Arranged

Mickalene Thomas
Interior: Monet's Blue Foyer
2012
oil paint, acrylic paint and enamel on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Jakob Weidemann
Interior with Man
1942
oil on board
private collection

Geoffrey Tibble
Figures in an Interior
before 1952
watercolor and gouache on paper
private collection

Jacques Villon
Interior
1913
oil on canvas
private collection

Édouard Vuillard
Interior
ca. 1913
distemper on cardboard
Musée des Beaux-Arts et d’Archéologie de Troyes

Anonymous French Makers
Cabinet bibliothèque de l'hôtel Villemaré-Dangé, Paris
18th century
boiseries
Musée du Louvre

Leo Whelan
Kitchen Interior with Maid
ca. 1920-25
oil on canvas
private collection

Félix Vallotton
Interior with Woman in Red
1903
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Gustav Wentzel
Interior in Paris
1884
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

André Kertész
Snake in Interior
1960
platinum print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Anonymous English Painter
Interior Scene
19th century
oil on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henri Matisse
Interior with Violin Case
1918-19
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Ernest Townsend
Summer Morning Interior
1917
oil on canvas
Derby Museum and Art Gallery

Jacobus Vrel
Interior Scene with Mother and Children
1654
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Arts

Samuel van Hoogstraten
Interior View through Doorway
1658
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Pablo Picasso
Interior with Girl drawing
1935
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Joan Miró
Dutch Interior (I)
1928
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

The Hammers

Noise of hammers once I heard,

Many hammers, busy hammers,

Beating, shaping, night and day,

Shaping, beating dust and clay

To a palace; saw it reared; 

Saw the hammers laid away.

And I listened, and I heard

Hammers beating, night and day,

In the palace newly reared,

Beating it to dust and clay:

Other hammers, muffled hammers,

Silent hammers of decay.

– Ralph Hodgson (1907)

Slice

Anton Tomschik
Study of Apricots and Pears
1857
gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Jan Toorop
Portrait of Rachel Isabella Steyn Fraser
1905
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Francesco Trevisani
St Sebastian
ca. 1720
oil on canvas
Staatsgalerie im Schloss Johannisburg, Aschaffenburg

Paul Troger
Study for Mouth of Hell in Pendentive
ca. 1735-45
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Vasily Tropinin
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
State Tretyakov Gallery, Moscow

Alessandro Turchi (l'Orbetto)
Hercules rescuing Alcestis from Hades
before 1649
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Edgard Tytgat
Corner of the Studio
1932
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

workshop of Adriaen van der Werff
Diana at Rest
1722
oil on panel
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Anthony van Dyck
Portrait of Queen Henrietta Maria
(sent as gift to Cardinal Francesco Barberini in Rome)
1638
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Giorgio Vasari
The Taking of Christ
ca. 1560-70
drawing
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Giuseppe Vasi
View of the Città Leonina, Rome
1765
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Karen Rebekka Vasstrand
Untitled
1987
oil on canvas
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Gabriel-Constant Vaucher
Head of the Farnese Hercules
ca. 1785
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Philipp Veith
Scene near Potschappel in the Plauensche Grund
1798
watercolor on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Agostino Velasco
St Anthony Abbot
ca. 1725
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Geer van Velde
Femme à la Fenêtre, Bord du Mer
1944
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

After 1127, then, Suger had St. Bernard no longer at his heels; but he had him very much in his mind, and this is one of the several reasons why he became that great exception to the role, the patron who turned littérateur.  There can be no doubt that the memorials reprinted in this volume are in part pointedly apologetic and that this apology is largely directed against Cîteaux and Clairvaux.  Time and again Suger interrupts his enthusiastic descriptions of gleaming gold and precious jewels to counter the attacks of an imaginary opponent who is in fact not imaginary at all but identical with the man who had written: "But we who, for the sake of Christ, have deemed as dung whatever shines with beauty, enchants the ear, delights through fragrance, flatters the taste, pleases the touch – whose devotions, I ask, do we intend to incite by means of these very things?"

Where St. Bernard, in the words of "pagan Persius," indignantly exclaims: "What has gold to do in the sanctuary?" Suger requests that all the gorgeous vestments and altar vessels acquired under his administration be laid out in the church on his anniversary ("for we are convinced that it is useful and becoming not to hide but to proclaim Divine benefactions").  He deeply regrets that his Great Cross, one of the most sumptuous objects ever contrived by man, still lacks its full complement of gems and pearls: and he is keenly disappointed that he was forced to encase the new tomb of the Holy Martyrs with mere copper-gilt instead of with solid gold ("for we, most miserable men, should deem it worth our effort to cover the most sacred ashes of those whose venerable spirits – radiant as the sun – attend upon Almighty God with the most precious materials we possibly can.")

