Painted Magi

Franco-Flemish Master
Adoration of the Magi, with St Anthony Abbot
ca. 1410-20
tempera and oil on panel
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

St Joseph, seated directly above – and behind the Virgin and Child – wears no halo. The painting's themes and composition are, this early in the 15th century in the north of  Europe, more influenced by medieval tradition than Renaissance innovation. The room itself is marooned between a flat tableau and a space rendered in depth – the floor appears to slope downward like a raked stage with the two standing Magi at right appearing to float slightly above it. St Anthony Abbot, at far left, is placed to usurp the attention to which St Joseph, as foster father of Christ, would seem entitled. But Joseph's stock did not stand high in the middle ages. He was most commonly portrayed as quite old, both white-haired and inert, perhaps to crush any suggestion that he was truly the Virgin's spouse, that he would or could ever make any claims on her sacred, inviolate body. Anthony, on the other hand, was one of the most prominent "healing" saints – the tiny pig begging for his attention represents the diseased sufferers he had the power to cure. Contemporary viewers had good reason, then, for preferring Anthony to Joseph.  

Antonio Vivarini
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1445-47
tempera on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Francesco Botticini
Adoration of the Magi in a Landscape
ca. 1480
tempera on panel
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Bartholome Zeitblom
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1490
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Master of the Aachen Altarpiece
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1500-1510
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Raphael
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1502-1504
tempera on panel, transferred to canvas
(predella fragment from Coronation of the Virgin altarpiece)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Albrecht Dürer
Adoration of the Magi
1504
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Master of Frankfurt
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1510
oil on panels (triptych)
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Jan van Scorel
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1519
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Girolamo da Carpi
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1525-28
oil on canvas
Gallerie Estense, Modena

Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
Adoration of the Magi
1547
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Pieter Isaacsz
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1600
oil on copper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Leonaert Bramer
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1630-35
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Federico Bencovich
Adoration of the Magi
1725
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1811-13
oil on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

from Magi

If only you'd been a better mother.

How could I have been a better mother?

I would have needed a better self,
and that is a gift I never received.

So you're saying it's someone else's fault?

The gift of having had a better mother myself,
my own mother having had a better mother herself.
The gift that keeps on not being given.

Who was supposed to give it?

How am I supposed to know?

Well, how am I supposed to live?

I suppose you must live as if you had been

given better to live with. Comb your hair, for instance.

I cut off my hair, to sell for the money

to buy you what you wanted.

I wanted nothing but your happiness.

I can't give you that!
What would Jesus do?
He had a weird mother too . . . 

Use the myrrh, the frankincense, as if

it were given unconditionally, your birthright.

– Brenda Shaughnessy (2012)

Allegorical Contrivances - III

Félix Auvray
Allegorical Scene
(Child with the Three Fates)
ca. 1820-30
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Carlo Caliari
Allegorical Figures
ca. 1590-95
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione (il Grechetto)
Study for Allegorical Composition
ca. 1652
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Hans Daucher
Allegory of Dürer's Virtues
(armored artist in combat before his patron, Emperor Maximilian I)
1522
Solnhofen limestone relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Abraham Hondius
Cosmic Allegory
ca. 1660-65
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Anonymous Italian Artist
Holy Trinity in the Tree of Eden
flanked by Allegorical Figures
ca. 1650
drawing
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Laurent de La Hyre
Allegory of the Regency of Anne of Austria
1648
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Anonymous German Artist
Allegorical Figure of Discretion
1702-1704
sandstone relief
(architectural ornament)
Bode Museum, Berlin

Andreas Schlüter
Allegorical Figure of Fortitude
ca. 1704
sandstone relief
(lunette)
Bode Museum, Berlin

Michiel Sweerts
Allegory of the Sense of Hearing
ca. 1655-60
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Adolph Menzel
Study for Hammonia
(Personification of Hamburg)
1887
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Charles Mellin-
Allegorical Figure
ca. 1630
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Balthasar Permoser
Flora as Allegory of Spring
1695
ivory
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci)
Allegorical Figure
ca. 1535-36
drawing
(study for fresco)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Antonio Vassilacchi (Antonio Aliense)
Allegorical Scene
ca. 1585
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Jacopo Tintoretto
Allegorical Portrait of Ottavio Strada
1567
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Duke of Guise [soliloquy]:

Now Guise, begins those deepe ingendred thoughts

To burst abroad, those never dying flames,
Which cannot be extinguisht but by bloud.

Oft have I leveld, and at last have learnd,

That perill is the cheefest way to happines,
And resolution honors fairest aime.
What glory is there in a common good,
That hanges for every peasant to atchive?
That like I best that flyes beyond my reach.

Set me to scale the high Peramides,

And thereon set the Diadem of Fraunce,
Ile either rend it with my nayles to naught,
Or mount the top with my aspiring winges,
Although my downfall be the deepest hell.
For this, I wake, when others think I sleepe,
For this, I waite, that scornes attendance else:

For this, my quenchles thirst whereon I builde,
Hath often pleaded kindred to the King,

For this, this head, this heart, this hand and sworde,

Contrives, imagines and fully executes
Matters of importe, aimed at by many,
Yet understoode by none.

For this, hath heaven engendred me of earth,
For this, this earth sustaines my bodies waight,
And with this wait I'le counterpoise a Crowne,

Or with seditions weary all the worlde . . .

