Sunday, August 20, 2017

Drawings from Rome

Giovanni Francesco Penni
Madonna and Child in Glory with Saint
ca. 1514-20
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Domenico Campagnola
Temple of Vesta, Rome
ca. 1530-60
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Anonymous Roman artist after Michelangelo
Right arm, with head study
ca. 1550-1600
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Marco Marchetti
Roman General receiving tribute from Barbarians
before 1588
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

A QUINCE PRESERVED THROUGH THE WINTER, GIVEN TO A LADY

I'm a quince, saved over from last year, still fresh,
               my skin young, not spotted or wrinkled, downy as the new-born,
as though I were still among my leaves. Seldom
               does winter yield such gifts, but for you, my queen,
even the snows and frosts bear harvests like this.

 an epigram by Antiphilus of Byzantium, from the Palatine Anthology, translated by W.S. Merwin

Federico Zuccaro
Demons in grotesque attitudes
before 1609
drawing
Royal Collection, Windsor

Andrea Sacchi
St Anthony of Padua raising man from the dead
ca. 1632-33
drawing for altarpiece
British Museum

ON THEODOROS

Someone is glad that I, Theodoros, am dead
Another will be glad when that someone is dead
We are all in arrears to death

 an epigram by Simonides (ca. 556-466 BC), translated by Peter Jay

Claude Lorrain
View of the Tiber at Rome
ca. 1635-40
wash drawing
Nelson Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Anonymous Roman artist
Figure astride clouds, di sotto in su
ca. 1640-80
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

ACHILLES GIVES THE BODY OF HECTOR TO PRIAM

Then Achilles called the serving-women out:
"Bathe and anoint the body 
bear it aside first. Priam must not see his son."
He feared that, overwhelmed by the sight of Hector,
wild with grief, Priam might let his anger flare
and Achilles might fly into fresh rage himself,
cut the old man down and break the laws of Zeus.
So when the maids had bathed and anointed the body
sleek with olive oil and wrapped it round and round
in a braided battle-shirt and handsome battle-cape,
then Achilles lifted Hector up in his own arms
and laid him down on a bier, and comrades helped him
raise the bier and body on to the sturdy wagon . . .
Then with a groan he called his dear friend by name:
"Feel no anger at me, Patroclus, if you learn 
even in the House of Death – I let his father
have Prince Hector back."

 from the Iliad of Homer (book 24), translated by Robert Fagles

Giuseppe Belloni
Constantine the Great commissions Basilica of S. Giovanni in Laterano
ca. 1656-76
drawing
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Giovanni Battista Gaulli
St Augustine's vision of the Trinity
before 1689
drawing for engraving
British Museum

Luigi Garzi
Minerva descending with her aegis to protect Arts and Sciences from Time
before 1721
drawing for ceiling fresco
British Museum

Jacob Frey after Carlo Maratti
Drawing Academy 
1728
engraving (after Carlo Maratti drawing)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Luigi Vanvitelli
Design for a marble throne for statue of St Peter at the Vatican
1754
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand
Piazza del Popolo, Rome
ca. 1754
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum