Carven

Anonymous Christian-Roman Sculptor
Christ healing the Paralytic
AD 400-415
ivory relief (fragment of altarpiece)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Norwegian Sculptor
Chess Piece (King)
ca. 1200
walrus ivory
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Mourning Virgin from Crucifixion scene
ca. 1225-1250
ivory (originally painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1270-80
ivory (originally painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous German Sculptor
St Sebastian
ca. 1600-1650
ivory (Rothschild bequest)
Musée du Louvre

Jacobus Agnesius
St Sebastian
ca. 1610
ivory
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Francesco Terilli
Christ aux outrages
ca. 1615
ivory
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Jürgen Kriebel
St John the Evangelist from Crucifixion scene
ca. 1620
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Sculptor
Portrait of Cardinal de Retz 
borne by Allegorical Figures
ca. 1654
ivory relief
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Pierre Jaillot
St Sebastian
1662
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Gérard van Opstal
Triton and Nereid
before 1668
ivory relief
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Chinese Sculptor
Head of a Woman
17th century
ivory relief (partly painted)
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous European Sculptor
The Unrepentant Thief
17th century
ivory (fragment of Crucifixion scene)
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Anonymous French Sculptor
The Judgment of Paris
17th century
pierced ivory relief
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anonymous German Sculptor after Gianlorenzo Bernini
Bowl with Marine Deities
(imitation of Triton Fountain)
18th century
ivory
Musée du Louvre

Claude-Antoine Rosset
Portrait of Voltaire
after 1760
ivory bust
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Auguste Barre
Mademoiselle Rachel of the Comédie française
1848
ivory
Musée du Louvre

from Lines

(written at Geneva)

                        Although no flowers or grass

Grow from the corpse of a deceased sound,

Somewhat, methinks, should mark the air around

Its dying place and tomb,

A gentle music, or a pale perfume:

For hath it not a body and a spirit,

A noise and meaning? and, when one doth hear it

Twice born, twice dying, doubly found and lost,

That second self, that echo, is its ghost.

But even the dead are all asleep this time,

And not a grave shakes with the dreams of crime –

The earth is full of chambers for the dead,

And every soul is quiet in his bed;

Some who have seen their bodies moulder away,

Antediluvian minds, most happy they,

Who have no body but the beauteous air,

No body but their minds.

– Thomas Lovell Beddoes (1824)

Jean-Étienne Liotard

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Anne-Germaine Larrivée,
Madame Paul-Louis Girardot de Vermenoux
ca. 1775
pastel on vellum
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Woman with Hyacinths
ca. 1750-60
pastel on vellum
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Miniature of Laura Tarsi, a Grecian Lady
ca. 1745-50
watercolor and gouache on ivory
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Frankish Woman of Pera in Constantinople
ca. 1750
pastel on paper
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Frankish Woman and her Servant
1750
oil on canvas
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Ekaterina Mavrocordato,
Princess of Moldova
1742-43
drawing (red and black chalk)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Francis I, Holy Roman Emperor
1762
pastel on vellum
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress
1762
pastel on vellum
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Maria Theresa, Holy Roman Empress
1762
pastel on vellum
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Madame Sophie of France
ca. 1762
pastel on vellum
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Johanne Salome von der Asseburg
1748
pastel on vellum
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Jeanne-Marie Liotard
ca. 1745
pastel on vellum
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Madame Marc Liotard de la Servette,
née Marianne Sarasin
1775
pastel and gouache on paper, mounted on canvas
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Self Portrait
ca. 1781
mezzotint
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of the artist's wife Marie Gargues
and their daughter Marie-Jeanne
ca. 1768
watercolor and charcoal on paper
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Divan in Liotard's Rooms in Constantinople
ca. 1738-42
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire,Genève

