Youth Pictured

Ancient Greek Culture under the Roman Empire
Polydeukion, favorite of Herodes Atticus
AD 150-170
marble (excavated in Attica)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Tanzio da Varallo
Kneeling Youth
ca. 1610
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pieter Feddes after Martin Gheeraerts
Child Skeleton
(series, Anatomical Figures of Various Ages)
1614
etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Aniello Falcone
Head of a Boy
ca. 1635-40
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Grégoire Huret
Jean-Baptiste Amador de Vignerot du Plessis
ca. 1642-45
engraving
British Museum

Marie-Élisabeth Gabiou
Girl with Cherries
ca. 1787
oil on canvas
(sold at Christie's London, 2022)
private collection

Gaetano Gandolfi
Girl Reading
before 1802
drawing
British Museum

Thomas Ball
John Magee Ellsworth, age two
1876
marble
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Charles Lepec
Design for Ornamental Mask
ca. 1880
drawing
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Robert Henri
Portrait of a Girl - Checkered Blouse
1910
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Rose Simmonds
Rosemary with Fishing Line
ca. 1938
gelatin silver print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Harry Warnecke
Shirley Temple
1938
tricolor carbro print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Jack Humphrey
Boy in Leather Jacket (Edgar Price)
1939
oil on panel
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Sid Grossman
Boy with Stove
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Helen Levitt
New York
ca. 1942
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Mark Cohen
Girl Holding Popsicle
1972
gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Loretta Lux
The Red Ball 1
2002
C-print
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Where are my wingèd words? Dissolved in air.

Where is my flower of youth? All withered. Where

My glory? Vanished! Where the strength I knew

From comely limbs? Disease hath changed it too,

And bent them. Where the riches and the lands? –

God Hath Them! Yea, and sinner's snatching hands

Have grudged the rest. Where is my father, mother,

And where my blessed sister, my sweet brother? –

Gone to the grave! – There did remain for me

Alone my fatherland, till destiny,

Malignly stirring a black tempest, drove

My foot from the last rest. And now I rove

Estranged and desolate a foreign shore,

And drag my mournful life and age all hoar

Throneless and cityless, and childless save

This father-care for children, which I have,

Living from day to day on wandering feet.

Where shall I cast this body? What will greet

My sorrows with an end? What gentle ground

And hospitable grave will wrap me round? 

Who last my dying eyelids stoop to close –
Some saint, the Saviour's friend? or one of those

Who do not know Him? – The air interpose,

And scatter these words too.

– Gregory of Nazianzus (AD 329-390), translated by Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1842)