Knees

Marco Zoppo
Penitent St Jerome
ca. 1465-66
tempera on panel
Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna

attributed to Antonio Mantegazza
The Virgin kneeling
(fragment from Crucifixion scene)
ca. 1482-85
marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Fra Bartolomeo
Penitent St Jerome
ca. 1498
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Baldung
Virgin and Child with the Holy Spirit and Cherubs
1516
oil on panel
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Matthias Grünewald
Study of Kneeling Monarch attended by Angels
ca. 1516-19
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Angel of the Annunciation
1528
detached fresco
Museo di Capodimonte, Naples

Simon Guillain the Elder
Figure funéraire de Charlotte Catherine de La Trémoille, princesse de Condé
1629
marble
Musée du Louvre

Bernardino Mei
The Annunciation
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Museo San Pietro, Colle di Val d'Elsa

Jacopo Confortini
The Magdalen anointing the Feet of Christ
ca. 1631
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Philippe de Champaigne
Vision of St Juliana of Mount Cornillon
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas
Barber Institute of Fine Arts,
University of Birmingham, West Midlands

Ciro Ferri
St Teresa of Avila
kneeling before Effigy of the Christ Child
before 1689
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (il Baciccio)
Allegorical Figure of Concord in Clouds
ca. 1692-93
drawing (study for ceiling painting)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Marie-Philippe Coupin de La Couperie
Mademoiselle d'Arjuzon implorant la Bonté Divine
ca. 1812-14
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Richard Westall
Woman kneeling on Stormy Shore
before 1836
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Drawing in the Sand
ca. 1911
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, Margaret French)
Christopher Isherwood on Provincetown Beach
1947
(photograph reproduced here as offset-print in 1978 for exhibition announcement)
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Alberto Giacometti
Kneeling Woman
1956
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from News

    News of a foreign country came

As if my treasure and my wealth lay there;

    So much it did my heart inflame,

'Twas wont to call my Soul into mine ear;

        Which thither went to meet

            The approaching sweet,

        And on the threshold stood

    To entertain the unknown Good. 

            It hovered there

        As if 'twould leave mine ear,

    And was so eager to embrace

        The joyful tidings as they came,

    'Twould almost leave its dwelling-place

        To entertain the same.

    As if the tidings were the things,

My very joys themselves, my foreign treasure –

    Or else did bear them on their wings –

With so much joy they came, with so much pleasure.

        My Soul stood at the gate

            To recreate

        Itself with bliss, and to

    Be pleased with speed. A fuller view

            It fain would take,

        Yet journeys back would make

    Unto my heart; as if 'twould fain

        Go out to meet, yet stay within

    To fit a place to entertain

        And bring the tidings in.

– Thomas Traherne (1638-1674)