Dark Grounds - III

Joshua Reynolds
Study of a Young Woman
ca. 1760-65
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Cindy Sherman
Untitled (MP #116)
1982
C-print
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Tom Krestesen
Cardinal
ca. 1970
watercolor on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Kåre Kivijärvi
Katariina
1985
gelatin silver print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Eva Klasson
Untitled
1975
gelatin silver print
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Anonymous German Printmaker
Cornetto Tabak
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Wilhelm Leibl
Study of Hand with Ring
ca. 1880
oil on panel
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Marco Carlone (et al)
Phaedra and Hippolytus
ca. 1775-80
watercolor and gouache on paper
(after wall painting in the Baths of Titus)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Marco Carlone (et al)
Scene of Courtship
ca. 1775-80
watercolor and gouache on paper
(after wall painting in the Baths of Titus)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Francesco Bartolozzi after Giovanni Battista Cipriani
Figures from the Portland Vase
1786
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Paul-André Basset (publisher)
Crucifixion, with Instruments of the Passion
ca. 1800-1825
hand-colored engraving
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Ernst Ludwig Kirchner
Absalom and his Counselors
1918
woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jacob Gole
Personification of Italy
ca. 1680
mezzotint
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Elias Nessenthaler
Pietà
ca. 1690
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Félix Vallotton
Cæsar - Socrate - Iésus - Néron
ca. 1900
woodcut
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Anton Dominik Fernkorn
The singer Wilhelmine Schröder-Devrient
1856
marble
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

On the Picture of a certain Sophist at Pergamus – Forgive our delay in offering the portrait long due to you on account of your discourses and well-running, honeyed speech; but now, Heraclamon, we have set up this picture of you in return for your labours and care for the city's weal.  If the gift be little, blame us not; for with such gifts we ever reward good men.

On the Picture of Ajax by Timomachus – Ajax, more the son of Timomachus than thine own father's, Art seized on thee as thou really wert; the painter saw thee in thy frenzy; his hand grew mad as the madman, and the tears he mixed on his palette were a compound of all the griefs that made up thy sorrow. 

To a Magistrate – Mix with mildness a little terror, for the buzzing bee herself is armed with a sharp sting, the noble horse is not guided without a whip, nor does a herd of swine obey the swineherd before they hear the sound of the far-booming crook.

We honour the boy Thyonichus with this statue, not that thou mayst see by the beauty of this monument how comely he was, but, good Sir, that thou mayst learn his achievements, and be emulous of such enthusiasm.  This is he whose legs never gave way owing to fatigue, and who vanquished every adversary, him of his own age, the younger one, and the elder one. 

Full of hope is he, and he shows that the breath on the tip of his lips comes from deep within the hollow of his sides.  The bronze is ready to leap forth to gain the crown, and the base shall not hold it back.  O Art, swifter than the wind!

We erected here in marble the statue of Theodosius, great in counsel, the Proconsul, ruler of Asia, because he raised Smyrna from ruin and brought her to light again,* the city much besung for her beautiful edifices. 

– from Book XVI (Epigrams of the Planudean Anthology) in the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1918)

*after the earthquake of AD 178