European Sixteenth-Century Quality - III

follower of Giulio Romano
St Veronica with the Sudarium
before 1550
oil on canvas
Philadelphia Museum of Art

follower of Hendrik Goltzius
Two Figure Studies of Women
1568
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean Hey
Mourning Virgin
(fragment of painting - Christ carrying the Cross)
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Jean Hey
St John the Evangelist
(fragment of painting - Christ carrying the Cross)
ca. 1500-1505
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Wolfgang Huber
Raising of the Cross
ca. 1522
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Three Putti with Musical Instruments
ca. 1520-30
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

The Land of Nod

Growing up, I barely knew the Bible, but read
and reread the part when Cain drifted east
or was drawn that way, into a place of desolation,
the land of Nod, there to begin, with a wife

of unknown origin, another race of men,
under the mark of God. As a boy, I thought Nod
would be a place where the blue scillas
would bloom gray, a country of the rack and screw,

the serrated sword, where the very serving cups
were bone. As a grown man, I've heard that Nod
never was a nation – of Cain's offspring, or anyone –
but a mistranslation of "wander," so Cain

could go wherever, and be in Nod. Far more
than God, I believe in Cain, who destroyed
his own brother, and therefore in any city
could have his wish, and be alone.

–James Arthur (2011)

Monogrammist IP
The Fall of Man
ca. 1520-30
pear-wood relief
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Battista Naldini
Study for The Purification of the Virgin
ca. 1577
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Bartolomeo Passarotti
Young Woman and Matron
before 1592
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Perino del Vaga
Crossing of the Red Sea
ca. 1522-23
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

Callisto Piazza
A Musical Gathering
ca. 1520-30
oil on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Camillo Procaccini
The Transfiguration
ca. 1590
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Allegory of Spirit and Matter
ca. 1515-30
bronze plaquette
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Brutus and Lucretia
ca. 1495-1515
bronze plaquette
Victoria & Albert Museum

European Sixteenth-Century Quality - II

attributed to Annibale Carracci
Seated Figure (half-length, viewed from the back)
1590s
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Annibale Carracci
Landscape with Man sleeping beneath a Tree
1595
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Ludovico Carracci
Alexander Farnese directing the Siege of Antwerp
ca. 1580-90
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Ludovico Carracci
Judith and Holofernes
ca. 1583-85
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Ludovico Carracci
Christ and the Woman of Canaan
1595-96
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan

from The Task

Thus heav'n-ward all things tend. For all were once
Perfect, and all must be at length restor'd.
So God has greatly purpos'd; who would else
In his dishonour'd works himself endure
Dishonour, and be wrong'd without redress.
Haste then, and wheel away a shatter'd world,
Ye slow-revolving seasons! we would see,
(A sight to which our eyes are strangers yet)
A world that does not dread and hate his laws,
And suffer for its crime; would learn how fair
The creature is that God pronounces good,
How pleasant in itself what please him.
Here ev'ry drop of honey hides a sting,
Worms wind themselves into our sweetest flow'rs,
And ev'n the joy that haply some poor heart
Derives from heav'n, pure as the fountain
Is sully'd in the stream; taking a taint
From touch of human lips, at best impure.
Oh for a world in principle as chaste
As this is gross and selfish! over which
Custom and prejudice shall bear no sway,
That govern all things here, should'ring aside
The meek and modest truth, and forcing her
To seek a refuge from the tongue of strife
In nooks obscure, far from the ways of men:
Where violence shall never lift the sword,
Nor cunning justify the proud man's wrong,
Leaving the poor no remedy but tears:
Where he that fills an office, shall esteem
Th' occasion it presents of doing good
More than the perquisite: Where law shall speak
Seldom, and never but as wisdom prompts
And equity; not jealous more to guard
A worthless form, than to decide aright:
Where fashion shall not sanctify abuse,
Nor smooth good-breeding (supplemental grace)
With lean performance ape the work of love.

– William Cowper (1785)

Cesare da Sesto
Adoration of the Kings (detail)
ca. 1516-19
oil on panel
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Cima da Conegliano
St Sebastian
ca. 1500-1502
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Dirk Coornhert
Capture of King Francis I of France at the Battle of Pavia
(Victories of Emperor Charles V)
ca. 1570-80
cherry-wood relief
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Dirk Coornhert
Conquest of the Americas
(Victories of Emperor Charles V)
ca. 1570-80
cherry-wood relief
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

workshop of Dosso and Battista Dossi
Appearance of the Virgin and Child
with St Francis and St Bernardino
to the Confraternita di Santa Maria della Neve
ca. 1530-40
oil on canvas
Palazzo dei Musei, Modena

Albrecht Dürer
Martyrdom of the Ten Thousand Christians
1508
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Albrecht Dürer
Three Putti with Shield and Helmet
ca. 1505
engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Albrecht Dürer
Witch riding backward on a Goat
ca. 1500-1502
engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Matthias Gerung
The Dream of Paris
1536
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

