Ornamental

Lucas Cranach the Elder
St Christina of Bolsena
ca. 1520-22
oil on panel (altarpiece fragment)
Národní Galerie, Prague

Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints
1524
drawing (study for altarpiece)
British Museum

Philip Galle after Maarten van Heemskerck
The Prodigal Son rioting with Harlots
1562
engraving
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Hans Ulrich Franck
Allegory of Chastity
before 1675
drawing (print study)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Aelbert Cuyp
Mariakerk in Utrecht
before 1691
drawing
British Museum

John Sell Cotman
Moonlight
(study for illustration to Ossian)
1803
drawing
British Museum

Joseph von Führich
Virgin and Child with Saints and Angels
1835
oil on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Maria Cosway
Mother and Child
before 1838
etching
British Museum

Fortunato Duranti
Scene of Adoration
before 1863
gouache and ink on paper
British Museum

Walter Crane
Scene from Puss in Boots
1870
ink on paper
(design for printed illustration)
British Museum

Kenyon Cox
An Eclogue
1890
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Antonio Frasconi
Fish-Nets
1951
color woodblock print
Art Institute of Chicago

Terry Frost
Green and Orange
1970
lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Allen Frame
Cady Noland - phone booth - NYC
1981
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Gordon Cheung
Floating Worlds
2006
inkjet print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Gordon Cheung
Monkey
2006
inkjet print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Maureen Dougherty
Young
2021
oil on canvas
Portland Museum of Art, Maine

On Himself, upon Hearing What Was His Sentence

Let them bestow on every airt a limb,

Open all my veins, that I may swim

To thee my saviour, in that crimson lake;

Then place my parboiled head upon a stake;

Scatter my ashes, throw them in the air:

Lord (since thou knowest where all these atoms are)

I'm hopeful, once thou'lt recollect my dust,

And confident thou'lt raise me with the just.

– James Graham, Marquis of Montrose (1650)

Resting Places

Manuel Alvarez Bravo
Cemetery Wall
ca. 1965
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous German Artist
Priest officiating at Burial
1508
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

René-Henri Ravaut
Burial of St Bertrand de Comminges
ca. 1890
Falconetto-
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Dirck van Delen
Tomb of the Van Tuyll van Serooskerken family
1634
oil on panel
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Angelo Falconetto
Tomb for a Writer
before 1567
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Paul Bril
Etruscan Tomb in Latium
ca. 1600
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Battista dell'Angolo del Moro after Parmigianino
Tomb of a Bishop
ca. 1550-70
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Peter Fendi
Recording Angel seated on a Grave
1824
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Friedrich Preller the Elder
Megalithic Grave on Rügen
1843
oil on canvas
Ostdeutsche Galerie, Regensburg

attributed to Jacques Stella
The Entombment
ca. 1620-40
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Mathieu Le Nain
The Entombment
ca. 1645
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Giovanni Santi
(father of the famous Raphael)
Dead Christ in the Tomb with Symbols of the Passion
ca. 1474-82
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

Taddeo di Bartolo
Entombment of the Virgin
ca. 1410
tempera on panel
Landesmuseum Hannover

Ancient Etruscan Culture
Cinerary Coffer
125-100 BC
terracotta
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Roman Empire
Cinerary Urn
AD 20-40
marble
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Roman Empire
Cinerary Urn
1st century AD
marble
(excavated 1760 in Rome - subsequently engraved by Piranesi)
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Queen:  Aiai, this is truly the most towering disaster I have ever heard of, a cause for shame and for shrill wailing to the Persians!  But go back to the beginning and tell me this: how great were the actual numbers of the Greek ships, that they thought themselves capable of joining battle with the Persian fleet and ramming their vessels?  

