Friday, January 3, 2020

Heaven and/or Earth supported by the Titan Atlas

Roman Empire
The Farnese Atlas
2nd century AD
marble statue
Museo Archeologico Nazionale, Naples

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Hercules relieving Atlas of the Globe
ca. 1530
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Heinrich Aldegrever
Hercules and Atlas
1550
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Cornelis Cort after Frans Floris the Elder
Hercules bearing the Globe of Atlas
1563
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Jean Warin
Hercules relieving Atlas of the Globe
1629
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Guercino
Atlas
1646
drawing
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Remembering Atlas

Our eyes, abandoned to the night,
Have seen its wide uneasiness
Sustain the moon; we do not guess
What carnal influence of time
Opens the sky like a caress.

Shuddering from the heart's clear shell
The waves of adoration rise,
Drift through the blood, and like a bell
Struck in a peerless monotone,
Mourn from the temple of the skies.

So to the pendulous hour we cling,
While the ineluctable stars
Float their elusive vapors down
To screen our perishable eyes
With the smoke of avatars.

But a moment, swift, electrical,
Can annihilate delight
And seal the sober reticule
Of the slow and valvular heart –
And all the brain go dry and white.

O, when the hour falls, and time
No longer mystical becomes
A mortal and perverse event,
We shall abide in madness, numb
Beneath its pillared firmament.

– Roberta Holloway (1937)

Claude Mellan
Hercules taking the Globe from Atlas
ca. 1652-61
engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hubert Quellinus after Artus Quellinus
Figure of Atlas
ca. 1663
etching and engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Hendrick van Beaumont
Atlas
1696
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean Le Blanc
Atlas supporting the Heavens
1715
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

attributed to Clodion
Atlas
ca. 1780
terracotta painted to resemble bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Italian Artist
Design for Oil Lamp with Atlas supporting a Globe
ca. 1800-1850
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Isaac Weissenbruch
Three Statues of Atlas
late 19th century
wood-engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

John Singer Sargent
Sketches for Atlas and the Hesperides
(study for mural)
1921-22
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Atlas

Extreme exertion
isolates a person
from help,
discovered Atlas.
Once a certain
shoulder-to-burden
ratio collapses,
there is so little
others can do:
they can't
lend a hand
with Brazil
and not stand
on Peru.

– Kay Ryan (2005)