– Christopher Marlowe, The Massacre at Paris, scene ii (1593)

Angels (European Visual Tradition) - III

Anonymous German Artist
The Annunciation
ca. 1000
ivory relief
(missal cover)
Bode Museum, Berlin

Niccolò di Pietro Gerini
The Annunciation
ca. 1380-90
tempera on panel
Yale University Art Gallery

Lorenzo di Credi
The Annunciation
ca. 1480-90
tempera on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Albrecht Bouts
The Annunciation
ca. 1480
oil on panel
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean Hey (Master of Moulins)
The Annunciation
ca. 1490-95
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Alessandro Araldi
The Annunciation
1514
oil on panel
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
The Annunciation
ca. 1530-35
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jacopo Tintoretto
The Annunciation
before 1594
oil on canvas
Romanian National Museum of Art, Bucharest

El Greco
The Annunciation
ca. 1600
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Alessandro Vitali and workshop
The Annunciation
ca. 1603
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino

Jacques Bellange
The Annunciation
ca. 1605
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstmuseum Basel

Matthias Stom
The Annunciation
ca. 1630-32
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Philippe de Champaigne
The Annunciation
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

David Teniers the Younger
The Annunciation
ca. 1650
oil on copper
Staatsgalerie Flämische Barockmalerei
im Schloss Neuburg

follower of Rembrandt
The Annunciation
ca. 1650-55
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Benedetto Gennari the Younger
The Annunciation
1686
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Machevill:

Albeit the world thinke Machevill is dead,

Yet was his soule but flowne beyond the Alpes,
And now the Guize is dead, is come from France

To view this Land, and frolicke with his friends.
To some perhaps my name is odious,
But such as love me, gard me from their tongues,
And let them know that I am Machevill,

And weigh not men, and therefore not mens words.
Admir'd I am of those that hate me most:
Though some speake openly against my bookes, 
Yet will they reade me, and thereby attaine
To Peters Chayre: And when they cast me off,
Are poyson'd by my climing followers.
I count Religion but a childish Toy,

And hold there is no sinne but Ignorance.
Birds of the Aire will tell of murders past;
I am asham'd to heare such fooleries.
Many will talke of Title to a Crowne:

What right had Cæsar to the Empery?
Might first made Kings, and Lawes were then most sure
When like the Dracos they were writ in blood.
Hence comes it, that a strong built Citadell
Commands much more then letters can import:
Which maxime had Phaleris observ'd,
H'had never bellowed in a brasen Bull
Of great ones envy; o'th poore petty wites,
Let me be envy'd and not pittied!
But whither am I bound, I come not, I,

To reade a lecture here in Britanie,
But to present the Tragedy of a Jew,
Who smiles to see how full his bags are cramb'd,
Which money was not got without my meanes.
I crave but this, Grace him as he deserves,
And let him not be entertain'd the worse
Because he favours me.

– Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, prologue (1592)

Iconic Corpse - III

Pieter de Witte (Pietro Candido)
Pietà
ca. 1595
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Artist after Jacopo Sansovino
Pietà
ca. 1550-1600
terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous German Artist
Pietà of Chioggia
ca. 1600
bronze relief
Detroit Institute of Arts

Jan Thomas
The Lamentation
1661
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Peter Paul Rubens
The Lamentation
ca. 1600-1610
oil on panel (sketch)
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Peter Paul Rubens
The Lamentation, with St John the Evangelist and the Virgin
ca. 1614-15
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Paolo Gerolamo Piola
The Lamentation
ca. 1695
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Palma il Giovane
Study for the Lamentation
ca. 1590
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone
The Lamentation
ca. 1640
oil on panel
Staatsgalerie, Stuttgart

Pompeo Batoni
The Lamentation
1747
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Antonio Balestra
The Lamentation
1721
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Federico Zuccaro
Dead Christ supported by an Angel
ca. 1563
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Andrea Sacchi
Model posing as the Dead Christ
ca. 1640
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Palma il Giovane
Dead Christ supported by an Angel
ca. 1612
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Artist after Pietro Testa
Dead Christ mourned by Angels
17th century
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

workshop of Pietro Faccini
The Virgin with the Dead Christ
ca. 1595-1600
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Tamburlaine [at the bedside of Zenocrate, his Queen]:

Blacke is the beauty of the brightest day,

The golden balle of heavens eternal fire,

That danc'd with glorie on the silver waves,
Now wants the fewell that enflamde his beames:
And all with faintnesse and for foule disgrace,

He bindes his temples with a frowning cloude,

Ready to darken earth with endlesse night:
Zenocrate that gave him light and life,
Whose eies shot fire from their Ivory bowers,

And tempered every soule with lively heat,
Now by the malice of the angry Skies,

Whose jealousie admits no second Mate,
Drawes in the comfort of her latest breath

All dasled with the hellish mists of death.

Now walk the angels on the walles of heaven,

As Centinels to warne th'immortall soules,

To entertaine devine Zenocrate.

Apollo, Cynthia, and the ceaslesse lamps
That gently look'd upon this loathsome earth,
Shine downwards now no more, but deck the heavens
To entertaine divine Zenocrate.

The Cherubins and holy Seraphins
That sing and play before the king of kings,
Use all their voices and their instruments
To entertaine divine Zenocrate.

And in this sweet and currious harmony,
The God that tunes this musicke to our soules,
Holds out his hand in highest majesty
To entertaine divine Zenocrate.

Then let some holy traunce convay my thoughts,
Up to the pallace of th'imperiall heaven:
That this my life may be as short to me
As are the daies of sweet Zenocrate . . .

– Christopher Marlowe, Tamburlaine, The Second Part, act II, scene iv (1590)