Messenger:  I assure you that, so far as numbers are concerned, the fleet of the Easterners would have prevailed.  The Greeks had a grand total of about three hundred ships, and ten of those formed a special select squadron; whereas Xerxes – I know this for sure – had a thousand under his command, and those of outstanding speed numbered two hundred and seven.  Such is the reckoning; I hardly imagine you'll consider we were inferior in that respect in the battle!  It was some divinity that destroyed our fleet like this, weighting the scales so that fortune did not fall out even: the gods have served the city of the goddess Pallas.  

Queen:  Then the city of Athens is still unsacked?

Messenger:  While she has her men, her defences are secure.

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Rudolf Eickemeyer - Evelyn Nesbit

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
ca. 1901
hand-colored photoprint
(postcard derived from platinum print)
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Evelyn Nesbit
1901
platinum print
National Museum of American History,
Washington DC

from The Consolation of Philosophy

All men, throughout the peopled earth

    From one sublime beginning spring;

All from one source derive their birth

    The same their parent and their king.

At his command proud Titan glows,

    And Luna lifts her horn on high;

His hand this earth on man bestows,

    And strews with stars the spangled sky. 

From her high seats he drew the soul,

    And in this earthly cage confin'd;

To wond'ring worlds produc'd the whole,

    Essence divine with matter join'd. 

Since then alike all men derive

    From God himself their noble race,

Why should the witless mortals strive

    For vulgar ancestry and place?

Why boast their birth before his eyes,

    Who holds no human creature mean;

Save him whose soul enslav'd to Vice,

    Deserts her nobler origin?

– Boethius (AD 476-524), translated by Samuel Johnson and Hester Thrale (ca. 1765)

*lines in italics written by Mrs. Thrale

Ornamental

Master of Saint Augustine (Netherlandish painter)
Scenes from the Life of St Augustine
ca. 1490
oil on panel (panel of triptych)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Albrecht Dürer
Temptation of the Idler
ca. 1497-98
engraving
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Taddeo Zuccaro
The Flight into Egypt
ca. 1558-59
drawing (study for fresco)
British Museum

Meindert Hobbema
Water Mill
ca. 1664
drawing
British Museum

Richard Cosway
Sir Thomas Gascoigne on the Grand Tour
making love to an Italian Woman
ca. 1765
drawing
British Museum

John Sell Cotman after Samuel Prout
Bridge at Saltram
ca. 1812
watercolor on paper (after Prout's print)
British Museum

Matthew Digby Wyatt
A Group in Bronze by Vittoz of Paris
1851
chromolithograph
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

James McNeill Whistler
Harmony in Green and Rose - The Music Room
1860-61
oil on canvas
Freer Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington DC

Kenyon Cox
Two Figures
(study for painting Jacob wrestling with the Angel)
1886
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Winslow Homer
Moonlight on the Water
1906
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Marguerite Zorach
George Davidson
1913
watercolor on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Walter Crane
Draped Women dancing on the Strand with a Galley in the Background
before 1915
drawing
British Museum

Arthur F. Kales
Lorna Palmer
1928
bromoil print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Mabel Dwight
Greetings from the House of Weyhe
(Christmas Card from Art Gallery in New York)
1928
lithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alice Trumbull Mason
Free White Spacing
1939
oil on linen
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jacques Villon
L'Univers
1951
color etching and aquatint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Brett Weston
Rhubarb Stalks
1973
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Upon Bishop Andrewes's Picture before His 'Sermons'

This reverend shadow cast that setting sun

Whose glorious course through our horizon run

Left the dim face of this dull hemisphere

All one great eye, all drowned in one great tear.

Whose fair illustrious soul led his free thought

Though learning's universe, and (vainly) sought

Room for her spacious self, until at length

She found the way home: with an holy strength

Snatched herself hence to heaven; filled a bright place

Mongst those immortal fires; and on the face

Of her great maker fixed her flaming eye,

There still to read true pure divinity.

And now that grave aspéct hath deigned to shrink

Into this less appearance: if you think

'Tis but a dead face art doth here bequeath,

Look on the following leaves and see him breathe.

– Richard Crashaw (1631)