Thursday, February 6, 2020

Human and/or Divine Figures in Paint (1730-1740)

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
Triumphal Entry of a Roman Emperor
ca. 1730-40
gouache on paper
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Giovanni Battista Pittoni
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
ca. 1730-40
oil on canvas
Museums Sheffield

Jean-Baptiste Pater
Fête Galante
ca. 1730
oil on canvas
Kenwood House, London

Giambattista Tiepolo
St Roch
ca. 1730-35
oil on canvas
Courtauld Gallery, London

Willem van Mieris
The Greengrocer
1731
oil on panel
Wallace Collection, London

A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford

Even now there are places where a thought might grow –
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford,

Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.

They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something –
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.

There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door grow strong –
'Elbow room! Elbow room!'
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken pitchers, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.

A half-century, without visitors, in the dark –
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges; magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.

They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
'Save us, save us,' they seem to say,
'Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naive labours have been in vain!'

– Derek Mahon (2011)

François Boucher
Mercury confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs
ca. 1732-34
oil on canvas
Wallace Collection, London

Antonio Balestra
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1733
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Giambattista Tiepolo
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St Dominic and St Hyacinth

ca. 1735
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Charles Jervas
Portrait of Captain The Honourable William Egerton
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
National Trust, Belton House, Lincolnshire

Joseph Highmore
Portrait of the Right Honourable Edward Thompson of Marston
1735
oil on canvas
York Art Gallery

attributed to William Hoare
Portrait of Charles Fitzroy, 2nd Duke of Grafton
ca. 1735-40
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, London

William Hogarth
Act I, Scene 2 from The Tempest by Shakespeare
ca. 1736
oil on canvas
National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

Barthélemy Guillibaud
Three d'Hervart Children as the Infant Bacchus and Attendants with a Goat
1737
oil on canvas
National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire

Aureliano Milani
St John the Baptist Preaching
1738
oil on canvas
National Trust, Hinton Ampner, Hampshire

 Andrea Casali
Portrait of Sir Charles Frederick
1738
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford