Saturday, April 11, 2026

Various Clouds

Titian
Virgin and Child in Glory with Saints
1522-26
oil on panel, transferred to canvas
(altarpiece)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Maurice de Vlaminck
Landscape with Haystacks
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Romanian National Museum of Art, Bucharest

Jan Sadeler the Elder after Theodor Bernard
Personification of Evening
1582
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jan Sadeler the Elder after Theodor Bernard
Personification of Dawn
1582
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

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

Karel Dujardin
Return from the Flight into Egypt
1662
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Eugène Boudin
The Shore at Deauville
1897
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Ferdinand Hodler
The Weisshorn viewed from Montana
1915
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Jacob van Ruisdael
Dam Square in Amsterdam
ca. 1670-80
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Thoma
St George
1889
oil on cardboard
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Figure seated on Clouds
16th century
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Domenico Mondo
Allegorical Scene
ca. 1780-85
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Luca Giordano
Allegorical Figure riding Pegasus and scattering Rose Petals
before 1705
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Gustave Doré
Scottish Landscape
1881
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Enrico Prampolini
Diver among Clouds
ca. 1930
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Kolomon Moser
Cloud Study
ca. 1913
oil on card
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

It is a lying fable, Theocles, that the Graces are good and that there are three of them in Orchomenus; for five times ten dance round thy face, all archeresses, ravishers of other men's souls. 

Now thou givest me these futile kisses, when the fire of love is quenched, when not even apart from it do I regard thee as a sweet friend.  For I remember those days of thy stubborn resistance.  Yet even now, Daphnis, though it be late, let repentance find its place.

What delight, Heliodorus, is there in kisses, if thou dost not kiss me, pressing against me with greedy lips, but on the tips of mine with thine closed and motionless, as a wax image at home kisses me even without thee?

If I do you a wrong by kissing you, and you think this an injury, kiss me too, inflicting the same on me as a punishment.  

If you were still uninitiated in the matter about which I go on trying to persuade you, you would be right in being afraid, thinking it is perhaps something formidable.  But if your master's bed has made you proficient in it, why do you grudge granting the favour to another, receiving the same?  For he, after summoning you to the business, dismisses you, and being your lord and master, goes to sleep without even addressing a word to you.  But here you will have other enjoyments, playing on equal terms, talking together, and all else by invitation and not by order. 

How, Dionysius, shall you teach a boy to read when you do not even know how to make the transition from one note to another?  You have passed so quickly from the highest note to a deep one, from the slightest rise to the most voluminous.  Yet I bear you no grudge; only study, and striking both notes say Lambda and Alpha* to the envious.

 – from Book XII (Strato's Musa Puerilis) in the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

*Probably, as the commentators explain, having some sort of sexual meaning. There is double meaning in all the rest of the epigram, but it is somewhat obscure – and had best remain so.