Anonymous German Artist Game Piece (Samson led to prison, and grinding at the mill) ca. 1140-50 ivory Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Anonymous European Artist Virgin and Child with St Dorothy and St Catherine ca. 1470-1530 ivory (front) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Anonymous European Artist Virgin and Child with St Dorothy and St Catherine ca. 1470-1530 ivory (back) Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Anonymous German Artist Death's Head ca. 1575-1625 ivory Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Christoph Angermair Satyr Head ca. 1624-27 ivory, combined with irregular deer antlers (fragment of chandelier) Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich |
Georg Petel St Sebastian ca. 1630-31 ivory Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich |
Justus Glesker after Michelangelo Risen Christ ca. 1635-40 ivory Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna |
Adam Lenckhardt Christ at the Column ca. 1645-50 ivory Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Anonymous German Artist Death Devoured ca. 1650 ivory Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Balthasar Griessmann Joseph and Potiphar's Wife ca. 1650-60 ivory relief Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Johann Christoph Schenck Allegory of Transience (Putto blowing bubbles, leaning on decomposing skull) ca. 1650 ivory relief mounted in wood Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
David Heschler Descent from the Cross ca. 1660 ivory relief National Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen |
Anonymous Flemish Artist Allegory of Youth and Age ca. 1650-1700 ivory relief Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Anonymous Flemish Artist Venus and Cupid ca. 1675-1700 ivory relief Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Anonymous German Artist Wedding of Neptune and Amphitrite ca. 1675-1700 relief on ivory cylinder Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
Jean Cavalier Portrait of Baron and Baroness North and Grey 1690 ivory relief Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto |
from 1929
It was Easter as I walked in the public gardens,
Hearing the frogs exhaling from the pond,
Watching traffic of magnificent cloud
Moving without anxiety on open sky –
Season when lovers and writers find
An altering speech for altering things,
An emphasis on new names, on the arm
A fresh hand with fresh power.
But thinking so I came at once
Where solitary man sat weeping on a bench,
Hanging his head down, with his mouth distorted
Helpless and ugly as an embryo chicken.
So I remembered all of those whose death
Is necessary condition of the season's putting forth,
Who, sorry in this time, look only back
To Christmas intimacy, a winter dialogue
Fading in silence, leaving them in tears.
And recent particulars come to mind:
The death by cancer of a once hated master,
A friend's analysis of his own failure,
Listened to at intervals throughout the winter
At different hours and in different rooms.
But always with success of others for comparison,
The happiness, for instance, of my friend Kurt Groote,
Absence of fear in Gerhart Meyer
From the sea, the truly strong man.
A 'bus ran home then, on the public ground
Lay fallen bicycles like huddled corpses:
No chattering valves of laughter emphasised
Nor the swept gown ends of a gesture stirred
The sessile hush; until a sudden shower
Fell willing into grass and closed the day,
Making choice seem a necessary error.
– W.H. Auden (1929)