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)

Traces

Polidoro da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze
Perseus rescuing Andromeda
ca. 1525
detached exterior fresco from demolished Roman palazzo
Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi

Chim (David Seymour)
Maria Callas
1955
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Domenico Brusasorci
Venus, Cupid and Vulcan
ca. 1550
detached exterior fresco from Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, Verona
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

László Moholy-Nagy
D IV
1922
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Polidoro da Caravaggio and Maturino da Firenze
Scene of Sacrifice
ca. 1525
detached exterior fresco from demolished Roman palazzo
Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi

Chim (David Seymour)
Audrey Hepburn rehearsing in Paris
1956
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Domenico Brusasorci
Apollo and the Muses
ca. 1550
detached exterior fresco from Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, Verona
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

László Moholy-Nagy
Untitled
1923
lithograph
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Triumph of Paullus Macedonicus
before 1543
tempera on canvas (grisaille)
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Chim (David Seymour)
Republican Soldiers looting a Church, Barcelona
1936
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco (Achenbach Foundation)

Domenico Brusasorci
Juno with Peacock
ca. 1550
detached exterior fresco from Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, Verona
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

László Moholy-Nagy
Z VII
1926
oil paint and graphite on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Triumph of Paullus Macedonicus
before 1543
tempera on canvas (grisaille)
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Chim (David Seymour)
Bernard Berenson, Rome
1955
gelatin silver print
Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco
(Achenbach Foundation)

Domenico Brusasorci
Minerva, Pluto, Mercury and Jupiter
ca. 1550
detached exterior fresco from Palazzo Fiorio della Seta, Verona
Museo degli affreschi Giovanni Battista Cavalcaselle, Verona

László Moholy-Nagy
Red Cross & White Balls
1921
ink and gouache on paper
Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Virgin of the Annunciation
1528
detached fresco
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

from Argument

Before the forenoon of discussion, as the dawn-gust wrinkles the pools, I waken with an idea of building.

    Speak the name only with meaning only for us, meaning Him, a call to our clearing.  Secret the meeting in time and place, the time of the off-shore wind, the place where the loyalty is divided.  Meeting of seven, each with a talent. 

    On the concrete banks of baths, in the grassy squares of exercise, we are joined, brave in the long body, under His eye.  (Their annual games under the auspices of the dead.)  Our bond, friend, is a third party.

    Smile inwardly on their day handing round tea. (Their women have the faces of birds.)  Walking in the mountains we were persons unknown to our parents, awarded them little, had a word of our own for our better shadow.  Crossing ourselves under the arch of a bridge we crucified fear.

    Crofter, leader of hay, working in sweat and weathers, tin-streamer, heckler, blow-room major, we are within a vein's distance of your poisoned blood.  Stranger who cannot read our letters, you are remembered.  

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)

Brevity

Lucas Cranach the Elder
Portrait of Christiane von Eulenau
1534
oil on panel
Staatsgalerie in der Neuen Residenz, Bamberg

Bartholomäus Bruyn the Elder
Portrait of Doctor Ludwig Falckenberch
ca. 1535
gouache and oil paint on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio after Girolamo dai Libri
Virgin and Child with St Anne, St Roch and St Sebastian
ca. 1520-40
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Nicolaes de Bruyn
Abigail before David
1608
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Michel Corneille the Elder
St Paul and St Barnabus denying the Gods of Lystra
1644
oil on canvas
(grisaille sketch for May painting at Notre Dame)
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Achilles receiving Weapons from Thetis
before 1669
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Michel Corneille the Younger
Studies for the Figure of Martha
ca. 1690
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Louis-Léopold Boilly
Young Woman holding Child
ca. 1810
pastel on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Honoré Daumier
The Lover of Oysters
1836
lithograph
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

William Merritt Chase
Man wearing Gold-Rimmed Spectacles
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

Norman Deck
Joan at Witty Combe
1910
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

William Ramsden Brealey
Rich Man's Treasure - Poor Man's Treasure
ca. 1925
lithograph (poster)
Allard Pierson Museum, Amsterdam

Herbert Bayer
Herbert Bayer, Association of German Advertising Professionals
(Bauhaus in Dessau)
1928
lithograph and letterpress
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, New York

Edward Burra
Skull in a Landscape
1946
watercolor and gouache on paper
Imperial War Museum, London

Richard Benson
Stones of Newport
1977-78
palladium print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Simon Cooper
Still Life (Package)
1993
etching
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sam Contis
Eggs
2015
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Dedication to the first printing (1623) of The Duchess of Malfi

To the Right Honourable, George Harding, Baron Berkeley of Berkeley Castle, and Knight of the Order of the Bath to the Illustrious Prince Charles.

My Noble Lord,

    That I may present my excuse why, being a stranger to your lordship, I offer this poem to your patronage, I plead this warrant: men who never saw the sea, yet desire to behold that regiment of waters, choose some eminent river to guide them thither, and make that, as it were, their conduct or postilion; by the like ingenious means has your fame arrived at my knowledge, receiving it from some of worth who both in contemplation and practice owe to your Honour their clearest service.  I do not altogether look up at your title, the ancientest nobility being but a relic of time past, and the truest honour indeed being for a man to confer honour on himself, which your learning arrives to propagate and shall make you arrive at the dignity of a great example.  I am confident this work is not unworthy your Honour's perusal; for by such poems as this, poets have kissed the hands of great princes and drawn their gentle eyes to look down upon their sheets of paper when the poets themselves were bound up in their winding sheets.  The like courtesy from your Lordship shall make you live in your grave and laurel spring out of it, when the ignorant scorners of the Muses (that like worms in libraries seem to live only to destroy learning) shall wither, neglected and forgotten.  This work and myself I humbly present to your approved censure, it being the utmost of my wishes to have your Honourable self my weighty and perspicuous comment: which grace so done me, shall ever be acknowledged

                                                                                            By your Lordship's

                                                                                                 in all duty and observance,

                                                                                                         John Webster