Wednesday, November 30, 2022

Studies for Fall of the Rebel Angels at Versailles

Charles Le Brun
Avenging Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure studies for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

"Hell from beneath is moved for thee to meet thee at thy coming: it stirreth up the dead for thee, even all the chief ones of the earth; it hath raised up from their thrones all the kings of the nations. All they shall speak and say unto thee, Art thou also become weak as we? art thou become like unto us? Thy pomp is brought down to the grave, and the noise of thy viols: the worm is spread under thee, and the worms cover thee. How art thou fallen from heaven, O Lucifer, son of the morning! how art thou cut down to the ground, which didst weaken the nations! For thou hast said in thine heart, I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God: I will sit also upon the mount of the congregation, in the sides of the north: I will ascend above the heights of the clouds; I will be like the most High. Yet thou shalt be brought down to hell, to the sides of the pit."

– from the book of Isaiah, chapter 14 (King James Bible, 1611)

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure studies for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure studies for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure studies for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
 Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1672
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration at Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

 

Tuesday, November 29, 2022

Allegorical Study Drawings at the Louvre

Simon Vouet
Study for Allegory of Intellect
before 1649
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François Valentin
Allegorical Depiction of the Meeting
between Emperor Joseph II and Louis XVI

ca. 1777
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles-François Poerson
Allegory of the Union of the Academies of Paris and Rome
ca. 1682
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giuseppe Passeri
Personification of the Church
before 1714
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Mignard
Allegory of Truth
ca. 1692
drawing
(study for ceiling painting, Château de Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Eustache Le Sueur
Allegory with Virgo
(astrological figure)
before 1655
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Allegorical Figure, Winged and Crowned
ca. 1650
drawing
(study for tapestry)
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Lanfranco
Allegorical Setting for the Arms of the Veralli Family
ca. 1630
drawing
(study for engraving)
Musée du Louvre


Paolo Farinati
Allegory in Honor of Giacomo Foscarini
(the artist's patron)
1570
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles-Antoine Coypel
Allegorical Figure of Lyric Poetry
before 1752
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Simone Cantarini (il Pesarese)
Medici Arms with Allegorical Figures
1637
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giulio Campi
Allegory of History
(woman seated in a study)
before 1572
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Benedetto Caliari after Paolo Veronese
Earthly Fortune
before 1598
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Agnolo Bronzino
Allegory of Marriage
with Crowned Venus and the Muses

ca. 1565
drawing
(study for banner)
Musée du Louvre

Alessandro Algardi
Allegory of Rome
before 1654
drawing
Musée du Louvre

The Dream Play

The spirits have dispersed, the woods
faded to grey from midnight blue
leaving a powdery residue,
night music fainter, frivolous gods
withdrawing, cries of yin and yang,
discords of the bionic young;
cobweb and insects, hares and deer,
wild strawberries and eglantine,
dawn silence of the biosphere,
amid the branches a torn wing
– what is this enchanted place?
Not the strict groves of academe
but an old thicket of lost time
too cool for school, recovered space
where the brain yields to nose and ear,
folk remedy and herbal cure,
old narratives of heart and hand,
and a dazed donkey, starry eyed,
with pearls and honeysuckle crowned,
beside her naked nibs is laid.
Wild viruses, Elysian fields –
our own planet lit by the fire
of molten substance, constant flux,
hot ice and acrobatic sex,
the electric moth-touch of desire
and a new vision, a new regime
where the white blaze of physics yields
to yellow moonlight, dance and dream
induced by what mind-altering drug
or rough-cast magic realism;
till morning bright with ant and bug
shines in a mist of glistening gism,
shifting identities, mutant forms,
angels evolved from snails and worms.

– Derek Mahon (2008)

Monday, November 28, 2022

Allegorical Struggles (Vices and Triumphs)

Anthony van Dyck
Allegory of Strength defeated by Love
before 1641
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Peter Paul Rubens
Peace and War
(Minerva protecting Peace from Mars)

ca. 1629-30
drawing, with gouache and oil paint
Musée du Louvre

Giuseppe Passeri
Allegorical Scene of Triumph
before 1714
drawing
(study for ceiling painting)
Musée du Louvre

Antonio Molinari
Time vanquishing Beauty
before 1704
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Paolo de' Matteis
The Church triumphant over Falsehood
before 1728
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Carlo Maratti
Painting attacked by Ignorance
ca. 1680-82
drawing
(study for print)
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Jacopo Ligozzi
Vice disrupting Scholarship
ca. 1590
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jacopo Ligozzi
Triumph of Death
before 1626
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Allegorical Figure of Discord
ca. 1650
drawing
(study for tapestry)
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Allegorical Figure of Deception
ca. 1650
drawing
(study for tapestry)
Musée du Louvre

Paolo Farinati
Allegory of Fortune
before 1606
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Ludovico Carracci
Allegory of Poetry consoling Painting
ca. 1603
drawing
(study for funeral decorations for Agostino Carracci)
Musée du Louvre

Ludovico Carracci
Allegorical Scene of Triumph
ca. 1600-1619
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Bernardino Campi
Allegory on the Power of Oratory
before 1591
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Alexandre Cabanel
Triumph of Flora
(Allegory of Spring)

ca. 1869-73
drawing, with watercolor
(study for ceiling painting)
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

On Reading The Essayes or Counsels, Civill and Morall

1

So many had nothing; we have orchards
sometimes ill-neighboured, and are driven
to untimely harvest, simply to thwart thieves.
Our galleries may or may not be places
of seasonable resort.

