L'Allegro - III

Georg Lemberger
The Opening of the Seventh Seal
1524
hand-colored woodcut
(illustration to the "Luther" Bible)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Georg Pecham
Neptune in Shell Chariot
1594
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Philip Galle after Johannes Stradanus
Fishing with Nets in the Arno
ca. 1578-80
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Gentile da Fabriano
St Nicholas of Bari saving a Ship from sinking
1425
tempera on panel
(predella fragment)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Michaelina Woutiers
Bacchanal
(self-portrait in pink at extreme right)
before 1659
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Lorenzo de Caro
Israelites worshipping the Golden Calf
ca. 1758
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Cesare Nebbia
Athena teaching Women to Weave
before 1614
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Martin Baes
Falling Icarus with Rearing Horse
1633
engraving
(leaf from Emblem Book)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jost Amman
Abduction of Ganymede
1578
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Nicolas Tournier
Drinkers at an Inn
ca. 1620-25
oil on canvas
Musée de Tessé, Le Mans

Anonymous French Artist
Triumph of Henri IV
ca. 1610
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Art d'Orléans

Jacques-Louis David
Napoleon crossing the Alps
1801
oil on canvas
(looted from France by Prussian troops in 1814)
Schloss Charlottenburg, Berlin

Cherubino Alberti 
Statue of Prometheus
1590
engraving
(after Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

attributed to Giulio Benso
Two Men playing Racquet Game in an Interior
ca. 1630
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Francesco Guardi
Festivities to honor the Russian Heir in Piazza San Marco, Venice
1782
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anders Zorn
The Waltz
1891
etching
Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden

It lightened sweet beauty; see how he flasheth flame from his eyes.  Hath Love produced a boy armed with the bolt of heaven?  Hail! Myiscus, who bringest to mortals the fire of thy Loves, and mayest thou shine on earth, a torch befriending me. 

If I came to thee in revel, Archinus, willingly, load me with ten thousand reproaches; but if I am here against my will, consider the vehemence of the cause.  Strong wine and love compelled me; one of them pulled me and the other would not let me be sober-minded.  But when I came I did not cry who I was or whose, but I kissed the door-post: if that be a sin, I sinned.

I shall bear, Bacchus, thy boldness, I swear it by thyself; lead on, begin the revel; thou art a god; govern a mortal heart.  Born in the flame, thou lovest the flame love hath, and again leadest me, thy suppliant, in bonds.  Of a truth thou art a traitor and faithless, and while thou biddest us hide thy mysteries, thou wouldst now bring mine to light.

Tell me, Cleonicus, did the bright Graces meet thee walking in a narrow lane and take thee in their rosy arms, dear boy, that thou hast become such a Grace as thou art?  From afar I bid thee all hail, but ah! dear, it is not safe for a dry corn-stalk to draw nearer to the fire. 

When Menecharmus, Anticles' son, won the boxing match, I crowned him with ten soft fillets, and thrice I kissed him all dabbled with blood as he was, but the blood was sweeter to me than myrrh. 

Love in the night brought me under my mantle the sweet dream of a softly laughing boy of eighteen, still wearing the chlamys; and I, pressing his tender flesh to my breast, culled empty hopes.  Still does the desire of the memory heat me, and in my eyes still abideth sleep that caught for me in the chase that winged phantom.  O soul, ill-starred in love, cease at last even in dreams to be warmed all in vain by beauty's images. 

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

Foregathered

Liberale da Verona
Triumph of Fame
ca. 1470
tempera on panel
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Anonymous French Artist - School of Fontainebleau
Triumph of Chastity
ca. 1560
oil on canvas
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco

Jacob Hoefnagel
Triumph of Autumn
1605
oil on copper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Dirck Hals (figures) and Dirck van Delen (architecture)
Festive Company in Renaissance Interior
1628
oil on panel
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Gerard van Opstal
Lidded Mug with Triumph of Silenus
ca. 1640
ivory with gilt-bronze mount
Musée du Louvre

Angelo Trevisani
Triumph of Scipio
ca. 1700-1725
oil on canvas
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Edme Bouchardon
Masquerade
ca. 1723-32
drawing (print study)
Musée du Louvre

Hugues Taraval
The Waking of Cupid
1781
oil on canvas (overdoor)
Wallace Collection, London

Felice Giani
Altar erected by the invading French in St Peter's Square for Napoleonic festival
1798
oil on canvas
Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi

 

Anonymous Italian Printmaker
Masquerade in Rome
1813
etching
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Eugène Boudin
Concert at the Casino, Deauville
1865
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bernardo Ferrándiz Bádenes
Festival in Málaga
1872
oil on canvas
Colección Bellver, Sevilla

Simeon Solomon
Greek Festival
1873
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Hugh Lane Gallery, Dublin

Camille Pissarro
Study of Outdoor Market
ca. 1900-1901
ink, gouache and wash on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Domenico Cucchiari
Parish Festival
1926
oil on canvas
Palazzo Cybo Malaspina, Carrara

Felix Nussbaum
Masquerade
ca. 1939
oil on canvas
Smart Museum of Art, University of Chicago

Max Beckmann
Baccarat
1947
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Commendatory Verse, printed in the first edition (1623) of The Duchess of Malfi

In the most worth of that well-deserver, Mr. John Webster, and upon this masterpiece of tragedy.

        In this thou imitat'st one rich, and wise,

        That sees his good deeds done before he dies;

        As he by works, thou by this work of fame,

        Hast well provided for thy living name.

