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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh Nymph and Shepherd in a Landscape ca. 1630 oil on copper Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh Miniature portrait of Susanna van Collen ca. 1626 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Simon de Vos and workshop Merrymakers at an Inn ca. 1630-39 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
Are they shadows that we see?
And can shadows pleasure give?
Pleasures only shadows be
Cast by bodies we conceive,
And are made the things we deem
In those figures which they seem.
But these pleasures vanish fast,
Which by shadows are expressed:
Pleasures are not, if they last;
In their passing is their best.
Glory is most bright and gay
In a flash, and so away.
Feed apace then greedy eyes
On the wonder you behold.
Take it sudden as it flies,
Though you take it not to hold;
When your eyes have done their part,
Thought must length it in the heart.
– Samuel Daniel (1610)
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| Domenico Antonio Vaccaro Allegory of the Papacy of Clement XI ca. 1720 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| François de Nomé St Paul preaching to the Athenians ca. 1620-24 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| François de Nomé Head of St John the Baptist presented to Salome ca. 1620-24 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Francesco Albani Holy Family with Angels 1608-1610 oil on copper Museum of Fine Arts, Boston |
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| Marzio di Colantonio Alexander the Great in his Conquest of Asia ca. 1620 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
A Tetradrachm of Alexander the Great
How many days' wages, how many loaves and brimming
kylikes this coin represented for the grunts in
his command I cannot say, but for sheer heft this now
useless ounce of the universal currency plops
in the palm with the undiminished weight of a youth-
king's argentine indifference – a profile struck in high
relief, the polished cheek barely hinting at a beard.
What exactly was the bony socket of his eye
trained on, unblinking, beyond the coin's circumference
where the virtuous abstractions of space must be filled
with history? If not crowns, what Herculean prize?
The lion's pelt already seems to have devoured
most of his head in myth. The mane flares back from his face
like a comet prefiguring changes. Which legacy
should we envy: Persepolis in flames, the pickled
corpse enshrined as every petty tyrant's golden boy,
the squabbling brood of princelings with a pie? Nothing's left
but vague reverberations, mere tactical lessons
of a genius at war – and this untarnished bit, which
slaves, chained to a forge, hammered from the molten mass of
his aesthetic. The hand chills at the chance to grasp it.
– Richard Foerster (1997)
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| Jan de Bray Head of a Boy ca. 1660-69 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Pietro Longhi The Music Lesson ca. 1760 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| William Blake The Horse ca. 1805 tempera on copper Yale Center for British Art |
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| Anonymous Flemish painter Rest on the Flight into Egypt, with infant St John the Baptist 17th century tempera on copper Harvard Art Museums |
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| Christian Friedrich Zincke Miniature Portrait of a Man 1716 enamel on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |
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| Peeter van Avont Holy Family departing for Egypt ca. 1625 oil on copper Walters Art Museum, Baltimore |