Surmises

Audrey Flack
Roman Beauties
1983
dye transfer print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

James Fittler after Samuel Woodforde
Alexander Iden dragging John Cade
(illustration to Shakespeare's Henry VI, Part 2)
1806
etching
British Museum

Paolo Finoglia
The Immaculate Conception
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Fidus (Hugo Höppener)
Proposal for a Beethoven Monument
1903
lithograph (magazine illustration)
Beethoven Haus, Bonn

Edgar Fernhout
Still Life with Two Small Bottles
1948
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Herbert Ferber
Gray Sculpture
1954
copper and lead
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Georg Fennitzer
Portrait of Andreas Scharmann
ca. 1690
mezzotint
British Museum

Lyonel Feininger
Gelmeroda IV
1915
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Frederick H. Evans
Portrait of photographer F. Holland Day
ca. 1895
platinum print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Richard Estes
Ten Doors
1972
screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mark English
Educate Your Parents
1970
acrylic on board
(commissioned by Time magazine)
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Renold Elstrack
Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley (murdered, 1566)
ca. 1616-20
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Fritz Eichenberg
Rush Hour (Myers Cafeteria)
ca. 1936
wood-engraving
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Thomas Eakins
Talcott Williams
ca. 1892
platinum print
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Will Dyson
Dr Freud introduces a Patient to her Subconscious
ca. 1929
drypoint
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Mabel Dwight
Banana Men
1936
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Thomas Germain Joseph Duvivier
An Architect's Table
1772
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

from Minturno, or, On Beauty

(Modeled on Plato's Hippias Major, Minturno is a conversation between the philosopher Antonio Minturno and Geronimo Ruscelli, a colorful courtier and dilettante)

Geronimo Ruscelli:  I consider beauty, like love, the proper possession of youth.

Antonio Minturno:  If love came into being before the beginning of the world, as the poets say, it must be very old indeed, and the same argument applies to beauty, for love is the desire for beauty.  But leaving this aside, tell me, if you will: this lady, whom you consider beauty itself – do her clothes also seem beautiful to you?

G.R.:  Extremely beautiful.

A.M.:  Through the art of the tailor or embroiderer or of some other artisan?

G.R.:  Everything she wears is beautiful – she adds beauty to whatever she happens to be wearing.

A.M.:  Are her horse and carriage also beautiful?

G.R.:  As beautiful as the chariot of the sun.

A.M.:  But what would we say of the same things if they belonged to somebody else?

G.R.:  Perhaps they would be beautiful, perhaps not.

A.M.:  Because they might belong to someone they were not suited to, or for some other reason?

G.R.:  For the reason you mention.

A.M.:  Then it is the suitable, or the fitting, which makes every ornament beautiful.  The same clothes would not be suitable if worn by a Gabrina [character in Orlando Furioso], and hence not beautiful, and it was because gold is not a beautiful color for eyes that Phidias made his statue of Minerva with eyes of ivory and pupils of precious stone [as mentioned by Plato].

G.R.:  So it seems. 

A.M.:  And Omphale's clothes were not beautiful when Hercules wore them, nor his lion's skin when worn by Omphale, because in both cases the other's clothes were unsuitable.

G.R.:  What you are saying seems to me very true.

A.M.:  In your opinion, then, the fitting and the beautiful are the same thing, since the fitting is what makes everything beautiful. 

– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1593-94), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)