Potency

Sebastiano Mazzoni
The Three Fates
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
Barber Institute of Fine Arts,
University of Birmingham, West Midlands

Marco Bigio
The Three Fates
ca. 1530-40
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Francesco Salviati
The Three Fates
ca. 1550
oil on canvas
Galleria Palatina, Florence

Lodovico Settevecchie and Leonardo da Brescia
Cronos and the Three Fates
ca. 1570
fresco
Castello Estense, Ferrara

attributed to Jean-Baptiste Siméon Chardin
The Vestal Virgins
ca. 1760-70
oil on canvas (grisaille)
Art Institute of Chicago

Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
Vestal Virgin Claudia Quinta righting Ship carrying Statue of Cybele
(episode described by Ovid)
ca. 1530-35
oil on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Angelica Kauffmann
Portrait of a Woman as a Vestal Virgin
ca. 1780-90
oil on canvas
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Anonymous Italian Sculptor
Sibyl
ca. 1300-1350
marble
Musée du Louvre

Ludger tom Ring the Elder
Delphic Sibyl
ca. 1535
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Andrea del Castagno
Cumaean Sibyl
ca. 1450
detached fresco
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Raffaello Schiaminossi
Cumaean Sibyl
1609
etching
British Museum

Raffaello Schiaminossi
Cimmerian Sibyl
1609
etching
British Museum

Jean-Jacques Caffieri
Erythraean Sibyl
1759
marble
Musée du Louvre

Domenico Puligo (Domenico Ubaldini)
Portrait of a Woman as a Sibyl
before 1527
oil on panel
private collection

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
The Three Graces
before 1875
marble
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anonymous Italian Sculptor
The Three Graces
ca. 1650-1700
alabaster
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Odilon Redon
The Three Fates
1900
oil on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from The Romance of the Lily

    As a buried soul awaking

        From the cycle of its sleep,

Panic-struck and sad doth lie

Beneath its mind's dim canopy,

    And marks the stars of memory breaking

        From 'neath oblivion's ebbing deep,

While clouds of doubt bewilder the true sky –

    So in the hieroglyphic portal

        Of his dreams sate Balthazar,

Awake amidst his slumbering senses,

    And felt as feels man's ghost immortal,

Whom the corpse's earthen fences

    From his vast existence bar. 

– Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1825)

Mannerist Attitudes

El Greco
Penitent Magdalen
ca. 1576-77
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Andrea Andreani after Parmigianino
St Cecilia
ca. 1590
chiaroscuro woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pieter Coecke van Aelst
Lucretia
before 1550
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum Basel

Antonio Fantuzzi
The Muse Melpomene
ca. 1545
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Pierre Eskrich
Art assisting Nature
(illustration to Alciati's Emblems)
ca. 1540-50
woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Giulio Bonasone
Mercury with Seven-Branched Candlestick
ca. 1555
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Cornelis Cort after Antoine Lafréry
Statue of Antique Warrior with Dead Child
1574
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci)
Sibyl
ca. 1540
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Lucas van Leyden
Fall of Man
1529
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Michele Tosini
St John the Baptist
ca. 1570
oil on panel
Saint Louis Art Museum

Lambert Zutman
St John the Evangelist
1545
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Adamo Scultori after Giulio Romano
Musical Faun and Nymph
before 1585
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Antonio Campi
Design for Architectural Ornaments
ca. 1570
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

attributed to Girolamo Siciolante
Holy Family
ca. 1544
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Luis de Morales
Ecce Homo
before 1586
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Hans Hoffmann
Expulsion from Paradise
ca. 1580-90
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Chorus of Persian Elders:  How it pains me to hear of these many sufferings, present and still to come, of the people of the East!

Queen:  O god, how many dire sorrows are coming upon me!  But the misfortune that stings me most of all is to hear of the dishonourable state of the garments that clothe my son's body.  I am going  now, and I will take proper attire from the palace and try to meet my son.  We will not fail those who are dearest to us when they are in trouble. 

[Exit.]

Chorus:  O popoi! What a great and good life we enjoyed

                in our well-run city, when our old 

                never-failing, never-harming, invincible king,

                godlike Darius, ruled the country!

                

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

The Ground Layer (Sombre) - III

Franz Sedlacek
Storm
1932
oil on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Anonymous French Artist
Erythraean Sibyl
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
St James the Greater
ca. 1510-20
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari
Drunkenness of Noah
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

attributed to Francesco Crescenzi
Judgment of Paris
ca. 1615-20
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Edgar Klier
Miners
1960
oil on canvas
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Lizzy Ansingh
The Seven Deadly Sins
1914
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum

Gustave Courbet
Académie
ca. 1842
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

William Merritt Chase
Portrait of Mrs Chase
ca. 1890-95
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Aert de Gelder
Tobias welcomed by his mother Hannah
ca. 1690-1700
oil on canvas
Museum Catharijneconvent, Utrecht

Willem van Mieris
Odysseus threatening Circe
1690
oil on panel
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Jacopo Zucchi
Crucifixion
1583
oil on copper
Yale University Art Gallery

