Corporeal

 Girolamo Muziano
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1555
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Andrea Boscoli
Acts of Mercy
ca. 1600
drawing
British Museum

Pieter Feddes after Martin Gheeraerts
Elderly Écorché
1614
etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Arnout Vinckenborch
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1617-20
oil on panel
Rubenshuis, Antwerp

Domenico Tintoretto
Raising of Drusiana by St John the Evangelist
ca. 1626
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Alessandro Turchi (l'Orbetto)
St Roch
before 1649
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

 

Karel Dujardin
The Sick Goat
ca. 1660-63
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Augustinus Terwesten
Anatomical Studies from Ancient Sculptures
(Arms of Farnese Hercules and Medici Venus)
ca. 1670-80
etching (study for drawing manual)
British Museum

Nicolas Colombel
Christ healing the Blind
1682
oil on canvas
Saint Louis Art Museum

Girolamo Ferroni after Simone Cantarini
St Peter and St John the Evangelist healing the Lame
ca. 1710-30
etching
British Museum

Étienne Parrocel
St Francis Regis interceding in 1616
for the plague-stricken of Toulouse
1739
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Antoine de Favray
Saints Cosmas and Damian dressing a Chest Wound
1748
oil on canvas
Wellcome Collection, London

Noël Hallé
Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Thomas Stothard
Rescue of Serena and Sir Calepine
(illustration to the Faerie Queene)
1810
watercolor on paper (print study)
British Museum

William Strang
Anatomical Study
ca. 1879-80
drawing
British Museum

Jan Toorop
The Sick Child (Charley Toorop)
1898
hand-colored drypoint
British Museum

Alan Turner
Rescue
1974
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from Of the Answers of the Oracle of Apollo at Delphos to Croesus King of Lydia

    Not to knowe things beyond the Arch of our intellectualls, or what spirits apprehend, is the imperfection of our nature not our Knowledge, and rather Inscience than Ignorance in man. Revelation might render a great part of the creation easie which now seemes beyond the stretch of human indagation; and welcome no doubt from good hands might bee a true Almagest or great celestial construction: A cleare systeme of the planeticall bodyes; of the invisible and seeming uselesse starres unto us; of the many sunnes in the eighth spheare, what they are, what they contrive, and unto what those stupendous bodies are more immediately serviceable. Butt this being not hinted in the Authentick Revelation and written booke of God, nor yet knowne how farre their discoveries are stinted; if the same should come unto us from the mouth of evell spirits, the belief thereof might bee as unsafe as the enquiries, and how farre to credit the father of darknesse and great obscurer of truth, might bee yet obscure unto us.    

– Sir Thomas Browne (1656)

Ovidians - III

Adriaen van der Werff after Peter Paul Rubens
Jupiter and Callisto
ca. 1675
oil on copper
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Johann Spillenberger
Diana and Callisto
1676
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Ugo da Carpi after Parmigianino
Diana and Callisto
ca. 1530
chiaroscuro woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pietro Liberi
Diana and Callisto
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Cornelis Bisschop
Mercury preparing to slay Argus
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Marco Sammartino
Mercury and Argus
ca. 1650-70
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Hendrik van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder
Marriage of Peleus and Thetis
before 1625
oil on copper
Národní Galerie, Prague

Noël Coypel
Combat of Hercules and Acheloüs
ca. 1675
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Pygmalion with his Statue
1777
oil on canvas
Sinebrychoff Art Museum, Helsinki

Bernaert de Ryckere
Diana and Actaeon
1582
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Hans Rottenhammer
Diana and Actaeon
1597
oil on copper
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Anonymous Artist working in Rome
Diana and Actaeon
1711
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Friedrich Christoph Steinhammer
Diana and Actaeon
1615
oil on copper
Národní Galerie, Prague

Joachim Wtewael 
Diana and Actaeon
1607
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Sebastiano Ricci
Contest between Pan and Apollo judged by King Midas
ca. 1685-87
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Gillis van Coninxloo II (landscape) and Karel van Mander the Elder (figures)
Judgment of Midas
1598
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Chorus of the daughters of Danaus:

May Zeus make all be well in very truth!

