Chasms

Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel
Portrait of a Child in a Sailor Suit
1884
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans

Britta Skaar
Man with Pipe
ca. 1950
etching
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Wilhelm Titel
Portrait of a Girl
1820
oil on canvas
Pomeranian State Museum, Greifswald

Jan Veth
Portrait of Anna Cornelia Giltay
1887
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Jean Clouet
Portrait of François, duc de Bretagne,
Dauphin of France (died at age 18)
ca. 1520-25
oil on panel
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Leopold Kalckreuth
Portrait of a Man at his Desk
1899
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Paula Modersohn-Becker
Girl with Wreath
1902
oil on cardboard
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Rembrandt van Rijn
The Artist's Mother
1631
etching
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig

Jan Mytens
Portrait of Christina Pompe
1655
oil on panel
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Gerbrand van den Eeckhout
Study of an Old Man
before 1674
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Head of a Boy
ca. 1775
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Georges de La Tour
Penitent St Jerome
ca. 1628-30
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Dirk Helmbreker
Portrait of a Girl
1653
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Manuel García
1904-1905
oil on canvas
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Inta Ruka
Natasha Kurova
2004
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Arnold Johansen
Sverre
1987
etching
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Athena:  The matter is too great for any mortal who may think he can decide it; but neither is it proper for me to judge a case of murder which can give rise to fierce words – especially since you have approached this temple, disciplined to suffering, as a pure and harmless suppliant, while these beings have an allotted function that is hard to dismiss, and if they do not get a victorious outcome, the poison that will afterwards fall from their outraged pride into the soil will be an unbearable, unending plague for this land.  That is how it is: both options, to let you remain or to send you away, are very hard for me to take without incurring wrath.  Nevertheless, since this matter has fallen upon us here, I shall choose for my city men without fault to be judges of homicide, respecting the ordinance of an oath which I shall establish for all time.  [Addressing both Orestes and Chorus] Will you please collect testimonies and proofs as supporting props for your pleas; I will come back when I have chosen the best among my citizens to decide this issue well and truly, not being led by unrighteous thoughts to violate their oath in any way at all.  [Exit Athena.] 

Chorus of Furies:

Now comes the overthrow of ordained

laws, if the injurious cause

of this slayer of his mother

is going to prevail.

This event will at once unite

all mortals in total licentiousness.

Many very real sufferings,

wounds inflicted by their children, await parents

in the future, as time passes.

– Aeschylus, from Eumenides (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)