Centered - IV

Carolus-Duran
Portrait of art dealer Gustave Tempelaere
1871
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Charley Toorop
Mother and Child
1934
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Agostino Marchesi after Correggio
Oval with Putti and Stag's Head
and Lunette with Figure of Chastity
1843
watercolor on paper (print study)
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Eugen, Prince of Sweden
Nike in Snow at Waldemarsudde
1932
oil on board
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
Castel Sant'Angelo, Rome
ca. 1835-40
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Lovis Corinth
Portrait of Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz
1917
oil on canvas
Deutsches Historisches Museum, Berlin

André Derain
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1925
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Braunschweig merchant Cyriacus Kale
1533
oil on panel
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Hans Using after Gregor Bieber
Stage Set with Persian Pleasure-Garden
1655
etching
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Gaetano Vascellini after Giambologna
Fountain with Oceanus and River Gods,
Giardino di Boboli, Florence
1789
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Pressmark of Johann Froben of Basel
ca. 1510
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Adriaen Collaert
Minerva
before 1618
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Virgil Solis
Ceres
before 1562
etching and engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anonymous Austrian Artist
Académie
ca. 1900
drawing
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Henri-Louis Levavasseur
Venus de Milo
ca. 1875
oil on paper (grisaille)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Karl Albiker
Standing Youth
1910-11
bronze (half life-size)
Museum Folkwang, Essen

In a shady grove of Locris, the Nymphs washed the body of Hesiod with water from their springs and raised a tomb to him. And on it the goat-herds poured libations of milk mixed with golden honey. For even such was the song the old man breathed who had tasted the pure fountains of the nine Muses.

Ascra, the land of broad corn-fields, was my country, but the land of the charioteer Minyae holds my bones now I am dead. I am Hesiod, the most glorious in the eyes of the world of men who are judged by the test of wisdom.

                                               *                           *                       *

The earth in her bosom hides here the body of Plato, but his soul has its immortal station among the blest, the soul of Ariston's son, whom every good man, even if he dwell in a far land, honours in that he saw the divine life. 

Here lieth the divine Aristocles* who excelled all mortals in temperance and the ways of justice. If any one gained from all men much praise for wisdom it was he, and no envy therewith.

 

Question: "Eagle, why standest thou on the tomb, and on whose, tell me, and why gazest thou at the starry home of the gods?"  Answer: "I am the image of the soul of Plato that hath flown away to Olympus, but his earth-born body rests here in Attic earth."

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

*Plato's original name