Wednesday, July 26, 2017

European Drawings from the 1590s

Johannes Stradanus
Printers at Work
ca. 1590
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Anonymous artist working in Bologna
Madonna and Child
ca. 1590-1600
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Hendrik Goltzius
Classical Statue known as the Albani Faun
1590-91
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Cristofano Roncalli
Hellenistic sculpture known as the Dying Alexander
ca. 1590-1620
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

The Burning Babe

As I in hoary winter's night
   Stood shivering in the snow,
Surprised I was with sudden heat,
   Which made my heart to glow.

And lifting up a fearful eye
   To view what fire was near,
A pretty Babe all burning bright
   Did in the air appear;

Who, scorched with excessive heat,
   Such floods of tears did shed,
As though his floods should quench his flames
   Which with his tears were fed.

'Alas', quoth he, 'but newly born
   In fiery heats I fry,
Yet none approach to warm their hearts,
   Or feel my fire, but I.

'My faultless breast the furnace is,
   The fuel wounding thorns;
Love is the fire, and sighs the smoke,
  The ashes, shame and scorns;

'The fuel Justice layeth on,
   And Mercy blows the coals;
The metal in this furnace wrought
   Are men's defiled souls:

'For which, as now on fire I am
   To work them to their good,
So will I melt into a bath
   To wash them in my blood.'

With this he vanished out of sight
  And swiftly shrunk away,
And straight I called unto mind
   That it was Christmas day.

– by Robert Southwell, SJ (written 1586-92, published 1602)

Cristofano Roncalli
Study of Head
ca. 1590-1620
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Girolamo Muziano
Christ driving Money-changers from the Temple
before 1592
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Girolamo Muziano
Raising of Lazarus
before 1592
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Jacopo Tintoretto
Studies for Samson slaying the Philistines
before 1594
chalk drawing
Morgan Library, New York

from The Tragedie of Dido, Queene of Carthage (1594)

Aeneas: Then he unlockt the Horse, and suddenly
From out his entrails, Neoptolemus
Setting his spear upon the ground, leapt forth,
And after him a thousand Grecians more,
In whose sterne faces shin'd the quenchles fire,
That after burnt the pride of Asia.
By this the Campe was come unto the walles,
And through the breach did march into the streetes,
Where meeting with the rest, kill kill they cryed.
Frighted with this confused noyse, I rose,
And looking from a turret, might behold
Young infants swimming in their parents bloud,
Headles carkasses piled up in heapes,
Virgins halfe dead dragged by their golden haire,
And with maine force flung on a ring of pikes,
Old men with swords thrust through their aged sides,
Kneeling for mercie to a Greekish lad,
Who with steele pol-axes dasht out their braines.
Then buckled I mine armour, drew my sword,
And thinking to goe down, came Hectors ghost
With ashie visage, blewish sulphure eyes,
His armes torne from his shoulders, and his breast
Furrowd with wounds, and that which made me weepe,
Thongs at his heeles, by which Achilles horse
Drew him in triumph through the Greekish Campe,
Burst from the earth, crying, Aeneas flye,
Troy is a fire, the Grecians have the towne.

– by Christopher Marlowe and Thomas Nashe, translated and adapted from Book 2 of Virgil's Aeneid 

Guido Reni
Birth of the Virgin
ca. 1595-1600
wash drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Jan Brueghel the Younger
Landscape with Tobias and the Angel
ca. 1595-96
wash drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Christoph Murer
Cartoon for Stained-glass Window
1598
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni de' Vecchi
St John the Evangelist
1598-99
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Annibale Carracci
Study of Ignudo for Farnese Gallery Fresco
1598-99
drawing
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Francesco Brizio
Ulisse Aldrovandi presenting his book Ornithologiae to Pope Clement VIII in Bologna
ca. 1599
drawing - print-study for frontispiece
Royal Collection, Windsor