Nicolai Abildgaard Adrastos slays himself at the Tomb of Atys (from the story of King Croesus, as told by Herodotus) ca. 1774-75 drawing (study for painting) Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
Nicolai Abildgaard after Michelangelo Figure from Sistine Chapel Last Judgment 1774 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
Jean-Robert Ango Ascending Figure ca. 1759-70 drawing Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
Anonymous Dutch Artist after Jean Lepautre Laocoön Group ca. 1688-98 color etching, printed à la poupée Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
Jean Arp Doll without Head 1964 color woodblock print Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Jacques Coelemans after Valentin de Boulogne St Sebastian bound to a Tree before 1735 engraving Gemäldegalerie, Dresden |
Richard Cosway Venus and Mars ca. 1790 drawing Yale Center for British Art |
Giovanni Battista Crespi (il Cerano) Baptism of Christ 1601 oil on canvas Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
Arthur Crowquill Cover Design for Pictures of Life at Home and Abroad by Albert Smith ca. 1850-60 drawing, with watercolor Morgan Library, New York |
Jacques-Louis David Distraught Woman ca. 1775-80 drawing National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Robert Delaunay Political Drama 1914 oil paint and collage on cardboard National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Phyllis Dolton Design for Ballet Costume ca. 1935 drawing, with watercolor Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Henry Fuseli River God Skamandros shielding Trojan Warriors from Achilles (illustration to The Iliad) c1790- drawing- Morgan Library, New York |
Giambologna River God ca. 1580 terracotta modello Victoria & Albert Museum, London |
Corrado Giaquinto Triumph of Galatea 1733 oil on canvas Milwaukee Art Museum |
Luca Giordano Bacchus and Ariadne (Ariadne's pose derived from Michelangelo's tomb figures, Night and Day) ca. 1685-86 oil on canvas Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
Adam
Adam, on such a morning, named the beasts:
It was before the sin. It is again.
An openwork world of lights and ledges
Stretches to the eyes' lip its cup:
Flower-maned beasts, beasts of the cloud,
Beasts of the unseen, green beasts
Crowd forward to be named. Beasts of the qualities
Claim them: sinuous, pungent, swift:
We tell them over, surround them
In a world of sounds, and they are heard
Not drowned in them; we lay a hand
Along the snakeshead, take up
The nameless muzzle, to assign its vocable
And meaning. Are we the lords or limits
Of this teeming horde? We bring
To a kind of birth all we can name
And, named, it echoes in us our being.
Adam, on such a morning, knew
The perpetuity of Eden, drew from the words
Of that long naming, his sense of its continuance
And of its source – beyond the curse of the bitten apple –
Murmuring in wordless words: 'When you deny
The virtue of this place, then you
Will blame the wind or the wide air,
Whatever cannot be mastered with a name,
Mouther and unmaker, madman, Adam.'
– Charles Tomlinson (1968)