Perceptions

Anonymous Austrian Artist 
Orange
ca. 1800-1850
gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Hans Thoma
ABC Bilderbuch - Lemon
ca. 1905
drawing
(print study for book illustration)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jacopo Ligozzi
Study of Spruce Twigs
ca. 1590-1610
watercolor on vellum
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous German Artist
Ex Libris - Bibliothek zu Augsburg
ca. 1550-1600
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Anonymous German Artist 
Sacred Heart
15th century
hand-colored woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Russian Artist
Ex Libris - Gubar
ca. 1922
zincograph
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Carl Krahl
Arms of Lower Austria
ca. 1850
watercolor and gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Max Eckhardt
Stone-Carved Coat-of-Arms
on Cannon-Boring Mill near Dresden
1901
watercolor on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Gustav Klimt
Initial G
1897-98
drawing
(illustration for Secessionist magazine Ver Sacrum)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Charles-Alexandre Mairet
Initial P with Press Workers
ca. 1910-20
color woodblock print
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Franz von Seitz
Design for Nautilus Vessel
ca. 1865-75
watercolor and gouache on paper
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Alexandre Chaponnière
Study of Foot
ca. 1780-90
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Italian Artist
Reliquary shaped as Arm, with Hand in Blessing
ca. 1470
gilt bronze with rock-crystal inset
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Adolf Wölfli
Schähren-Hall und Schährer-Skt: Adolf Ring
1926
drawing (colored pencils)
Aargauer Kunsthaus, Switzerland

Anonymous Printmaker after Andrea Palladio
Ground Plane - Bramante's Tempietto, Rome
1581
woodcut
(page from Palladio's Quattro Libri dell'Architettura)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Adolphe-François Appia
Espace Rythmique - La Porte Ouverte
1909
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

From the point of view of information there is surely no difficulty in discussing portrayal.  To say of a drawing that it is a correct view of Tivoli does not mean, of course, that Tivoli is bounded by wiry lines.  It means that those who understand the notation will derive no false information from the drawing – whether it gives the contour in a few lines or picks out "every blade of grass" as Richter's friends wanted to do.  The complete portrayal might be the one which gives as much correct information about the spot as we would obtain if we looked at it from the very spot where the artist stood.

Styles, like languages, differ in the sequence of articulation and in the number of questions they allow the artist to ask: and so complex is the information that reaches us from the visible world that no picture will ever embody it all.  That is not due to the subjectivity of vision but to its richness.  Where the artist has to copy a human product he can, of course, produce a facsimile which is indistinguishable from the original.  The forger of banknotes succeeds only too well in effacing his personality and the limitations of a period style.  

But what matters to us is that the correct portrait, like the useful map, is an end product on a long road through schema and correction.  It is not a faithful record of a visual experience but the faithful construction of a relational model.  

Neither the subjectivity of vision nor the sway of conventions need lead us to deny that such a model can be constructed to any required degree of accuracy.  What is decisive here is clearly the word "required."  The form of a representation cannot be divorced from its purpose and the requirements of the society in which the given visual language gains currency.

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

Substantial

Anonymous Italian Maker
Double Cameo - recto, Head of a Woman
ca. 1400-1450 - onyx carved
ca. 1530-50 - gold mount added in Antwerp
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Maker
Double Cameo - verso, Virgin and Child
ca. 1400-1450 - onyx carved
ca. 1530-50 - gold mount added in Antwerp
British Museum

Francesco di Simone Ferrucci
Virgin adoring the Child
ca. 1470-90
marble relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Anonymous French Makers
Book Clasps
ca. 1500
silver-gilt with embroidered silk straps
British Museum

Anonymous German Makers
Book Cover for the Epistles
commissioned for Ulm Münster
ca. 1506
silver (partly enameled and partly gilt)
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Makers
Hat Jewel with the Judgment of Paris
ca. 1525-75
enameled gold set with garnets, sapphire and peridot
British Museum

Anonymous German Makers
Hat Jewel with the Conversion of Saul
ca. 1550
enameled gold set with rubies and diamonds
British Museum

