Dire - I

Eugène Lepoittevin
Shipwrecked Mariners threatened by Polar Bears
1839
oil on canvas
Musée de Picardie, Amiens

Georg Lemberger
God sending a Plague of Flies
ca. 1532-36
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Louis de Planet
Jews led into Captivity in Babylon
ca. 1843
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Adalbert Trillhaase
Lamentation of the Jews in Captivity
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Clemens-Sels Museum, Neuss, Germany

Hubert Robert
Demolition of the Château of Meudon
1806
oil on canvas
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Pietro de Angelis
Fire in an Antique City
ca. 1785-95
watercolor and gouache on paper
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

James Ensor
Demons that Torment Me
1895
hand-colored etching
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Giovanni Battista Galestruzzi after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Saturn castrating his father Caelus (Uranus)
ca. 1660
etching
(after now-lost outdoor fresco in Rome)
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Luca Giordano
Apollo and Marsyas
1637
oil on canvas
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Balthasar Permoser
Apollo and Marsyas
ca. 1675-80
ivory relief
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Matteo di Giovanni
St Bartholomew
(carrying his flayed skin)
ca. 1480-85
tempera on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Johannes Zainer
Theoxena and Poris and his Sons slaying themselves to avoid Capture
1473
hand-colored woodcut
(illustration to De Mulieribus Claris of Boccaccio)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Joachim von Sandrart
Central Figure of Laocoön Group
ca. 1632-35
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Hans Baldung
The Three Fates
ca. 1513
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Nikolaus Solis after Rosso Fiorentino
The Three Fates
ca. 1570
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Hell
ca. 1470
engraving
(after fresco in Pisa by Buonamico Buffalmacco)
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

The high-born virgin Justice, patroness of cities, does not turn her face away from gold that is associated with piety, but the very scales of Zeus with which he weighs every law of life are of solid gold. "Then did the Father hold out the scales of gold," if thou hast not forgotten the beauties of Homer.

Thrice I reigned as tyrant, and as many times did the people of Erechtheus expel me and thrice recall me, Pisistratus, great in council, who collected the works of Homer formerly sung in fragments. For that man of gold was our fellow citizen, if we Athenians colonized Smyrna. 

Painter, thou stealest the form only, and canst not, trusting in thy colours, capture the voice.

Thy love is counterfeit and thou lovest from fear and by force. But nothing is more treacherous than such love.

If thou lovest me, love me indeed, and do me no evil, making friendship the beginning of injury.  For I say that for all men open enmity is much better than deceptive friendship. They say, too, that for seafaring ships sunken reefs are worse than visible rocks. 

We saw at supper the great wisdom of the Cynic, that bearded beggar with the staff. To begin with he abstained from pulse and radishes, saying that virtue should not be the belly's slave. But when he saw before his eyes a snow-white sow's womb with sharp sauce, a dish that soon stole away his prudent mind, he asked for some unexpectedly, and really started eating, saying that a sow's womb does no harm to virtue.

– from Book XI (Convivial and Satirical Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)