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| Zanobi Machiavelli Virgin and Child Enthroned with Saints Sebastian, Andrew, Bernardino, Paul, Lawrence and Augustine ca. 1460-70 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Simone Martini St Andrew ca. 1320-25 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Master of the Goslar Sibyls The Calenberg Altarpiece Mystic Marriage of St Catherine, flanked by Saints and Donors ca. 1500-1525 oil on panels Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Master of the Sherman Predella Predella with Martyrdom of Female Saint, Flagellation of Christ, and St Jerome in the Wilderness ca. 1437-40 tempera on panels Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Rosso Fiorentino Dead Christ with Angels ca. 1524-27 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
Confirmèd beauty will not bear a stress –
Bright hues long look'd at thin, dissolve and fly:
Who lies on grass and pores upon the sky
Shall see the azure turn expressionless
And Tantalean slaty ashiness
Like Pharoah's ears of windy harvest dry
Dry up the blue and be not slaked thereby.
Ah! surely all who have written will profess
The sweetest sonnet five or six times read
Is tasteless nothing: and in my degree
I prove it. What then when these lines are dead
And coldly do belie the thought of thee?
I'll lay them by, and freshly turn instead
To thy not-staled uncharted memory.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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| Moretto da Brescia Virgin and Child with Donors ca. 1528-30 oil on canvas Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Cosimo Rosselli Descent from the Cross ca. 1485 tempera and oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Juan Rexach Mocking of Christ ca. 1464 oil on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
What hours, O what black hoürs we have spent
This night! what sights you, heart, saw; ways you went!
And more must, in yet longer light's delay.
With witness I speak this. But where I say
Hours I mean years, mean life. And my lament
Is cries countless, cries like dead letters sent
To dearest him that lives alas! away.
I am gall, I am heartburn. God's most deep decree
Bitter would have me taste: my taste was me;
Bones built in me, flesh filled, blood brimmed the curse.
Selfyeast of spirit a dull dough sours. I see
The lost are like this, and their scourge to be
As I am mine, their sweating selves; but worse.
– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844-1889)
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| Carlo Crivelli Lamentation over the Dead Christ 1485 tempera on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Bartolomeo Vivarini Virgin and Dead Christ, with Ascension and Saints 1485 tempera and oil on panels Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Pacino di Bonaguida The Chiarito Tabernacle ca. 1340-50 tempera on panel Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Davide Ghirlandaio Virgin and Child with St Apollonia and St Sebastian ca. 1490-1500 tempera on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Master of Cappenberg (Jan Baegert) Christ before Annas ca. 1525-30 oil on panel Philadelphia Museum of Art |
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| Master of Bonastre Coronation of the Virgin ca. 1450 oil on panel Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |