Sunday, July 2, 2017

Renaissance and Baroque Drawings at Museum Kunstpalast

Raphael
Eight Seated Bishops
ca. 1516
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Baglione
Jael and Sisera
1585
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

"And Jael went out to meet Sisera, and said unto him, Turn in, my lord, turn in to me; fear not.  And when he had turned in unto her into the tent, she covered him with a mantle.  And he said unto her, Give me, I pray thee, a little water to drink; for I am thirsty.  She opened a bottle of milk, and gave him drink, and covered him.  Again he said unto her, Stand in the door of the tent, and it shall be, when any man doth come and enquire of thee, and say, Is there any man here? that thou shalt say, No.  Then Jael Heber's wife took a nail of the tent, and took an hammer in her hand, and went softly unto him, and smote the nail into his temples, and fastened it into the ground: for he was fast asleep and weary.  So he died."

 from the Book of Judges (Authorized Version, 1611)

Ludovico Carracci
Figure study for Hercules
1588
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Hendrik Goltzius
Juno
1596
wash drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Hendrik Goltzius
Minerva
1596
wash drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Domenico Maria Canuti
Study for Head of Faun
1635
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Maria Morandi
Boreas abducting Orithyia
1640
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Maria Morandi
Boreas abducting Orithyia
1640
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

"Four sons were born to Erechtheus, and four daughters also.  Of these daughters, two were of equal beauty, of whom thou, Procris, didst make happy in wedlock Cephalus, the grandson of Aeolus.  Boreas was not favoured because of Tereus and the Thracians [since the home of Boreas was in the north, he was included in the hatred felt at Athens for Tereus and the Thracians]; and so the god was long kept from his beloved Orithyia, while he wooed and preferred to use prayers rather than force.  But when he could accomplish nothing by soothing words, rough with anger, which was the north-wind's usual and more natural mood, he said: 'I have deserved it!  For why have I given up my own weapons, fierceness and force, rage and threatening moods, and had recourse to prayers, which do not at all become me?  Force is my fit instrument.  By force I drive on the gloomy clouds, by force I shake the sea, I overturn gnarled oaks, pack hard the snow, and pelt the earth with hail.  So also when I meet my brothers in the open sky  for that is my battleground  I struggle with them so fiercely that the mid-heavens thunder with our meeting and fires leap bursting out of the hollow clouds.  So also when I have entered the vaulted hollows of the earth, and have set my strong back beneath her lowest caverns, I fright the ghosts and the whole world, too, by my heavings.  By this means I should have sought my wife.'"

 from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated for the Loeb Classical Library by Frank Justus Miller (1916)

Guillaume Courtois
Young woman carrying a pot
1645
drawing, colored chalks, blue paper
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Charles Alphonse Dufresnoy
Adoration of the Magi
1628
wash drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Simon Vouet
Man with raised arm behind parapet
1648
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Elisabetta Sirani
Madonna and Child
1660s
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Battista Gaulli
Study for a young man dancing
ca. 1680-82
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Antonio Molinari
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
1690
wash drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf