Friday, April 3, 2026

Built

David Anderson
Roof, 195 Broadway
1981
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York


Thomas Struth
Crosby Street, Soho, New York
1978
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giuseppe Valeriani
Arched Entrance above Flight of Steps
before 1771
drawing
British Museum

Nicola Vianelli
Pescheria, Rome
1836
drawing
British Museum

Eugène Atget
Terre-plein du Pont Neuf, matinée d'hiver
1925
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giambattista Tiepolo
Upper Story of Stable Block by Palladio at Villa Valmarana near Vicenza
1757
drawing
British Museum

Canaletto
The Molo and Palazzo Ducale, Venice
1730
oil on canvas
Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina

Richard Phené Spiers
Pompeian House built in Paris by Prince Jérôme-Napoléon
1860
(demolished in 1891)
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Alexandre Benois
Hermitage at Tsarskoye Selo
ca. 1900
watercolor on paper
Fleming Museum of Art, Burlington, Vermont

Edouard Baldus
Arc antique à Orange
1853
salted paper print from paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

attributed to Mauro Antonio Tesi
Classical Façade
before 1766
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Madoka Takagi
59th Street & 1st Avenue, New York
1989
platinum-palladium print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ilse Bing
Kloster Reichenau am Bodensee
1929
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Randolph Schwabe
Warwick Square, London EC4
1942
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis-Gustave Taraval
Design for Neoclassical Building
before 1794
ink and wash on paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jennifer Tauber
Waste Transfer Station
2005
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

William Henry Fox Talbot
The Boulevards at Paris
1843
salted paper print from paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Vanitas Vanitatum

All the flowers of the spring
Meet to perfume our burying;
These have but their growing prime,
And man does flourish but his time:
Survey our progress from our birth –
We are set, we grow, we turn to earth.
Courts adieu, and all delights,
All bewitching appetites!
Sweetest breath and clearest eye
Like perfumes go out and die;
And consequently this is done
As shadows wait upon the sun.
Vain the ambition of kings
Who seek by trophies and dead things
To leave a living name behind,
And weave but nets to catch the wind.

– John Webster, from The Devil's Law Case (ca. 1610)

Dire - III

Gioacchino Assereto
Prometheus
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Musée de la Chartreuse, Douai

Abraham Bloemaert after Titian
Prometheus
ca. 1600
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Sebald Beham
Expulsion from Paradise
1543
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Cherubino Alberti after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Expulsion of Adam and Eve
before 1615
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Abel Faivre
Pour la France versez votre Or
1915
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hans Konrad Escher von der Linth
Aeneas and Anchises
ca. 1781
drawing
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Anton Maria Zanetti after Parmigianino
Aeneas carrying Anchises out of burning Troy
1723
chiaroscuro woodcut
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Paolo Farinati
Tamerlane mounting his Horse
ca. 1575
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Brutus sentencing his Sons to Death
1799
drawing
(study for painting)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Roman Empire
Barbarian Prisoners and Trophies
AD 240-260
marble relief panels
(from Triumphal Arch demolished in Rome)
Giardino di Boboli, Florence

Matthias Gerung
Allegory of Justice sleeping in Chains
1543
oil and tempera on panel
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Alexander Rothaug
Odysseus longing for Home
ca, 1924
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Eugène Isabey
The Wreck
1854
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Gaspare Diziani
Jonah and the Whale
before 1767
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Frederic Leighton
Luca Signorelli painting his Beautiful Dead Son
1851
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jan Georg van Vliet
Beggar
1632
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Praxiteles the sculptor of old time wrought a delicate image, but lifeless, the dumb counterfeit of beauty, endowing the stone with form; but this Praxiteles of today, creator of living beings by his magic, hath moulded in my heart Love, the rogue of rogues.  Perchance, indeed, his name only is the same, but his works are better, since he hath transformed no stone, but the spirit of the mind.  Graciously may he mould my character, that when he has formed it he may have within me a temple of Love, even my soul. 

Troezen is a good nurse; thou shalt not err if thou praisest even the last of her boys. But Empedocles excels all in brilliance as much as the lovely rose outshines the other flowers of spring. 

Delicate children, so help me Love, doth Tyre nurture, but Myiscus is the sun that, when his light bursts forth, quenches the stars. 

If I see Thero, I see everything, but if I see everything and see no Thero, I again see nothing.

Look! consume not all Cnidus utterly, Aribazus; the very stone is softened and is vanishing.

Ye Persian mothers, beautiful, yea beautiful are the children ye bear, but Aribazus is to me a thing more beautiful than beauty. 

– from Book XII (Strato's Musa Puerilis) in the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

Wiener Werkstätte (Designers)

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum


Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Distel
ca. 1910
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Kolomon Moser for Wiener Werkstätte
Baummarder
ca. 1910-11
block-printed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Josef Hoffmann for Wiener Werkstätte
Adler
ca. 1910-12
block-printed silk
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anny Schröder for Wiener Werkstätte
Doily with Bird
1922
linen (bobbin lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anny Schröder for Wiener Werkstätte
Doily with Tree
1922
linen (bobbin lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Valerie Wieselthier for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1920
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Hilda Jeser for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1921
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
ca. 1917
painted zinc with glass liner
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Vase
1923
silver
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dina Kuhn for Wiener Werkstätte
Allegorical Head: Das Wasser
1929
glazed earthenware
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Mathilde Flögl for Wiener Werkstätte
Drawstring Bag
ca. 1925
beaded kidskin with silk cord
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Rix-Ueno for Wiener Werkstätte
Archibald
ca. 1913-17
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Rix-Ueno for Wiener Werkstätte
Archibald
ca. 1913-17
gouache on paper (design for textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Viola
1922
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Dagobert Peche for Wiener Werkstätte
Das Wasser
1922
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

As I gird on for fighting
    My sword upon my thigh,
I think on old ill fortunes
    Of better men than I.

Think I, the round world over,
    What golden lads are low
With hurts not mine to mourn for
    And shames I shall not know.

What evil luck soever
    For me remains in store,
'Tis sure much finer fellows
    Have fared much worse before. 

So here are things to think on
    That ought to make me brave,
As I strap on for fighting
    My sword that will not save.

– A.E. Housman (1922)