Anonymous Mexican Makers
Reliquary Pendant in Lantern Form
holding wooden Ecce Homo
ca. 1550-1600
partly-enameled gold, rock crystal, wood
British Museum

Anonymous Flemish Maker
Marcus Curtius leaping into the Chasm
(fragment of parade armour for a horse)
ca. 1570
embossed, chased and damascened iron 
British Museum

Suzanne de Court
Dish with Apollo and the Muses
ca. 1600
enamel on copper
British Museum

Anonymous English Maker
Locket
ca. 1610-20
enameled-gold set with diamonds and pearl
British Museum

Anonymous Dutch Maker
Portrait of Frederick Henry, Prince of Orange
1627
partly-enameled gold
British Museum

Anonymous Austrian Sculptor
Hercules and Achelous
ca. 1650-75
ivory
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Austrian Sculptor
Hercules and Achelous
ca, 1650-75
pear wood
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Maker
Plaque with Sale of Cupids
(after antique fresco excavated at Herculaneum)
ca. 1800-1830
rock crystal
British Museum

Giacomo Balla
Ballerina II
1922
(reconstructed in 1968)
chrome-plated brass wire
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Herbert Ferber
Running Water I
1954
brass and copper
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

    Our strength, matched with that of the unreasonable creatures, is but weakness.  All we can set our eyes upon in these intricate mazes of life is but alchemy, vain perspective and deceiving shadows, appearing far otherwise afar off than when enjoyed and looked upon at a near distance.  O! who, if before he had a being he could have knowledge of the manifold miseries of it, would enter this woeful hospital of the world and accept of life upon such hard conditions?  

    If death be good, why should it be feared, and if it be the work of nature, how should it not be good?  For nature is an ordinance, disposition and rule which God hath established in creating this universe, as is the law of a King which can not err.  For how should the maker of that ordinance err, sith in him there is no impotency and weakness by the which he might bring forth what is unperfect, no perverseness of will, of which might proceed any vicious action, no ignorance, by the which he might go wrong in working; being most powerful, most good, most wise, nay, all-wise, all-good, all-powerful?  He is the first orderer and marshalleth every other order, the highest essence, giving essence to all other things; of all causes the cause.  He worketh powerfully, bounteously, wisely, and maketh nature (his artificial organ) do the same.  How is not death of nature, sith what is naturally generate is subject to corruption, and sith such an harmony, which is life, arising of the mixture of the four elements, which are the ingredients of our bodies, can not ever endure; the contrarieties of their qualities, as a consuming rust in the baser metals being an inward cause of a necessary dissolution?  O of frail and instable things the constant, firm and eternal order!  For even in their changes they keep ever universal, ancient and uncorruptible laws. 

– William Drummond of Hawthornden, from A Cypress Grove (London: Hawthornden Press, 1919, reprinting the original edition of 1623)

Elite Headwear

Pieter Nason
Portrait of a Woman as Minerva
1663
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Irving Penn
Cate Blanchett as Queen Elizabeth I, New York
2007
inkjet print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous French Artist
Empress Eugénie
ca. 1863
collotype
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Reliquary Bust of a Bishop
ca. 1520
carved and painted oakwood
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of Anne-Marie-Louise d'Orléans,
duchesse de Montpensier, as Athena
(called la Grande Mademoiselle)
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

El Greco
St Louis (King Louis IX of France)
1592
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Roman Empire
Head of Hercules 
1st century AD
marble
(excavated at Herculaneum)
Antikensammlung, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Marcus Selmer
Bride from Birkeland
1855
hand-colored daguerreotype
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Franz von Stuck
Amazon in Battle
1897
oil on canvas
Lenbachhaus, Munich

Jacopo Tintoretto
Portrait of Doge Pasquale Cicogna
ca. 1585-90
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous French Artist
Louise-Marguerite de Lorraine, princesse de Conti
ca. 1600-1610
oil on panel
Musée Condé, Chantilly

Andrea Appiani the Elder
Empress Joséphine as Queen of Italy
1807
oil on canvas
Château de Malmaison

Gaston Bussière
Helen of Troy
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Musée des Ursulines de Mâcon

