Friday, May 5, 2017

Northern European Paintings on Copper Surfaces II

Jan Frans Beschey
Assumption of the Virgin
before 1799
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Denys Calvaert
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1605
oil on copper
Royal Collection, Windsor

Connecting Train

When the three sisters came home from the ball, their father was dead.  Next morning, it no longer helped to count the wagons of the freight trains.  A little later the coffee  house on the lower floor was closed down, too, and the garden cleared of garden chairs.  What remained was the off-licence on the other side of the tracks, the umbrella shop and the nunnery that didn't take novices.  They left school.

But even today the green trees give their greeting across the wall, the leaves through which you can blow as if through trumpets.  The May wind sways the black smoke, scattering it.  Children turn off into the Italian Embassy; shortly afterwards white clouds appear in the sky.  The afternoon begins with a promise.

Who will cross the footbridge once more before evening and blow the song through the leaves?  Who will help to count the wagons, and set the garden chairs out again in the smoke?  The bells are ringing from the barracks' church.  The moon is rising.  The night begins with a question.

 poem written in German by Ilse Aichinger (2001), translated by Ron Butlin and Regi Claire for an anthology edited by Iain Galbraith, The Night Begins with a Question : XXV Austrian Poems, 1978-2002 (Carcenet, 2007)

Frans Francken the Younger
Crucifixion of St Andrew
ca. 1620
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Karel van Mander the Elder
Continence of Scipio
1600
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

David Teniers
Judith with the head of Holofernes
1650s
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of a man
1597
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hendrik van der Borcht the Elder
Still-life with collection of curiosities
before 1651
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Gonzales Coques
Family of Jan Baptista Anthoine
1664
oil on copper
Royal Collection, Windsor

Jan Brueghel the Elder
Gypsy Gathering
ca. 1614
oil on copper
Prado, Madrid

Jan Brueghel the Elder
River Landscape
1607
oil on copper
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Izaak van Oosten
Landscape with boats
1650s
oil on copper
Prado, Madrid

Paul Bril
Landscape with goatherds
ca. 1620
oil on copper
Royal Collection, Windsor

Joachim Wtewael
The Golden Age
1605
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Leonaert Bramer
Sorrow of Hecuba
ca. 1630
oil on copper
Prado, Madrid