Monday, October 17, 2016

17th-century Drawings from the Morgan Library

Willem van Mieris
Apollo slaying Python
1690
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

In the first chapter of the Iliad, the god Apollo is responsible for sending plague by shooting arrows among the humans, and equally responsible for lifting the plague after a suitable interval of time has passed and suitable pleas have been heard. He founded his sanctuary at Delphi by killing the Python who guarded it for the archaic earth goddess Gaia. "Feared for their deadly venom, perhaps striking archetypical psychological chords of terror, the frightening aspects of snakes finds expression more in myth and art than in cult. Snakes (or 'dragons') were born of the earth or of the drops of Titans' blood; they are entwined in the Gorgon's hair, coiled around the body of Cerberus, accompany the Furies, and are sent by Hera to kill baby Hercules and his twin. . . . Probably evoking their hidden, secretive natural habitat of crevices and the world of 'under' in general, snakes were associated with chthonian powers. They were linked either with what emerges from the earth, such as trees or springs, or what is placed inside it, such as foundations of houses and altars, or graves." 

 from the Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth (Oxford University Press, 1996)

attributed to Francesco Antonio Meloni
Studies of hands 
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Salvator Rosa
Hooded man carrying a book
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Bartolomeo Schedoni
Turbaned figures
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

attributed to Herman van Swanevelt
Temple at Tivoli
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Jacob Jordaens
Head of a woman
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Nicolas Lagneau
Head of a Man
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Eustache Le Sueur
Stooping man
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Giovanni Stefano Montalto
Design for a pendentive with figure of a woman
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Beranrdo Strozzi
Lucretia
early 17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Anonymous French artist
Ideal figure
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

attributed to Ercole Procaccini
Heads of man and putto
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Johannes Thopas
Portrait of a woman
1654
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Adriaen van Ostade
Two views of a peasant from behind
17th century
drawing
Morgan Library, New York