Compositions with Ordeals

Master E.S. (German printmaker)
Martyrdom of St Sebastian
1467
engraving
British Museum

Master I.A.M. of Zwolle (Netherlandish printmaker)
Men battling Centaur
ca. 1470-95
engraving
British Museum

Master of the Subjects in Boccaccio (Netherlandish printmaker)
Humiliation of Emperor Valerian by King Sapor of Persia
1476
engraving
British Museum

Giovanni Mansueti
St Mark seized by Officials
1499
tempera and oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Perino del Vaga (Pietro Buonaccorsi)
Battle Scene
ca. 1525-27
drawing
British Museum

Master of the Egmont Albums (Netherlandish draughtsman)-
Cavalry Battle
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Master F.P. (Italian printmaker)
after Parmigianino
St Peter
ca. 1530-50
etching
British Museum

Master of the Die (Italian printmaker) after Giulio Romano
Battle of Men and Beasts
1532
engraving
British Museum

Monogrammist H.L. (German printmaker)
Man of Sorrows displaying Stigmata
before 1533
engraving
British Museum

Tiburzio Passarotti
Massacre of the Innocents
before 1612
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Palma il Giovane
The Deposition
before 1628
drawing
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Monogrammist M.P. (Italian printmaker)
after fresco by Niccolò Circignani
St Ignatius of Antioch eaten by Lions
before 1630
engraving
British Museum

Nicolas de Plattemontagne after Philippe de Champaigne
Dead Christ in the Tomb
1654
etching and engraving
British Museum

Domenico Peruzzini
The Entombment
ca. 1661
drawing
British Museum

John Hamilton Mortimer
Boat in a Storm
ca. 1770
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Bartolomeo Pinelli
Achilles viewing the severed head of Patroclus
1827
drawing
British Museum

Robert Macpherson
The Dying Gladiator
(antique sculpture in the Capitoline Museum, Rome)
ca. 1858-63
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Love's Martyrs

Oh no more, no more! too late

    Sighs are spent; the burning tapers

Of a life as chaste as Fate,

    Pure as are unwritten papers,

    Are burnt out; no heat, no light

    Now remains; 'tis ever night.

Love is dead; let lovers' eyes

    Locked in endless dreams,

    The extremes of all extremes,

Ope no more, for now Love dies.

    Now love dies, implying

Love's Martyrs must be ever, ever dying.

– John Ford (1586-1630)