Circumscribed - I

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Portrait of writer Gottfried Keller
ca. 1890
watercolor and gouache on paper
(design for stained glass)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anonymous German Artist
Ex Libris - Barbara Reihingin
1526
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Portrait of Socrates
1574
engraving
(book illustration)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Sandro Botticelli
Virgin and Child with St John the Baptist and an Angel
ca. 1470
tempera on panel
National Museum, Warsaw

Hans Brosamer
The Judgment of Paris
before 1554
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Nicolaes de Bruyn
Trojan Hector
1594
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki
Medallion Monument to Princess Casimira von Lippe-Detmold
1780
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Andrea della Robbia
Madonna of Arezzo
ca. 1480
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

Antonio Fantuzzi after Parmigianino
Circe offering Potion to Crew of Odysseus
ca. 1542
etching
Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome

Francesco di Giorgio Martini
St Jerome
ca. 1475
bronze plaquette
Bode Museum, Berlin

Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Jupiter and Minerva
ca. 1815
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Scott Gentling
Franz Joseph Haydn
1993
watercolor and gouache on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Hans Holbein the Younger
Miniature Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1530
gouache on vellum
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hendrik Hondius the Elder after Pieter Stevens
Colosseum, Rome
1600
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Daniel Hopfer
Roman Emperor Galba
before 1536
etching
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

Pierre-Charles Ingouf after Pierre-Alexandre Wille
Portrait of artist Johann Georg Wille
1771
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

On the Lyre-playing Stone at Megara – As thou passest by Nisaea remember me, the musical stone; for when Alcathous was building his towered wall, then Phoebus lifted on his shoulder the building stone, laying down his Delphian lyre in me.  Hence I am a lyrist; strike me with a small pebble and get evidence of what I boast.

On a Bath at Praenetus in Bithynia – What is now a bath was formerly no bath, but a rubbish ground, a place of execration; but now it excels in splendour those delightful and lovely baths of which all men sing the praises.  For Alexander, the bishop of Nicaca, the star of illustrious learning, built it at his own expense. 

On a Picture of Victories – Here we are, the Victories, the laughing maidens, bringing victories to the city that loveth righteousness.  Those to whom the city is dear painted us, fashioning us in such forms as are proper to Victories.  

On the Dancer Helladia – The feminine nature excels in dancing: give way, ye young men!  The Muse and Helladia laid down this law, one because she first invented the rhythm of movement, the other because she reached perfection in the art. 

On the Dancer Helladia – Someone sung the lay of Hector, a new tune, and Helladia, donning a chlamys, accompanied the melody.  In the dancing of this goddess of war there was both desire and terror, for with virile strength she mingled feminine grace. 

On the Dancer Pylades – Pylades put on the divinity of the frenzied god himself, when from Thebes he led the Bacchants to the Italian stage, a delight and a terror to men, so full of his dancing did he fill all the city with the untempered fury of the demon.  Thebes knows but the god who was born of fire; the heavenly one is this whom we see brought into the world by these hands that can utter everything.*

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

*i.e. the real Bacchus was born from the fire as his mother Semele was incinerated, whereas this stage Bacchus is created by the expressive gestures of the dancer's hands – in this kind of dancing, more importance was attached to the movements of the hands than to those of the feet