Friday, September 20, 2024

Ancient Divas - V

Luigi Garzi
Omphale with Lion Skin and Club
and Hercules with Spindle and Tambourine

ca. 1700-1710
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Giambattista Tiepolo
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1743-45
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Doccia Manufactory (Florence)
Ariadne Dancing, attended by a Panther
ca. 1780-90
porcelain
Detroit Institute of Arts

Gavin Hamilton
Death of Cleopatra
ca. 1767-69
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Anton Raphael Mengs
Augustus and Cleopatra
ca. 1759
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Jan Steen
Banquet of Antony and Cleopatra
ca. 1673-75
oil on canvas
Leiden Collection, New York

Leonello Spada
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1618
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Giovanni Baglione
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Simon Vouet 
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1620-25
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

attributed to Elisabetta Sirani after Guido Reni
Lucretia
ca. 1655
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Caspar Netscher
Lucretia
ca. 1665-67
oil on panel
Leiden Collection, New York

Luca Giordano
Death of Lucretia
ca. 1675-80
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

workshop of Rembrandt
Salome receiving the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1640-45
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

David Teniers the Younger after Palma il Giovane
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1651-56
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Onorio Marinari
Salome with the Head of John the Baptist
ca. 1680
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Wilhelm Trübner
Salome
1898
oil on cardboard
Milwaukee Art Museum

High Talk

Processions that lack high stilts have nothing that catches the eye.
What if my great-granddad had a pair that were twenty foot high,
And mine were but fifteen foot, no modern stalks upon higher,
Some rogue of the world stole them to patch up a fence or a fire.

Because piebald ponies, led bears, caged lions, make but poor shows,
Because children demand Daddy-long-legs upon his timber toes,
Because women in upper stories demand a face at the pane
That patching old heels they may shriek, I take to chisel and plane.

Malachi Stilt-Jack am I, whatever I learned has run wild.
From collar to collar, from stilt to stilt, from father to child.

All metaphor, Malachi, stilts and all. A barnacle goose
Far up on the stretches of night; night splits and the dawn breaks loose;
I, through the terrible novelty of light, stalk on, stalk on;
Those great sea-horses bare their teeth and laugh at the dawn.

– W.B. Yeats (1939)