Marcello Venusti after Scipione Pulzone
Madonna
ca. 1575
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Daniel Seghers
Cartouche Portrait of Nicolas Poussin
within Garland of Flowers
ca. 1650-51
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Nicolas de Largillière
Portrait of Madame Léon de la Mejenelle
1711
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Raffaellino del Garbo
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1490-1500
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

"I beg you to forgive me; I have not made up my mind to bring an accusation, but I cannot remain silent, not only because adultery is an insufferable crime but also because in addition to the usual outrageous behavior involved in it, there is a special feature in this case: the man involved is a slave – he is spiritually base, even if my wife thinks him handsome.  Furthermore, he is not even someone else's slave; he is my own.  He should have been her slave too – not her master!  The act of adultery is made extreme and more disgraceful by the twin facts that the adulterous woman's good reputation is united with her paramour's bad one."

                                                        *                   *                *

"Well, to sum things up, I have this to say.  They are an attractive pair.  But who would rank a slave above a husband?  He is in the bloom of youth, King, and I too think him handsome; and often did I foolishly commend him to her as attractive in appearance, with his languishing eyes.  I often commended his white fingers and his tawny locks.  By saying these things, then, I taught her to love.  You, King, know that this is the truth; for his beauty did not desert him even when he was in fear; his cheeks shone brightly with his panic; his looks did not lose their bloom even when he was in pain.  He stood in bonds before you, but even his hands were becoming to him.  The curses that are showered on your head and the risk of destruction that you run adorn you, you handsome rogue.  I hesitate, my lord, to say that he is even more handsome today.  Do you not pity me, King?  My adulterous wife is listening as I, the husband, am praising the adulterer.  I am afraid his good looks will help him even today – so much have I been praising him."

– Iamblichus, from A Babylonian Story, written in Greek, 2nd century AD.  This passage is from one of the few short fragments of the original text to have survived from antiquity, translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).

Viewers Viewing

Ferdinand Roybet
The Connoisseurs 
1876
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Ruth Orkin
Jinx staring at Statue, Florence
1951
gelatin silver print
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Hugh Douglas Hamilton
Antonio Canova in his studio with Henry Tresham
 studying a plaster model for Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1788-91
pastel on paper
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Jean-Simon Berthélemy
Portrait of a Gentleman
gazing at the Bust of Denis Diderot
1784
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Floris Verster
Man before a Bust
ca. 1880
drawing, with watercolor
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Madame de Vermenoux paying Homage to Apollo
1764
pastel on vellum
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Kenneth Hayes Miller
Woman in Sculpture Hall
1925
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Harm Kamerlingh Onnes
Young Woman in Museum
1960
oil on panel
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Jan van Kessel the Elder
Venus and Cupid in a Gallery
(Allegory of Sight)
before 1679
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Jan Juriaensz van Baden
Watching a Play in Amsterdam
ca. 1653
oil on panel
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Simon Vouet
Psyche secretly gazing upon Cupid
ca. 1645
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Laurie Simmons
Tourism: At the Bikini Atoll
1984
C-print
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Konrad Witz
The Tiburtine Sibyl showing Emperor Augustus 
a Vision of the Virgin and Child in the Sky
ca. 1435
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Alonso Cano
St John the Evangelist's Vision of the Lamb
ca. 1635-37
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Alonso Cano
St John the Evangelist's Vision of God the Father
ca. 1635-37
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Donato Creti
Astronomical Observations: The Sun
1711
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Ancestral Houses

Surely among a rich man's flowering lawns,

Amid the rustle of his planted hills, 
Life overflows without ambitious pains;

And rains down life until the basin spills,

And mounts more dizzy high the more it rains
As though to choose whatever shape it wills
And never stoop to a mechanical
Or servile shape, at others' beck and call.

Mere dreams, mere dreams! Yet Homer had not sung
Had he not found it certain beyond dreams
That out of life's own self-delight had sprung
The abounding glittering jet; though now it seems
As if some marvellous empty sea-shell flung
Out of the obscure dark of the rich streams,
And not a fountain, were the symbol which

Shadows the inherited glory of the rich.

Some violent bitter man, some powerful man
Called architect and artist in, that they,
Bitter and violent men, might rear in stone
The sweetness that all longed for night and day,
The gentleness none there had ever known;

But when the master's buried mice can play,
And maybe the great-grandson of that house,
For all its bronze and marble, 's but a mouse.

O what if gardens where the peacock strays
With delicate feet upon old terraces,
Or else all Juno from an urn displays
Before the indifferent garden deities;
O what if levelled lawns and gravelled ways
Where slippered Contemplation finds his ease
And Childhood a delight for every sense,

But take our greatness with our violence?

What if the glory of escutcheoned doors,

And buildings that a haughtier age designed,
The pacing to and fro on polished floors

Amid great chambers and long galleries, lined
With famous portraits of our ancestors;
What if those things the greatest of mankind
Consider most to magnify, or to bless,

But take our greatness with our bitterness?

– W.B. Yeats, from Meditations in Time of Civil War (1923)