Swords

Anonymous German Artist
Our Lady of Sorrows
15th century
hand-colored woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Albrecht Altdorfer
Expulsion from Paradise
ca. 1508
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff
Nero
1493
hand-colored woodcut
(illustration to the Nuremberg Chronicle) 
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jacob Matham after Hendrik Goltzius
Personification of Wrath
ca. 1600
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Warrior
before 1781
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Agnolo Gaddi
St Julian
ca. 1393-96
tempera and gold on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Joan of Arc kissing the Sword of Deliverance
1863
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Moderne et Contemporain de Strasbourg

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Sword of Henri IV
1813
drawing
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1540-50
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

René-Marie Castaing
St Martin
ca. 1935
gouache on paper
(study for altarpiece)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Juan de Flandes
Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1496-99
oil on panel
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Beheading of St John the Baptist
ca. 1520-30
oil on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Crispijn de Passe the Elder
Lucretia
ca. 1620
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anselm Feuerbach
Illustration Design for the Nibelungenlied
1844
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anton Koberger (printer)
Death of King Saul
ca. 1479-83
hand-colored woodcut
(Bible illustration)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Sebastian Vrancx
Soldiers plundering Peasants
ca. 1620
oil on panel
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

Evening Without Angels

                                                                                    the great interests of man; air

                                                                                    and light, the joy of having a

                                                                                    body, the voluptuousness of

                                                                                    looking.

                                                                                                                Mario Rossi

Why seraphim like lutanists arranged

Above the trees? And why the poet as

Eternal chef d'orchestre?

                                          Air is air,

Its vacancy glitters round us everywhere.

Its sounds are not angelic syllables

But our unfashioned spirits realized

More sharply in more furious selves. 

                                          And light

That fosters seraphim and is to them

Coiffeur of haloes, fecund jeweller –

Was the sun concoct for angels or for men?

Sad men made angels of the sun, and of

The moon they made their own attendant ghosts,

Which led them back to angels, after death.

Let this be clear that we are men of sun

And men of day and never of pointed night,

Men that repeat antiquest sounds of air

In an accord of repetitions. Yet,

If we repeat, it is because the wind

Encircling us, speaks always with our speech.

Light, too, encrusts us making visible

The motions of the mind and giving form

To moodiest nothings, as, desire for day

Accomplished in the immensely flashing East,

Desire for rest, in that descending sea

Of dark, which in its very darkening

Is rest and silence spreading into sleep.

. . . Evening, when the measure skips a beat

And then another, one by one, and all

To a seething minor swiftly modulate.

Bare night is best. Bare earth is best. Bare, bare,

Except for our own houses, huddled low,

Beneath the arches and their spangled air,

Beneath the rhapsodies of fire and fire,

Where the voice that is in us makes a true response,

Where the voice that is great within us rises up,

As we stand gazing at the rounded moon. 

– Wallace Stevens (1935)