2

Of Buildings and Of Gardens are themselves
exercises in prudence. He that builds
a fair house on an ill site doth commit
himself to prison
. The sentences also
rise and fall.

3

There are good whisperers and good magistrates
by a noble collusion that is the style.
Even perjury and simony set forth
at a steady pace and arrive in time
for their host to receive them

4

with due courtesy and writs of attainder.
Of Prophecies is not beyond our scope
nor Of Riches our means. Is this Senecan?
Of the True Greatness of Kingdoms and Estates
is a major piece

5

whereas Suspicion is shortly dealt with.
What would men have? puts a radical question
as does the contest between wit and judgment.
Poverty is ... tedious, and means chiefly
poverty of mind

6

that can accommodate what we would call
amplitude and quickness, which may be barren.
Religion, Matters of State, Great Persons
are to be spared jesting, as is any case
that deserves pity

7

though whether the dispossessed figure at all
is a question unasked at my lord's table.
There is much made of precious ointment
which is a potent magnanimity
that carries poison, 

8

in my opinion, having read these things.
Dedications were tricky then; they're not now.
That's well worth an acknowledgement, a breather,
before the tide of dark keeping
sweeps us elsewhere

9

sputtering among the wreckage of late Demos.
So many had, and have, nothing; and Bacon
speaks of privateness and retiring. Consult
Of Judicature: the final book of Moses
is his landmark

10

and a good landmark, even: the mislayer
of a mere stone's to blame
. So property
and equity are quits. My parents
never owned a house. It could be said
that was their folly.

11

The poor are bunglers: my people, whom I
nonetheless honor, who bought no landmark
other than their graves. I wish I could keep
Baconian counsel, wish I could keep resentment
out of my voice.

– Geoffrey Hill (2007)

Sunday, November 27, 2022

Allegorical Imagery for Bucolic Life & Values

attributed to Giovanni Angelo del Maino
Allegory of Abundance
ca. 1520
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Bernardino Campi
Allegory of Fire
ca. 1540-50
drawing
(study for chimneybreast fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Battista Dossi
Figure carrying Swags of Grape Vine
(Allegory of Autumn)

before 1548
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Nicolò dell'Abate
Allegory of Temperance
ca. 1560-70
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Nicolò dell'Abate
Allegory of Charity
ca. 1560-70
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Nicolò dell'Abate
Allegory of Virtue
ca. 1550
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Paolo Fiammingo
Allegory of Air
ca. 1580-90
oil on canvas
private collection


Paolo Fiammingo
Allegory of Water
ca. 1580-90
oil on canvas
private collection

Paolo Fiammingo
Ascension of Virtue
ca. 1580-90
oil on canvas
private collection

Charles Le Brun
Personification of the Month of June
ca. 1660
drawing
(figure study for ceiling decoration
at the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte)
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Mignard
Allegory of Time
ca. 1692
drawing
(study for ceiling fresco at the Château de Versailles)
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Jean-Baptiste Pigalle
Study for Allegory of Winter
before 1785
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pietro de Angelis
Allegorical Figure of Spring
ca. 1790
drawing, with watercolor
private collection

Andrea Appiani
Personification of Temperance
1808
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Andrea Appiani
Personification of Justice
1808
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre
 
Some Feel Rain

Some feel rain. Some feel the beetle startle
in its ghost-part when the bark
slips. Some feel musk. Asleep against
each other in the whiskey dark, scarcely there.
When it falls apart, some feel the moondark air
drop its motes to the patch-thick slopes of
snow. Tiny blinkings of ice from the oak,
a boot-beat that comes and goes, the line of prayer
you can follow from the dusking wind to the snowy owl
it carries. Some feel sunlight
well up in blood-vessels below the skin
and wish there had been less to lose.
Knowing how it could have been, pale maples
drowsing like a second sleep above our temperaments.
Do I imagine there is any place so safe it can't be
snapped? Some feel the rivers shift,
blue veins through soil, as if the smokestacks were a long
dream of exhalation. The lynx lets its paws
skim the ground in snow and showers.
The wildflowers scatter in warm tints until
the second they are plucked. You can wait
to scrape the ankle-burrs, you can wait until Mercury
the early star underdraws the night and its blackest
districts. And wonder. Why others feel
through coal-thick night that deeply colored garnet
star. Why sparring and pins are all you have.
Why the earth cannot make its way towards you.  

– Joanna Klink (2010)