Focus

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli)
Figure from the Fondaco dei Tedeschi
ca. 1508
detached exterior fresco
Museo di Palazzo Grimani, Venice

Domenico Brusasorci
Nymphs from Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, Verona
ca. 1550
detached exterior fresco
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

Jan de Bisschop
Market Scene under Trees at Katwijk op Rijn
ca. 1650-55
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Frédéric Flachéron
Bas-Relief from the Arch of Constantine, Rome
1849
paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Frederic Edwin Church
The Meteor
1860-61
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut

Julia Margaret Cameron
A Lovely Sketch
1873
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Constantin Mitrofanovich Flórinsky
Self Portrait
(officer of His Majesty, Tsar Nicholas II)
1907
autochrome
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alberto Giacometti
Diego
1953
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Eric Orr
Red Ecliptic
1987
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Jay Boersma
Recliner of Turin
1988
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Ralph Gibson
Untitled (T-shirt Portrait)
1990
C-print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College,
Poughkeepsie, New York

Christopher Bucklow
Guest
1995
C-print from camera with multiple pinholes
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Siegrun Appelt
Landscape V
1996
C-print shot from moving train between Naples and Rome
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Ruff
jpeg de01
2005
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Lisa Tyson Ennis
Moonlit Tent 2 a.m.
2007
gelatin silver print
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Todd Hido
#10552
2011
inkjet print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Andrew Cranston
Those Who Hide Well Live Well
2022
distemper on linen
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

from On Hope

By Way of Question and Answer Between Abraham Cowley and Richard Crashaw

Cowley.          Hope, Fortune's cheating lottery,    

                    Where for one prize an hundred blanks there be;

                    Fond archer Hope, who tak'st thine aim so far   

                    That still or short or wide thine arrows are.

                        Thine empty cloud the eye itself deceives

                        With shapes that our own fancy gives:

                        A cloud which gilt and painted now appears

                            But must drop presently in tears.

                    When thy false beams o'er reason's light prevail,

                    By ignes fatui, not North Stars, we sail.                                              

Crashaw.         Fortune, alas, above the world's law wars;

                    Hope kicks the curled heads of conspiring stars.

                    Her keel cuts not the waves, where our winds stir,

                    And Fate's whole lottery is one blank to her.

                        Her shafts and she fly far above,

                        And forage in the fields of light and love.

                        Sweet Hope! kind cheat! fair fallacy! by thee

                            We are not where or what we be,

                    But what and where we would be: thus art thou

                    Our absent presence, and our future now. 

                        

– Abraham Cowley and Richard Crashaw (ca. 1645)