Ancient Greek Culture Votive Relief Fragment with Torso 1st century BC marble Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Roman Empire Relief Fragment with Young Satyr 1st century AD glass cameo Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Anonymous French Artist Mirror Case with Amorous Couple ca. 1300-1350 ivory relief Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
Mino da Fiesole Julius Caesar ca. 1455-60 marble relief with limestone garland Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
workshop of Antonio Rossellino Virgin and Child ca. 1470 painted terracotta relief Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Anonymous Italian Artist after Pierino da Vinci Ugolino and his Sons starving in Prison ca. 1544-53 wax relief Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |
Orazio Marinali Head of a Young Man ca. 1700 marble relief Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Anonymous Italian Artist after Massimiliano Soldani Hagar and the Angel before 1743 wax relief National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Gérard-Antoine François after Jean-Guillaume Moitte The Game of Leap Frog 1785 wax relief on slate Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio |
Bertel Thorvaldsen Vulcan, Venus and Mars 1810 marble relief Neue Pinakothek, Munich |
Bertel Thorvaldsen The Three Graces listening to Cupid's Song 1836 marble relief National Gallery of Norway, Oslo |
Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux Portrait of Madame Armande Dieudé-Defly 1863 bronze relief National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Édouard Baldus La Résistance (relief on the Arc de Triomphe, Paris) ca. 1870 albumen print Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
Édouard Baldus Departure of the Volunteers of 1792 (relief on the Arc de Triomphe, Paris) ca. 1870 albumen print Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts |
Henri-Michel-Antoine Chapu La Pensée ca. 1877 marble relief National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
Constantin Meunier Société Royale Belge des Aquarellistes 1906 copper relief National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
from Thinking About Death
I am not thinking of Death, but Death is thinking of me.
– Mark Strand
Lucretius has an unconvincing argument
For why death doesn't matter, since I won't exist
When it occurs. No, goes the rejoinder, it does,
For it deprives me of a life I would have had
For it deprives me of a life I would have had
And probably would have loved – a rejoinder
I find hard to comprehend. It looks at life
As though it's there to lose, like a sense of humor
Or a book, instead of something that eventually has to end,
Although its ending, from the inside, makes no sense.
I am my world. (The microcosm.) – Wittgenstein.
– John Koethe (2018)