European Sixteenth-Century Quality - I

Cherubino Alberti after Michelangelo
St Jerome in the Desert
ca. 1575
engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous Artist working in the Netherlands
Susanna and the Elders
ca. 1550-75
tempera, lacquer, gold leaf and silver foil on glass
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Germany
The Crucifixion
ca. 1530
painted wood relief
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Domenico Beccafumi
Adoration of the Shepherds
before 1551
engraving
Princeton University Art Museum

Domenico Beccafumi
Holy Family
before 1551
oil on panel
private collection

Chester

Wallace Stevens is beyond fathoming, he is so strange; it is as if he had a morbid secret he would rather perish than disclose.
                    – Marianne Moore to William Carlos Williams

Another day, which is usually how they come:
A cat at the foot of the bed, noncommital
In its blankness of mind, with the morning light
Slowly filling the room, and fragmentary
Memories of last night's video and phone calls.
It is a feeling of sufficiency, one menaced
By the fear of some vague lack, of a simplicity
Of self, a self without a soul, the nagging fear
Of being someone to whom nothing ever happens.
Thus the fantasy of the narrative behind the story,
Of the half-concealed life that lies beneath
The ordinary one, made up of ordinary mornings
More alike in how they feel than what they say.
They seem like luxuries of consciousness,
Like second thoughts that complicate the time
One simply wastes. And why not? Mere being
Is supposed to be enough, without the intricate
Evasions of a mystery or offstage tragedy.
Evenings follow on the afternoons, lingering in
The living room and listening to the stereo
While Peggy Lee sings "Is That All There Is?"
Amid the morning papers and the usual
Ghosts keeping you company, but just for a while.
The true soul is the one that flickers in the eyes
Of an animal, like a cat that lifts its head and yawns
And stares at you, and then goes back to sleep.

– John Koethe (2007)

Domenico Beccafumi
Holy Family
ca. 1540-50
oil on panel
Princeton University Art Museum

Leonhard Beck
St George and the Dragon
ca. 1513-14
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Sebald Beham after Barthel Beham
Adam and Eve
1543
engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Sebald Beham
Women's Bath
ca. 1530-40
woodcut
Art Institute of Chicago

follower of Giovanni Bellini
Madonna and Child with Saints and Donors
ca. 1515
oil on panel
Harvard Art Museums

attributed to Andrea Boscoli
Olympias, Mother of Alexander the Great, visited by Zeus in the Guise of a Serpent
ca. 1595
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Andrea Boscoli after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Procession as Frieze
late 16th century
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Patricio Cajés
Liberation of St Peter
late 16th century
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Luca Cambiaso
Allegorical Subject
(Angel above Two Sibyls on Clouds)
ca. 1560-65
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

European Mannerism (Sacred and Profane)

Jan van Hemessen
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Giorgio Vasari
Temptation of St Jerome
ca. 1541-48
oil on panel (unfinished)
Art Institute of Chicago

"When artists and writers of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries examined the tensions and distortions, the visual and emotional surprises of the years around 1520, they characterized these developments as a decline and referred contemptuously to what they called maniera (manner).  This is derived from the Italian word mano (hand) that signifies the ascendancy of manual practice – and especially the art of drawing – over visual observation and intellectual clarity.  The assertion of a post-High Renaissance decline in central Italian art persisted throughout the nineteenth century; the decline was generally attributed to the excessive imitation of Michelangelo, to the pernicious influence of Giulio Romano, or to both.  Shortly before World War I, in an artistic atmosphere charged with the revolutionary developments of twentieth-century art, works of this period that had been condemned or ignored for more than three hundred years began to excite sympathetic interest."

 – Frederick Hartt, History of Italian Renaissance Art, originally published in 1969, revised by David G. Wilkins and reissued by Abrams in 1993

Giorgio Vasari
Study for Allegory of Two Quartieri of Florence
ca. 1563-65
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Giulio Cesare Procaccini
Virgin and Child with Angels
ca. 1610
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Pellegrino Tibaldi
Pan
before 1596
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

attributed to Francesco Primaticcio
Sacrifice of a Bull
ca. 1550-60
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Callisto Piazza
Beheading of St John the Baptist
before 1561
oil on panel
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Abraham Janssens
Jupiter rebuked by Venus
ca. 1612-13
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Federico Barocci after Raphael
Cumaean Sibyl
ca. 1556-66
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Federico Barocci
Head of Swooning Virgin
(study for The Deposition)
1568-69
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

Jacopo Bassano
Virgin and Child with the young St John the Baptist
ca. 1560-65
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Alessandro Vittoria
The Annunciation
ca. 1583
bronze relief
Art Institute of Chicago

follower of Taddeo and Federico Zuccaro
Marcus Curtius plunging into the Chasm
ca. 1550-95
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Joachim Wtewael
Battle between Gods and Giants
ca. 1608
oil on copper
Art Institute of Chicago