Representing Human Hands in Western Art - I

Raphael
Upraised Right Hand
1518-20
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Correggio
Study of Left Hand
before 1534
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Agnolo Bronzino
Study of Right Hand
ca. 1545-52
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Bartolomeo Passarotti
Studies of Hands
ca. 1560-90
drawing-
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Anonymous Italian Artist (formerly ascribed to Michelangelo)
Model known as Michelangelo's Hand
ca. 1580
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist (formerly ascribed to Michelangelo)
Model known as Michelangelo's Hand
ca. 1580
terracotta
Victoria & Albert Museum

attributed to Hendrik Goltzius
Study of Right Hand
ca. 1590-1600
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Luca Ciamberlano after Agostino Carracci
Studies of Hands
ca. 1600-1630
engraving
British Museum

Luca Ciamberlano after Agostino Carracci
Studies of Hands
ca. 1600-1630
engraving
British Museum

Luca Ciamberlano after Agostino Carracci
Studies of Hands
ca. 1600-1630
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Study of Left Hand
ca. 1600-1625
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Oliviero Gatti after Guercino
Studies of Hands
1619
engraving
Harvard Art Museums

Oliviero Gatti after Guercino
Studies of Hands
1619
engraving
Harvard Art Museums

Alessandro Allori
Three Anatomical Studies of a Hand
before 1607
drawing
Musée du Louvre

1880s - 1890s (Sculpture, Paintings, Prints)

Eames & Young Architects
Angel from Cornice
Title Guarantee Building, Chicago
1898
slip-glazed terracotta
Art Institute of Chicago

Edward Burne-Jones
Cupid's Hunting Fields
1885
gouache and watercolor on paper
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger after Arnold Böcklin
The Isle of the Dead
1890
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

Max Klinger after Arnold Böcklin
The Castle by the Sea
1887
etching and aquatint
Art Institute of Chicago

There came a Wind like a Bugle –
It quivered through the Grass
And a Green Chill upon the Heat
So ominous did pass
We barred the Windows and the Doors
As from an Emerald Ghost –
The Doom's Electric Moccasin
That very instant passed –
On a strange Mob of panting Trees
And Fences fled away
And Rivers where the Houses ran
Those looked that lived – that Day –
The Bell within the steeple wild
The flying tidings told –
How much can come
And much can go,
And yet abide the World!

– Emily Dickinson (1883)

Arnold Böcklin
In the Sea
1883
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

John Singer Sargent
Portrait of Mrs Hugh Hammersley
1892
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Walter Sickert
The Acting Manager (Helen Lenoir at the Savoy Theatre)
1884
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

Walter Sickert
Gatti’s Hungerford Palace of Varieties, Second Turn of Katie Lawrence
ca. 1888
oil on canvas
Yale University Art Gallery

Jean-Louis Forain
Tight-Rope Walker
ca. 1885
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Rosa Bonheur
Cattle at Rest on a Hillside in the Alps
1885
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Camille Pissarro
Woman bathing her feet in a brook
1894-95
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Camille Pissarro
Bather in the woods
1895
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Elihu Vedder
The Fates gathering in the Stars
1887
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

 

Abbott Handerson Thayer
Winged Figure
1889
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

European Sixteenth-Century Quality - IV

Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Shepherd Daphnis playing a Pipe
ca. 1520-30
bronze statuette
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

workshop of Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Kneeling Satyr
ca. 1525
bronze statuette
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

workshop of Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Oil Lamp in the form of a Sphinx
ca. 1525
bronze
Art Institute of Chicago

Riccio (Andrea Briosco)
Virgin and Child
ca. 1520-25
terracotta
(surviving fragment of full-length statue)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Francesco Salviati
Design for a Fan Handle
before 1563
drawing
British Museum

The Maldive Shark

About the Shark, phlegmatical one,
Pale sot of the Maldive sea,
The sleek little pilot-fish, azure and slim,
How alert in attendance be.
From his saw-pit of mouth, from his charnel of maw
They have nothing of harm to dread,
But liquidly glide on his ghastly flank
Or before his Gorgonian head;
Or lurk in the port of serrated teeth
In white triple tiers of glittering gates,
And there find a haven when peril's abroad,
An asylum in jaws of the Fates!
They are friends; and friendly they guide him to prey,
Yet never partake of the treat –
Eyes and brains to the dotard lethargic and dull,
Pale ravener of horrible meat.

