Thursday, November 27, 2025

Affinities - III

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Pleasures of Love
ca. 1718-19
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Giorgio de Chirico
The Couple
1926
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Léon Bonnat
Idyll
1890
oil on canvas
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Anonymous Japanese Artist
Ashinaga and Tenaga
ca. 1890-1910
ivory netsuke (partly painted)
Dayton Art Institute, Ohio

Anonymous German Artist
St Verena washing the Hair of a Plague Victim
1525
oil on panel
Landesmuseum, Württemberg

Jean-François de Troy
Christ and the Samaritan Woman
1741
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Oskar Kokoschka
Alma Mahler and Oskar Kokoschka
1913
drawing
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Israel van Meckenem
Couple making Music
ca. 1495
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Monogrammist GF
Putti playing with Lioness and Cub
1537
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hanne Nielsen
Tarzan (4)
1993
drawing
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Severin Nilson
Untitled (Man with Child aloft)
ca. 1890
collodion print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Pål-Nils Nilsson
Sicily
1956
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

François Perrier
The Cesi Pan and Apollo
(now in Museo delle Terme, Rome)
1638
etching
Hamburger, Kunsthalle

Pablo Picasso
Women with Antique Sculpture
1934
etching
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Roman Empire
Cupid and Psyche
AD 140-180
marble
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Cristofano Robetta
Allegory on the Power of Love
ca. 1500
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

[A Messenger is seen approaching from the west, in great haste.] 

Chorus of Persian Elders:  Well, it seems to me that you will soon know the whole story precisely.  The way this man runs clearly identifies him as a Persian, and he will be bringing some definite news, good or bad, for us to hear.

Messenger:  O you cities of the whole land of Asia!  O land of Persia, repository of great wealth!  How all your great prosperity has been destroyed in a single blow, and the flower of the Persians are fallen and departed!  [To the Chorus] Ah me, it is terrible to be the first to announce terrible news, but I have no choice but to reveal the whole sad tale.  Persians: the whole of the oriental army has been destroyed!

Chorus:  Painful, painful, unheard-of
                calamitous! Aiai, let your tears flow, Persians, 
                on hearing this grievous news!

Messenger:  I assure you, all those forces are annihilated; and I myself never expected to see the day of my return. 

Chorus:  Otototoi!  It was all in vain
                that those many weapons, all mingled together,
                went from the land of Asia to the country
                of Zeus, the land of Hellas!

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