Compositions with Ordeals

Jan Polack
The Crucifixion
1492
mixed media on panel
(central panel of altarpiece)
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Raphael
Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1510
drawing
(print study for Marcantonio Raimondi)
British Museum

Monogrammist D.S. (German printmaker)
The Crucifixion
with the Virgin and St John the Evangelist
1510
hand-colored woodcut and letterpress
(missal leaf printed on vellum)
British Museum

Monogrammist G.Z. (German printmaker)
Mourning Virgin
1520
drawing (print study)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Pseudo-Blesius
Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1520
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Felipe Pablo de San Leocadio
The Agony in the Garden
ca. 1520-25
oil on panel
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

Giuseppe Porta (Giuseppe Salviati)
The Taking of Samson
before 1570
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista della Rovere (il Fiammenghino)
Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1590
drawing (study for fresco)
British Museum

Bernardino Poccetti (Bernardino Barbatelli)
Ecce Homo
before 1612
drawing
British Museum

Jusepe de Ribera
Saint bound to a Tree
1626
drawing
British Museum

Rembrandt
Lamentation at the Foot of the Cross
ca. 1634-35
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Giovanni Pietro Possenti
St Michael casting down Lucifer
ca. 1640-50
etching
British Museum

Sebastiano Ricci
Study for Fall of the Giants
before 1734
drawing
British Museum

Stefano Pozzi
Apollo and Daphne
before 1768
drawing
British Museum

Alexander Runciman
Diana and Actaeon
before 1785
drawing (sketch)
British Museum

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
At Arthur's Tomb - Final Meeting of Lancelot and Guinevere
1855
watercolor and gouache on paper
British Museum

Odilon Redon
Christ crowned with Thorns
1895
drawing
British Museum

Of Many Things Questionable As They Are Commonly Described In Pictures

    And first in every place we meet with the picture of the Pelecan, opening her breast with her bill, and feeding her young ones with the bloud distilling from her. Thus is it set forth not only in common signes, but in the Crest and Schucheon of many Noble families; hath been asserted by many holy Writers, and was an Hieroglyphick of piety and pity among the Aegyptians; on which consideration, they spared them at their tables.  

    Notwithstanding upon enquiry we finde no mention hereof in Ancient Zoographers, and such as have particularly discoursed upon Animals, as Aristotle, Aelian, Pliny, Solinus and many more; who seldom forget proprieties of such a nature and have been very punctuall in lesse considerable Records. Some ground hereof I confesse we may allow, nor need we deny a remarkable affection in Pelecans toward their young; for Aelian discoursing of Storks, and their affection toward their brood, whom they instruct to fly, and unto whom they re-deliver up the production of their bellies, concludeth at last, that Herons and Pelecans doe the like. 

    As for the testimonies of Ancient Fathers, and Ecclesiasticall writers, we may more safely conceive therein some Emblematicall than any reall Story: so doth Eucherius confesse it to be the Embleme of Christ: and we are unwilling literally to receive that account of Jerome, that perceiving her young ones destroied by Serpents, she openeth her side with her bill, by the bloud whereof they revive and return unto life again. By which relation they might indeed illustrate the destruction of man by the old Serpent, and his restorement by the bloud of Christ; and in this sense we shall not dispute the like relations of Austine, Isidore, Albertus, and many more; and under an Emblematicall intention, we accept it in coat-armour. 

– John Evelyn from Pseudodoxia Epidemica (1646)