Monday, December 17, 2018

Baroque and Rococo in Marble, Ivory, Terracotta

Christophe Veyrier
Dying Achilles
1683
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Achilles

Down into the folly, you took my hand.
Moon red under the scud cloud,
the sheep bearing their gray, muted realm

past the thistle and the ruined elm,
and all silent, silent as cloth.
We had taken the rock-guarded path

up a horizon shaken on the west wind.
Below us, the closed land spread out
toward an old hall lit by candles

against the sparking wood. Somewhere
the clink of a chain
and the dim almost rustle of evening.

The cracked mirror
of Capability's lake turned livid, glinting
like a flutter of moths. Then we stepped down

onto the field of ghostly cattle
moving their great horned helmets against us.
The air was antique with breath.

And there stood Achilles, the famous bull,
proudly aside from the herd, massive, scarred,
nursing his anger.

He turned toward us in his naked heat.

– William Logan

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Bust of Thomas Baker
ca. 1638
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giovanni Antonio Gualterio
Crucifix Figure
ca. 1599
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Spanish sculptor
Repentant Thief from Crucifixion Group
ca. 1650
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous sculptor working in France or the Netherlands
Crucifix Figure
ca. 1700-1730
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

from The Crucifix

Have you ever tried to hold the attention of a child?
Being God is something like that, if you take it seriously.
The guilty ones are too meek and mild,
The earnest ones behave deliriously.
I wanted them to be gently wild.

– Augustine Bowe

Alessandro Algardi
Portrait of Cardinal Paolo Emilio Zacchia
ca/ 1650
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum

Cosimo Fancelli
A Widowed Lady
ca. 1660
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giovanni Battista Foggini
Bust of Cardinal Gian Carlo de' Medici
ca. 1700
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Giuseppe Mazzuoli
Bust of Cardinal Bernardino Panciatichi
1714
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous English sculptor
Mourning Child with Hour Glass (from a Tomb)
ca. 1700-1720
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

from An hour is not a house

An hour is not a house,
a life is not a house,
you do not go through them as if
they were doors to another.

Yet an hour can have shape and proportion,
four walls, a ceiling.
An hour can be dropped like a glass.

– Jane Hirshfield

Anonymous sculptor
Winter
ca. 1700-1720
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

Antonio Corradini
Apollo flaying Marsyas
ca. 1710-1750
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Dominique Lefevre
Fall of Phaeton
ca. 1700-1711
marble
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous French sculptor
Fan  Handle
ca. 1650
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum

– quoted lines originally published in Poetry (Chicago)