– Erwin Panofsky, from Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures (1946)

Slice

Franz Eybl
Berry-picker against Mountain Landscape
1844
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Equipo Crónica (art collective)
The Pamphlet
1973
acrylic on canvas
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

George Engleheart
Miniature Portrait of a Man
1804
watercolor on ivory
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

William Etty
Académie
ca. 1820-30
oil on board
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Archer sharpening Arrow
1812
oil on canvas
Ny Carlsberg Glyptotek, Copenhagen

Frank Samuel Eastman
Half-Length Study of Model
ca. 1910
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Otto Eckmann
Solitude
1894
photogravure by Eckmann of a painting by Eckmann
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Portrait Study
1902
platinum print
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Richard Ernst Eurich
Lyme Regis
1930
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

Allart van Everdingen
View of Dordrecht
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Cornelis Engebrechtsz
Christ taking Leave of his Mother
ca. 1515-20
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Elisabeth von Eicken
Spring
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, Ahrenshoop, Germany

Hans Rudi Erdt
With our Heroes on the Somme
1917
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Bonaventura Emler
Dante's Purgatory
1859
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Bonaventura Emler
Dante's Purgatory
ca. 1859
watercolor on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

James Ensor
Bourgeois Salon
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

The reformed St. Denis as realized by Suger thus differed very considerably from the reformed St. Denis as imagined by St. Bernard, and in one essential respect there was not only a difference but an irreconcilable contrast between the one and the other.  [In St. Bernard's vision] no figural painting or sculpture, except for wooden crucifixes, was tolerated; gems, pearls, gold and silk were forbidden; the vestments had to be of linen or fustian, the candlesticks and censers of iron; only the chalices were permitted to be of silver or silver-gilt.  Suger, however was frankly in love with splendor and beauty in every conceivable form; it might be said that his response to ecclesiastical ceremonial was largely aesthetic.  For him the benediction of the holy water is a wonderful dance, with countless dignitaries of the Church, "decorous in white vestments, splendidly arrayed in pontifical miters and precious ophreys embellished by circular ornaments," walking "round and round the vessel" as a "chorus celestial rather than terrestrial."  The simultaneous performance of the first twenty masses of the new chevet is a "symphony angelic rather than human."  Thus, if the spiritual pre-eminence of St. Denis was Suger's conviction, its material embellishment was his passion: the Holy Martyrs, whose "sacred ashes" could be carried only by the king and took precedence over all other relics however much revered, had to have the most beautiful church in France. 

From the earliest years of his abbacy Suger had begun to raise funds for the reconstruction and redecoration of the basilica, and when he died he left it "renewed from its very foundations" and filled with treasures second only – perhaps even superior – to those in Hagia Sophia.  . . .  In short, by making concessions to the zeal of St. Bernard in matters of morals and major ecclesiastical policy, Suger gained freedom and peace in all other respects.  Unmolested by the Abbot of Clairvaux, he made his Church the most resplendent in the Western world and raised pomp and circumstance to the level of fine art.  

– Erwin Panofsky, from Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures (1946)

Value

Karl Isakson
Studio Interior
ca. 1918-20
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Isaac Israëls
Basket of Flowers
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Bernardino India
Seated Woman
ca. 1584
drawing
British Museum

Heinrich Max Imhof
Portrait of Marchesa Marianna Florenzi
1833
marble
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Legs of Angel
(study for painting, Voeu de Louis XIII)
1821
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Figure Studies
(study for painting, Romulus victorious over Acron)
ca. 1812
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Figure of the Virgin
(study for painting, Voeu de Louis XIII)
1821
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Antoine Marie Idrac
Cupid stung by a Bee
1876
bronze
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Georgios Iakovidis
Académie
ca. 1880
drawing
National Gallery, Athens

Sanja Iveković
From the Work of Lady Rosa of Luxembourg
2001
photomontage
Institut Valencià d'Art Modern

Innocenzo da Imola
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1520-30
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Augustus John
Study of Lady Ottoline Morrell
1909
watercolor on paper
Manchester Art Gallery

Augustus John
Study of artist Gwen John
ca. 1900
drawing, with added watercolor
Manchester Art Gallery

Augustus John
Portrait of artist Gwen John
1900
drawing
Manchester Art Gallery

Gwen John
The Convalescent
ca. 1923-24
oil on canvas
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Gwen John
The Letter
1924
oil on canvas
Manchester Art Gallery

It may be taken for granted that art history deserves to be counted among the humanities.  But what is the use of the humanities as such?  Admittedly they are not practical, and admittedly they concern themselves with the past.  Why, it may be asked, should we engage in impractical investigations, and why should we be interested in the past?  The answer to this question is: because we are interested in reality.  . . .  There is nothing less real than the present.  To grasp reality we have to detach ourselves from the present.  Philosophy and mathematics do this by building systems in a medium which is by definition not subject to time.  Natural science and the humanities do it by creating those spatio-temporal structures which I have called the "cosmos of nature" and the "cosmos of culture."  And here we touch upon what is perhaps the most fundamental difference between the humanities and the natural sciences.  Natural science observes the time-bound processes of nature and tries to apprehend the timeless laws according to which they unfold.  Physical observation is only possible where something "happens," that is, where a change occurs or is made to occur by way of experiment.  And it is these changes which are finally symbolized by mathematical formulae.  The humanities, on the other hand, are not faced by the task of arresting what otherwise would slip away, but of enlivening what otherwise would remain dead.  Instead of dealing with temporal phenomena, and causing time to stop, they penetrate into a region where time has stopped of its own accord, and try to reactivate it.  Gazing as they do at those frozen, stationary records of which I have said that they "emerge from the stream of time," the humanities endeavor to capture the processes in the course of which those records were produced and became what they are. 

– Erwin Panofsky, from The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline (1940)