Showing posts with label silver. Show all posts
Showing posts with label silver. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 22, 2019

Fin-de-Siècle Narrative Fantasies by Max Klinger

Max Klinger
Lobsters
(from series Siestas)
1879
etching
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Max Klinger
Pursued Centaur
(from series Intermezzos)
1881
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger
Action
(from series A Glove)
1881
etching and aquatint
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University

Max Klinger
Abduction
(from series A Glove)
1881
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

"Born in Leipzig to a wealthy prominent family, and trained at the academy in Berlin, Max Klinger (1857-1920) was an equally gifted painter, printmaker, and sculptor.  He worked in a naturalistic figurative style and from it developed an art that was polemical in intent, uncanny in effect, and often controversial in reception."

– from curator's notes at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Max Klinger
For Everyone
(from series A Life)
1884
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger
Abandoned
(from series A Life)
1884
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger
Into the Gutter!
(from series A Life)
1884
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger
In the Park
(study for series A Love)
1887
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Max Klinger
In the Park
(from series A Love)
1887
etching, engraving and aquatint
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Max Klinger
Shame
(from series A Love)
1887
etching, engraving and aquatint
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Max Klinger
Philosopher
(from series On Death)
ca. 1889
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger
And Yet
(from series On Death)
ca. 1889
etching and aquatint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Max Klinger
Study for the Beethoven Monument
1897
drawing
Harvard Art Museums

Max Klinger
Galatea
1906
cast silver on carved marble base
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Monday, October 7, 2019

Idiosyncratic Objects Brought Together in Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Europe
Mountain Landscape
ca. 1550-1600
coral and gypsum
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Nubia
Beads
ca. AD 950
glass, shell, faience, stone
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Georg Schreiber
Casket
ca. 1630
amber, with silver and gold fittings
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Germany
Tankard
(handle formed by Satyr and Putto)
ca. 1650
ivory
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Innsbrucker Hofglashütte
Bird
ca. 1575-1600
glass
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Cup
(possibly part of a lamp)
4th century AD
carved mesh glass
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Dark Satanic Mills

The dark, satanic mills of Blake
how much darker and more satanic they are now!
But oh, the streams that stream white-faced, in and out,
in and out when the hooter hoots, white-faced, with a dreadful gush
of multitudinous ignominy,
what shall we think of these?
They are millions to my one!

They are millions to my one! But oh
what have they done to you, white-faced millions
mewed and mangled in the mills of man?
What have they done to you, what have they done to you,
what is this awful aspect of man?

Oh Jesus, didn't you see, when you talked of service
this would be the result!
When you said: Retro me, Satanas!
this is what you gave him leave to do
behind your back!

And now, the iron has entered into the soul
and the machine has entangled the brain, and got it fast,
and steel has twisted the loins of man, electricity has exploded the heart
and out of the lips of people jerk strange mechanical noises in place of speech.

What is man, that thou art no longer mindful of him?
and the son of man, that thou pitiest him not?
Are these no longer men, these millions, millions?
What are they then?

– D.H. Lawrence (1927)

Ancient Rome
Bowl
1st century AD
agate glass
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Florence
Inkwell
(Triton with Dolphin)
ca. 1550-1600
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

attributed to Caspar Gras
Nereid
before 1674
bronze statuette
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Alessandro Vittoria
Door Knocker
(Neptune flanked by Hippocamps)
ca. 1550-1600
bronze
Kunsthistorisches-Museum-Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Germany
Bowl
(Nautilus Shape with Relief Figures)
ca. 1650-1700
amber
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Christoph Maucher
Cleopatra
ca. 1690-1700
amber statuette
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Germany
Salt Cellar
ca. 1651-54
silver
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Maker working in Italy
Pitcher
ca. 1550-75
alabaster, with gold mounts
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Sunday, October 6, 2019

Faces in Limestone, Silver, Marble, Bronze, Alabaster (Vienna)

Ancient Egypt
Reserve Head from Burial Chamber
ca. 2600-2500 BC
limestone
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Greece (Rhodes)
Tetradrachma with image of Helios
ca. 404-385 BC
silver
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Head of a Matron
ca. 40 BC
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

attributed to Jörg Muskat
Eleanor of Portugal, Holy Roman Empress
ca. 1500-1510
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Sculptor working in Padua
Portrait of Marc Antonio della Torre
ca. 1500-1520
bronze-
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

attributed to Antonio Lombardo
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1505
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Sculptor working in the Netherlands
Emperor Charles V
ca. 1530-35
alabaster
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

attributed to Agostino Zoppo
Bust of a Scholar of Padua
ca. 1550-60
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous sculptor working in Venice
Bust of Dying Gaul
(after an antique marble)
ca. 1580
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

François Duquesnoy
Bust of St Susanna
ca. 1630-35
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

from Among School Children

Both nuns and mothers worship images,
But those the candles light are not as those
That animate a mother's reveries,
But keep a marble or a bronze repose.
And yet they too break hearts – O presences
That passion, piety or affection knows,
And that all heavenly glory symbolise –
O born self-mockers of man's enterprise . . .

– William Butler Yeats (1926)

Gianlorenzo Bernini
Bust of Pope Alexander VII Chigi
ca. 1657
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Matthäus Donner
Bust of Empress Maria Theresa
1750
bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Franz Xaver Messerschmidt
Portrait of Gerard van Swieten
ca. 1770-72
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Antonio Canova
Bust of Emperor Franz I
1805
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Tuesday, October 1, 2019

Portraits of the Ancients as Gems (Vienna)

Hellenistic Greek Culture in Egypt
Portraits of Ptolemy II Philadelphus
and his sister-wife Arsinoe II

ca. 278-269 BC
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Portrait of a Woman
1st century BC
onyx cameo with enameled-gold mount,
set with diamonds and rubies
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Bust of a Youth
ca. 60-50 BC
carnelian intaglio mounted in gold finger-ring
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Ancient Rome
Portrait of a Married Couple
AD 230
sardonyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Busts of Four Roman Emperors
ca. 1550-1600
agate cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Portrait of Agrippina as Ceres
16th century
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in France
Bust of a Roman Emperor
ca. 1575-80
onyx cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Portrait of Nero
ca. 1600
chalcedony cameo with enameled-gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Italy
Bust of a Roman Emperor
ca. 1600
agate cameo with silver-gilt mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist working in Prague
Bust of Alexander the Great
ca. 1600-1620
moss-agate cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Niccolò Morelli
Bust of Alexander the Great
ca. 1800-1830
jasper cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Bust of Antinoüs
ca. 1690-1710
carnelian intaglio with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Giuseppe Girometti
Bust of Antinoüs
before 1851
onyx cameo with gold mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Portrait of Livia as Ceres
ca. 1700-1750
aquamarine intaglio with silver mount
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

"Certainly the weather was variable.  It was green in the garden; grey the next.  Here came the sun – an illimitable rapture of joy, embracing every flower, every leaf.  Then in compassion it withdrew, covering its face, as if it forebore to look on human suffering.  There was a fecklessness, a lack of symmetry and order in the clouds, as they thinned and thickened.  Was it their own law, or no law, they obeyed?  Some were wisps of white hair merely.  One, high up, very distant, had hardened to golden alabaster; was made of immortal marble.  Beyond that was blue, pure blue, black blue; blue that had never filtered down; that had escaped registration.  It never fell as sun, shadow, or rain upon the world, but disregarded the little coloured ball of earth entirely.  No flower felt it; no field; no garden." 

– Virginia Woolf, Between the Acts (1941)