Monday, December 15, 2025

Compositions with Ordeals

Lucas van Leyden
Cain slaying Abel
1524
engraving
British Museum


Jacopo di Giovanni di Francesco (Jacone)
The Deposition
before 1553
drawing
British Museum
 
Anonymous Italian Printmaker
after Bartolomeo Passarotti
St Sebastian
ca. 1550-1600
engraving
British Museum

Michele Greco after Michelangelo Buonarroti
The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel
ca. 1570
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Juan de Juanes
Triptych of the Crucifixion
(originally with sculpted crucifix at center)
ca. 1570-75
oil on panels
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

Hans Hoffmann
The Expulsion from Paradise
ca. 1580
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Pietro Faccini
Study for The Entombment
ca. 1580-1600
drawing
British Museum

Hendrik Goltzius after Anthonie Blocklandt
Dead Christ with the Four Evangelists
1583
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Descent from the Cross
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Assassination of Servius Tullius
1760
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jean-Jacques Lagrenée
The Testament of Eudamidas
ca. 1760-63
etching
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Cipriani
Ixion chained to the Wheel
ca. 1779
drawing
British Museum

Joseph Anton Koch
Thieves tormented by Serpents in Dante's Hell
1808
etching (book illustration)
British Museum

Otto Gussmann
Mythical Battle against Powers of Darkness
1902
cupola fresco
Burschenschaftsdenkmal, Eisenach

Oluf Hartmann
Study for Sisyphus
1909
watercolor and gouache on paper
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Ludwig Hirschfeld-Mack
Desolation:
Internment Camp, New South Wales

1941
woodcut
British Museum

Julo Levin
Prometheus
ca. 1942
woodcut
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

from The Progress of Learning

When Lucifer no longer could advance
His works on the false ground of ignorance,
New arts he tries, and new designs he lays,
Then his well-studied masterpiece he plays:
Loyola, Luther, Calvin he inspires,
And kindles with infernal flames their fires,
Sends their forerunner (conscious of th' event)
Printing, his most pernicious instrument:
Wild controversy then, which long had slept, 
Into the press from ruined cloisters leapt;
No longer by implicit faith we err,
While every man's his own interpreter;
No more conducted now by Aaron's rod,
Lay-elders from their ends create their god. 
But seven wise men the ancient world did know,
We scarce know seven who think themselves not so. 

– Sir John Denham (published 1668)