        To trust to other's honourings is worth's crime –

        Thy monument is rais'd in thy life-time;

        And 'tis most just; for every worthy man

        Is his own marble, and his merit can

        Cut him to any figure and express

        More art than Death's cathedral palaces,

        Where royal ashes keep their court. Thy note

        Be ever plainness, 'tis the richest coat:

        Thy epitaph only the title be –

        Write, 'Duchess', that will fetch a tear for thee,

        For who e'er saw this duchess live, and die,

        That could get off under a bleeding eye?

– Thomas Middleton

L'Allegro - II

Jacques Callot
Bird of Paradise
ca. 1625-30
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Marco Zoppo
Fortuna filling the Sail
ca. 1460
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle 

Frans Wouters
Bacchanal
ca. 1648
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Adriaen van Stalbemt
Triumph of the Infant Bacchus
ca. 1620-40
oil on copper
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Johann Elias Ridinger
Joyous Dancer
ca. 1730
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Pierre Brébiette
Venus sailing in Shell Chariot
ca. 1640
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Sébastien Dulac
Bohème
1831
oil on canvas
private collection

Dirck Hals
Merry Company
1633
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Carl Wilhelm von Heideck
The Wild Hunter
1817
watercolor on paper
(illustration to poem by Gottfried August Bürger)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Marie-François Firmin Girard
Sirens luring the Ship of Odysseus
1864
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne

Madeleine Lemaire
Fairies in Chariot
ca. 1892
oil on canvas
Château Musée de Dieppe

Jan Miense Molenaer
Brothel Scene
before 1668
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Pietro Palmieri the Elder
Group making Music
ca. 1780
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pietro Righini
Rococo Set for Opera staged at La Scala, Milan
ca. 1730
etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Three Bacchantes
ca. 1570
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustin Hirschvogel
The Four Winds
1549
etching
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Two loves, descending on me like the tempest, consume me, Eumachus, and I am caught in the toils of two furious passions.  On this side I bend towards Asander, and on that again my eye, waxing keener, turns to Telephus.  Cut me in two, I should love that, and dividing the halves in a just balance, carry off my limbs, each of you, as the lot decides. 

O eyes, betrayers of the soul, boy-hunting hounds, your glances ever smeared with Cypris' bird-lime, ye have seized on another Love, like sheep catching a wolf, or a crow a scorpion, or the ash the fire that smoulders beneath it.  Do even what ye will.  Why do you shed showers of tears and straight run off again to Hiketas?  Roast yourselves in beauty, consume away now over the fire, for Love is an admirable cook of the soul.  

Boys are a labyrinth from which there is no way out; for wherever thou castest thine eye it is fast entangled as if by bird-lime.  Here Theodorus attracts thee to the plump ripeness of his flesh and the unadulterate bloom of his limbs, and there it is the golden face of Philocles, who is not great in stature, but heavenly grace environs him.  But if thou turnest to look on Leptines thou shalt no more move thy limbs, but shalt remain, thy steps glued as if by indissoluble adamant; such a flame hath the boy in his eyes to set thee afire from thy head to thy toe and finger tips.  All hail, beautiful boys!  May ye come to the prime of youth and live till grey hair clothe your heads.   

Delightful is Diodorus and the eyes of all are on Heraclitus, Dion is sweet-spoken, and Uliades has lovely loins.  But, Philocles, touch the delicate-skinned one, and look on the next and speak to the third, and for the fourth – etcetera; so that thou mayst see how free from envy my mind is.  But if thou cast greedy eyes on Myiscus, mayst thou never see beauty again. 

I know but one beauty in the world; my greedy eye knows but one thing, to look on Myiscus, and for all else I am blind.  He represents everything to me.  Is it just on what will please the soul that the eyes look, the flatterers? 

I am caught by Love, I who had never dreamt it, and never had I learnt to feed a male flame hot beneath my heart.  I am caught.  Yet it was no longing for evil, but a pure glance, foster-brother of modesty, that burnt me to ashes.  Let it consume away, the long labour of the Muses; for my mind is cast in the fire, bearing the burden of a sweet pain.

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

Bacchic

Anonymous Italian Sculptor imitating the Antique
Bacchante
ca. 1500
marble relief
(Napoleonic loot seized in Turin)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Venetian Painter
Bacchanal
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Pietro Mera (il Fiammingo)
Bacchanalia
ca. 1590-1600
oil on copper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Dirk de Quade van Ravesteyn
Venus and Cupid riding Satyrs
ca. 1602-1608
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Antonio Tempesta
Triumph of Bacchus
before 1630
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Giulio Carpioni
Bacchanal
ca. 1638
oil on canvas
Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina

Mattia Preti (il Cavalier Calabrese)
Bacchanal
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Museo Bardini, Florence

Giovanni Belloni
Bacchus and Ariadne
ca. 1665-70
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Charles Poerson
Silenus supported by Bacchanalian Revelers
before 1667
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Gerard van Opstal
Drunken Silenus
before 1668
ivory relief
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Paolo Pagani
Bacchic Figure in Lunette
ca. 1700
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Gérard de Lairesse
Bacchanal
before 1711
drawing (sketch)
British Museum

Francesco Zuccarelli
Bacchanal
ca. 1740-50
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Louis-Gustave Taraval
Bacchante in Niche with Candelabrum
ca. 1776
drawing
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Guglielmo Plüschow
Bacchic Youth on Leopard Skin
ca. 1890-1900
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ivor Hele
Studies for a Bacchante
1929
drawing
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

John Clem Clarke
Bacchanal
ca. 1970
lithograph
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

On Lot's Wife Turned to Salt

This is a tomb, no corpse within:

This is a corpse, no tomb without:

Corpse-shell self-tombed, self in self.

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Andrew Miller