Nobody knew this better than Ruskin, the propagator of the theory of the innocent eye.  Indeed I know of no clearer analysis of what is here involved in the painter's art than another paragraph from Ruskin's little manual:  "While form is absolute, so that you can say at the moment you draw any line that it is either right or wrong, colour is wholly relative.  Every hue throughout your work is altered by every touch that you add in other places; so that what was warm a minute ago, becomes cold when you have put a hotter colour in another place, and what was in harmony when you left it, becomes discordant as you set other colours beside it; so that every touch must be laid, not with a view to its effect at the time, but with a view to its effect in futurity, the result upon it of all that is afterwards to be done being previously considered.  You may easily understand that, this being so, nothing but the devotion of life, and great genius besides, can make a colourist."  

In stressing this need for the imitator of nature to hold the effect of all elements upon each other simultaneously in his mind, Ruskin has, without realizing it, amended his own theory of childlike vision.  For this mental act rests on knowledge of how colors will affect each other.  In fact, it demands a willingness to use a pigment which in isolation still looks unlike the area to be matched in order that it may look like it in the end.  This power, I believe, is not only independent of the eye, or the image on the retina, it has also very little to do with visual memory.  There are psychological types, we are told, who can hold a visual impression for quite some time after it has vanished from their eyes.  They keep something like a color photograph in their minds, even when closing their eyes.  Obviously such a faculty may be useful for a painter who wants to memorize a scene and who can devote more time to painting than to looking.  But the claims that have been made for this so-called "eidetic faculty" in relation to art seem to me as unfounded as are those for the innocent eye.  For we have seen that even the humble task of copying nature facsimilewise presents difficulties of a much higher order than those of remembering.  Whether the artist has his prototype in front of him or "in his mind" can make little difference here.  That power of holding on to an image that Ruskin describes so admirably is not the power of the eidetic; it is that faculty of keeping a large number of relationships present in one's mind that distinguishes all mental achievement, be it that of the chess player, the composer, or the great artist.

 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Groups

Édouard Manet
Musique aux Tuileries
1862
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Giulio Marchetti
Drowned
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Palazzo Cybo Malaspina, Carrara

Rocco Marconi
Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery
before 1529
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Master of the Legend of Saint Lucy (Netherlandish painter)
Virgo inter Virgines
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Roger Mayne
Teddy-Boy Group, Princedale Road, North Kensington, London
1956
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Daniel McCarthy
UCB Briefcase Drill Team
1982
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Hans Memling
Jeering Crowd
(fragment from The Mocking of Christ)
before 1494
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Joel Meyerowitz
Cocktail Party - Wellfleet, Massachusetts
1977
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Martin van Meytens
Empress Maria Theresa with Husband and Children
ca. 1756
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Francesco Mosca
Diana and Actaeon
ca. 1550-75
terracotta modello for marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Luigi Mussini
Chess Challenge at the Court of Philip II
1882
oil on canvas
Collezioni della Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena

Mark Neville
Boys at Devol, Port Glasgow
2005
C-print
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Nicola da Urbino
Apollo and the Muses
ca. 1525-26
maiolica plate (lacking the rim)
Musée du Louvre

Plinio Nomellini
Nuova Gente
1909
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Genoa

Gérard van Opstal
Cupids defending Woman from Centaurs
before 1668
ivory relief
Musée du Louvre

Bill Owens
Housecoat Party with TV Trays, Northern California
ca. 1969
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Martin Parr
Strawberry Tea - Malvern Girls' College
ca. 1986
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from I Am

I am: yet what I am none cares or knows,

    My friends forsake me like a memory lost;

I am the self-consumer of my woes,

    They rise and vanish in oblivious host,

Like shades in love and death's oblivion lost;

And yet I am, and live with shadows tost

Into the nothingness of scorn and noise,

    Into the living sea of waking dreams,

Where there is neither sense of life nor joys,

    But the vast shipwreck of my life's esteems;

And e'en the dearest – that I loved the best –

Are strange – nay, rather stranger than the rest.

– John Clare (1845)