A Voyage to Abyssinia. This was originally a manuscript written in the 1660s by Father Jerónimo Lobo, a Portuguese Jesuit, about a mission he had pursued in the 1630s. Lobo's text remained unpublished until translated into French and printed in 1728, the same year Samuel Johnson entered Pembroke College, Oxford – where this French version of Lobo's Voyage was one of the "new" books the young scholar quickly found and read. Thirty years later he would set his own fictional Rasselas in Abyssinia.  

"In 1735, when Johnson's age was twenty-six, and the world seemed to have shut against him every door of hope, Johnson stayed for six months at Birmingham with his old schoolfellow Hector, who was aiming at medical practice, and who lodged at the house of a bookseller.  Johnson spoke with interest of Father Lobo, whose book he had read at Pembroke College.  Mr. Warren, the bookseller, thought it would be worthwhile to print a translation.  Hector joined in urging Johnson to undertake it, for a payment of five guineas.  Although nearly brought to a stop midway by hypochondriac despondency, a little suggestion that the printers also were stopped, and if they had not got their work had not their pay, caused Johnson to go on to the end.  He began work as a professional writer with this translation." 

 – from Henry Morley's introduction to a Victorian reprint of Johnson's translation, 1887