– Herman Melville (1888)

Giuseppe Salviati
The Resurrection
before 1575
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Giampietro Silvio
Holy Family with St John the Baptist and St Jerome
ca. 1520-25
oil on panel
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Sodoma
Christ at the Column
(from the Life of St Benedict cycle)
ca. 1505-1508
fresco
Abbazia di Monte Oliveto Maggiore, near Ascanio

Pellegrino Tibaldi
Battling Tritons and Battling Men on Hippocampi
before 1596
drawing
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Paolo Veronese
Creation of Eve
ca. 1570-80
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

workshop of Paolo Veronese
Personification of Charity
before 1588
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

workshop of Paolo Veronese
Personification of Faith
before 1588
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

workshop of Paolo Veronese
Personification of Fortitude
before 1588
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

workshop of Paolo Veronese
Personifications of Justice and Prudence
before 1588
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Renaissance and Mannerist Portraits (Sixteenth Century)

attributed to Benvenuto Tisi, Il Garofalo
Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1505-1520
drawing
British Museum

When this portrait drawing was owned in the 17th century by Thomas Howard, 14th Earl of Arundel (1585-1646) it was attributed to Leonardo da Vinci.  As such, it was etched in reverse by Wenceslaus Hollar (1607-1677).   The next recorded owner was Sir Peter Lely (1618-1680), court painter to Charles II.  By the 19th century, still ascribed to Leonardo, the work was in the collection of Dr. Rev. Henry Wellesley (1794-1866), curator of the Bodleian Library and the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford.  When the Wellesley collection was sold at Sotheby's in 1866 the sitter in this portrait was (imaginatively) identified as Giovanni Galeazzo, Duke of Milan.  One year later an intermediary agent sold on the drawing for the then-substantial sum of £86 to John Malcolm of Poltalloch (1805-1893), 14th laird of Poltalloch in Argyll.  In the catalogue of the Malcolm collection prepared in 1876 the Leonardo attribution was revised to "Milanese School of Leonardo."  Malcolm's son Col. John Wingfield Malcolm (1833-1902) eventually inherited his father's large collection of prints and drawings, which he sold en bloc in 1895 to the British Museum for £25,000.  Philip Pouncey (1910-1990), curator of Italian old master drawings at the British Museum, brought forward evidence in the 1950s comparing the drawing to documented frescoes by Garofalo in Palazzo Costabili and Palazzo Sacrati, both in Ferrara, and thus established the current attribution.  (Both the halo and the lettering are later additions, not made by the artist). 

Lorenzo Lotto
Head of a Bearded Man
ca. 1516-17
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Andrea del Sarto
Two Studies of the Head of a Youth
1521
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Daniel Hopfer after Lucas Cranach the Elder
Martin Luther
1523
etching
Art Institute of Chicago

 Callisto Piazza
Portrait of a Man (possibly Ghirardo Averoldi)
ca. 1528
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

attributed to Callisto Piazza
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1530-35
drawing
British Museum

"The drawing was long considered to be by Titian and featured as such in the Ottley, Lawrence and Wellesley sales.  The woman in the drawing was identified as Titian's mistress in the Lawrence Gallery catalogue in 1836, and later as Isabella Sforza when Wellesley's collection was dispersed in 1866."  When acquired by the British Museum in 1895 as part of the Malcolm collection, the Titian attribution still held.  It was later tentatively revised to Pordenone by curators, until the present attribution to Piazza was established by art historian Hans Tietze (1880-1954), later endorsed by Giulio Bora (b. 1939).

Barthel Beham
Portrait of a Man making Calculations
1529
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Barthel Beham
Portrait of a Woman with a Parrot
1529
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Domenico Beccafumi
Head of a Bearded Man in Profile
ca. 1530-35
oil on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Master of the 1540s
Portrait of a Woman
1544
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Baccio Bandinelli
Two Studies of the Head of a Youth
ca. 1550
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago

attributed to Alessandro Allori
Portrait of Francesco de' Medici
ca. 1560
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Alessandro Vittoria
Bust of Angela Loredan Zorzi
ca. 1560-70
terracotta
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

 

Agostino Carracci
Portrait of the artist's son Antonio Carracci
ca. 1592-95
drawing
Art Institute of Chicago