Wednesday, October 24, 2018

Drawings and Three-Dimensional Objects (16th Century)

School of the Carracci (Bologna)
Galatea and Companion riding Dolphin
ca. 1590
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Finger Ring
16th century
enameled gold with table-cut diamond
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

attributed to Perino del Vaga
Infantry Captain with Pike and Sword (costume study)
ca. 1535-47
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Something Lost

How changed is Nature from the Time antique!
The world we see to-day is dumb and cold:
It has no word for us.  Not thus of old
It won heart-worship from the enamoured Greek.
Through all fair forms he heard the Beauty speak;
To him glad tidings of the unknown were told
By babbling runlets, or sublimely rolled
In thunder from the cloud-enveloped peak.
He caught a message at the oak's great girth,
While prisoned Hamadryads weirdly sang:
He stood where Delphi's Voice had chasm-birth,
And o'er strange vapour watched the Sibyl hang;
Or where, mid throbbings of the tremulous earth,
The caldrons of Dodona pulsed and rang.

– Edward Cracroft Lefroy (1855-1891)

Giovanni Bernardi after Michelangelo
Fall of Phaeton
ca. 1531-35
engraved rock-crystal
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Valerio Belli
Adoration of the Shepherds
ca. 1530-46
engraved rock-crystal
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Niclauss Kippell
Una Corteggiana Venetiana
(Fashion-plate from Venetian manuscript costume-book)
ca. 1588
ink and tempera on paper
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Bust of Cleopatra
ca. 1519-22
bronze
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giovanni Francesco Rustici
St John the Baptist
ca. 1505-1515
glazed terracotta statuette
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Andrea Salviati
Soldier lifting a curtain
ca. 1550-55
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

On the Beach in November

My heart's Ideal, that somewhere out of sight
Art beautiful and gracious and alone –
Haply where blue Saronic waves are blown
On shores that keep some touch of old delight –
How welcome is thy memory, and how bright,
To one who watches over leagues of stone
These chilly northern waters creep and moan
From weary morning unto weary night.
O Shade-form, lovelier than the living crowd,
So kind to votaries, yet thyself unvowed,
So free to human fancies, fancy-free,
My vagrant thought goes out to thee, to thee,
As wandering lonelier than the Poet's cloud,
I listen to the wash of this dull sea.

– Edward Cracroft Lefroy (1855-1891)

follower of Andrea Salviati
Soldier with raised shield
ca. 1560-80
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giovanni della Robbia and workshop
Adam and Eve
ca. 1515
glazed terracotta relief
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Giovanni della Robbia
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1520
glazed terracotta statuette
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

attributed to Bartolomeo Passarotti
The Assumption
before 1592
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Two studies of an outstretched right arm
before 1592
 red chalk drawing by Passarotti, later retouched in red wash by Peter Paul Rubens
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Pietro Francavilla
Apollo victorious over Python
1591
marble
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Poems are from Edward Cracroft Lefroy: His Life and Poems, including a reprint of Echoes from Theocritus / by Edward Austin Gill, with a critical estimate of the sonnets by the late John Addington Symonds (London: John Lane, The Bodley Head, 1897)