Friday, June 15, 2018

Miniature Portraits in Ivory Relief

Joachim Henne
Miniature half-length portrait of unknown woman
ca. 1666
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Jean Cavalier
Miniature profile portrait of unknown woman
ca. 1685-98
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

David Le Marchand
Miniature profile portrait of David Melville,
3rd Earl of Leven and 2nd Earl of Melville
ca. 1696-1700
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

David Le Marchand
Miniature profile portrait of Mary Voyce
ca. 1712
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

David Le Marchand
Miniature profile portrait of Charles Marbury
before 1726
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gaspar van der Hagen
Miniature portrait of Sir Isaac Newton
ca. 1740-69
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gaspar van der Hagen
Miniature profile portrait of Alexander Pope
ca. 1740-69
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gaspar van der Hagen
Miniature profile portrait of Inigo Jones
ca. 1740-69
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gaspar van der Hagen
Miniature profile portrait of John Milton
ca. 1740-69
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Gaspar van der Hagen
Miniature profile portrait of King George II
ca. 1740-69
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous sculptor working in England
Miniature profile portrait of unknown woman
ca. 1750
ivory relief mounted on wood
Victoria & Albert Museum

Richard Cockle Lucas
Miniature profile portrait of Julius Caesar
ca. 1840-65
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Richard Cockle Lucas
Miniature profile portrait of Alexander the Great
ca. 1840-65
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

Richard Cockle Lucas
Miniature profile portrait of Jupiter
ca. 1840-65
ivory relief
Victoria & Albert Museum

"How weirdly attractive are things thrown together at random: over there is somebody crossing a street, and the space surrounding him is solid; over there are a piano on the sidewalk and automobiles seated beneath their drivers.  Pedestrians of unequal shape, matter of uneven temper, everything changes in accordance with the laws of disparity, and I stand agog at God's imagination, an imagination adjusted to minute and discordant variations, as if his chief venture were, on any given day, bringing together an orange and a string, a wall and a glance.  It would appear that, to God, the world is merely a vehicle for several essays at still-life painting.  He has a handful of gimmicks to which he invariably resorts: the absurd, the bizarre, the banal . . . there is no way of getting him to enlarge his scope."

– Louis Aragon, from Le Paysan de Paris (1924), translated as Nightwalker by Frederick Brown (1970)