Ancient Greek Culture
Head of Alexander the Great
300 BC
marble, with ancient vandalism
(excavated in Athens)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Julius Klinger
Exhibition of Office Supplies, Frankfurt
(head of Mercury)
1913
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous German Artist
Virgin and Child
ca. 1480
painted walnut relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Chorus:

Who was it that gave name

so utterly appropriate –

perhaps a being we cannot see,

using language with accuracy

through his foreknowledge of what was fated? –

to the spear-bride for whom two contended,

Helen? For in keeping with that name

she brought hell to ships, to men, to cities

when from her curtains of delicate fabric

she sailed, wafted by the breeze

of giant Zephyrus,

as did many men, hunters carrying shields, 

following the invisible track of their oar-blades,

after they had landed

on the leafy banks of the Simois –

it was caused by bloody Strife.

And for Ilium there was a wedding morning

true to its name, mourning indeed,

brought to pass by Wrath, exacting

delayed requital for the dishonouring

of the host's table and of Zeus,

god of hearth-sharing, against those who loudly

celebrated the bridal song.

At that time she encouraged

the bridegroom's kin to sing it splendidly,

but now the city of Priam in its old age 

is learning the song anew

as a bitter lament: surely it groans deeply, calling

Paris 'the man who made the evil marriage',

having made the life of its citizens

a life of total devastation, full of tears, 

having endured grievous bloodshed. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Substantial

Anonymous French Makers
The Holy Thorn Reliquary, with Arms of Jean, duc de Berry
ca. 1400
gold, enamel, rubies, pearls, sapphires
British Museum

Anonymous French Makers
Casket (likely used as Reliquary)
ca. 1400
ivory, silver, brass
British Museum

Anonymous Venetian Makers
Standing Cup with Cover
ca. 1450-1500
glass, partly gilded and enameled
British Museum

Anonymous Spanish Makers
Coffer
15th century
iron
British Museum

 Friedrich Hagenauer
Portrait of Ursula Ligsalz
1527
pearwood relief
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

 Friedrich Hagenauer
Portrait of Margaret von Firmian
1529
lead medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicholas Hilliard
Portrait of James I
(The Lyte Jewel)
ca. 1610-11
watercolor on vellum
in enameled-gold locket set with diamonds
British Museum

Anonymous German Makers
Tankard
ca. 1640-60
amber panels mounted in silver gilt
and carved with personifications of the Vices
(originally owned by Christina, Queen of Sweden)
British Museum

Anonymous German Makers
Perfume Flask
1688
boxwood
British Museum

Anonymous French Makers
Graphometer with Dolphins
(surveying instrument)
18th century
gilt-brass
British Museum

Anonymous French Maker
Quadrille Pool
ca. 1780-1800
painted wood components joined with cords
(bowl to hold game counters)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous German and French Makers
Casket
ca. 1600 - amber plaques carved in Germany
ca. 1850 - pastiche assembled in France with faux-antique mounts
British Museum

Harriet Goodhue Hosmer
Will o' the Wisp
ca. 1860
marble
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Josef Hoffmann
Tea Set
1923
silver and ivory
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Barbara Hepworth
Pendour
1947-48
partly painted wood
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Koren der Harootian
Eagles of Ararat
1956
marble
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jenny Holzer
Turn Soft and Lovely Anytime You Have a Chance
2011
limestone table with inscribed text
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

                                                                                            22 June 1969

Dear Francis,

    You must be fearing I had left the earth, and its binding forces hardly increase.  May I ask one question?  Has this double world the same significance as it would have here, or anything approaching it?  Just Yes or No, and we will pass on.  

    The book is the strongest you have done, and quality seems to break in everywhere, or perhaps rather to break out.  You have great gifts, and the present misfortunes will not alter its inevitable end.  You may come to say you are glad it all happened.  It is better to be drunk with loss and to beat the ground, than to let the deeper things gradually escape.

    Do come and see me when you can.

                    Yours always with love, 

                                           Ivy     

– quoted in Secrets of a Woman's Heart: the Later Life of Ivy Compton-Burnett, by Hilary Spurling (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1984)