The desire of Zeus is not easy to hunt out:

the paths of his mind

stretch tangled and shadowy,

impossible to perceive or see clearly.

It falls safe, not on its back,

when an action is definitively ordained by the nod of Zeus.

It blazes everywhere,

even in darkness, with black fortune

for mortal folk.

He casts humans down

from lofty, towering hopes to utter destruction,

without deploying any armed force.

Everything gods do is done without toil:

he sits still, and nevertheless somehow

carries out his will directly

from his holy abode. 

Let him look on this human 

act of outrage, on the kind of youthful stock that is sprouting:

the prospect of marriage with me makes it bloom

with determination hard to dissuade;

it has frenzied thoughts

that goad it on implacably,

having had its mind transformed to love a ruinous delusion.

Such are the sad sufferings that I speak and cry of,

grievous, keening, tear-falling sufferings –

ié, ié! – made conspicuous by loud laments:

I honour myself with dirges while I still live.

I appeal for the favour of the hilly land of Apia –

you understand well, O land, my barbaric speech* –

and I repeatedly fall upon my Sidonian veil,

tearing its linen to rags.

– Aeschylus, from Suppliants (ca. 470-460 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*although, in accordance with the conventions of tragedy, the words that actually come out of the Danaids' mouths are Greek, we are expected to imagine that they are speaking Egyptian (just as e.g. we are expected to imagine that the performers' linen masks are human faces)  

Designs on Paper

Tommi Parzinger
Design for Printed Textile
ca. 1930
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Tommi Parzinger
Design for Wallpaper
ca. 1940
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Tommi Parzinger
Design for Cigarette-Holder and Lighter
ca. 1950
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Claes Oldenburg
Proposal for a Colossal Monument in the Form of a Typewriter Eraser for Alcatraz
1972
graphite and watercolor on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Mirror Frame
ca. 1730
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Clock Case
ca. 1700
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Artist
Design for Window Hanging
ca. 1790-1800
drawing (ink and watercolor on paper)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Artist
Neoclassical Design for Woven Textile
ca. 1820
drawing (ink and gouache on paper)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Design for Painted Ceiling and Wall
ca. 1830-50
watercolor and gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Design for Painted Wall
ca. 1830-50
watercolor and gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Design for Painted Wall
ca. 1830-50
watercolor and gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Wallpaper Design
ca. 1840-60
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous European Artist
Design for Bronze Clock
ca. 1810-30
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Artist
Acanthus Design for Woven Textile
ca. 1815-25
gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous French Artist
Design for Candelabrum with Gilt-Bronze Mounts
ca. 1780
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dorothy Pease
Staccato
(textile design for Perspectives Inc, New York)
ca. 1942
ink and gouache on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dorothy Pease
Butterflies
(textile design for Perspectives Inc, New York)
ca. 1942
ink and watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Medea

[from the speech of the Chorus to dissuade Medea from her purpose of putting her Children to death, and flying for protection to Athens]

O haggard queen! to Athens dost thou guide

    Thy glowing chariot, steep'd in kindred gore;

Or seek to hide thy damned parracide

    Where Peace and Mercy dwell for evermore?

                                  *

In thine own children's gore? – oh! ere they bleed,

    Let Nature's voice thy ruthless heart appal!

Pause at the bold, irrevocable deed –

    The mother strikes – the guiltless babes shall fall!

Think what remorse thy maddening thoughts shall sting,

    When dying pangs their gentle bosoms tear;

Where shalt thou sink, when ling'ring echoes ring

    The screams of horror in thy tortur'd ear?

No! let thy bosom melt to Pity's cry –

    In dust we kneel – by sacred Heaven implore –

O! stop thy lifted arm, ere yet they die,

    Nor dip thy horrid hands in infant gore! –

– Euripides (485-406 BC), translated by Thomas Campbell (1799)