Irony

Juan Rexach
St James the Greater and St Giles
ca. 1450-60
tempera and gold on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

Girolamo Romanino
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St James the Greater and St Jerome
ca. 1512
oil on panel
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Marcantonio Raimondi
The Painter Raphael wrapped in a Cloak
ca. 1520
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pieter Pourbus
Portrait of a Young Clergyman
ca. 1560
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giovanni Pietro Possenti
Lot and his Daughters
ca. 1640-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1647
oil on panel
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Mattia Preti (il Cavalier Calabrese)
St Mark
before 1669
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Andrea Procaccini after Carlo Maratti
Cloelia fleeing across the Tiber
ca. 1710
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Sebastiano Ricci
Diana and Callisto
1712-16
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Jonathan Richardson, Senior
Portrait Study of boxer James Figg
1714
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johann Baptist Reiter
Portrait of a Man
1838
oil on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Childhood of St Geneviève
ca. 1877
ink on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Hilla Rebay
Solomon R. Guggenheim
1928
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Philip Reisman
The Bathroom
ca. 1929
etching
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Diego Rivera
Woman and Child in Snow (Moscow Scene)
1956
watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

John Raye
Carnival at Stop & Shop Plaza
ca. 1978
gelatin silver print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

David Robbins
Cindy Sherman
1986
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from Hero and Leander

With that he stripped him to the ivory skin,

And crying, 'Love, I come', leaped lively in.

Whereat the sapphire-visaged god grew proud,

And made his capering Triton sound aloud,

Imagining that Ganymede, displeased,

Had left the heavens; therefore on him seized.

Leander strived; the waves about him wound,

And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground

Was strewed with pearl, and in low coral groves

Sweet singing mermaids sported with their loves

On heaps of heavy gold, and took great pleasure

To spurn in careless sort the shipwreck treasure:

For here the stately azure palace stood,

Where kingly Neptune and his train abode. 

– Christopher Marlowe (1598)