Sunday, January 4, 2026

Ornamental

Martin Schongauer
Woman fanning Flames with Bird's Wing
ca. 1470-75
drawing
British Museum


Jacopo Ripanda
Scene from Roman History
ca. 1505-1507
drawing
British Museum

Andrea Schiavone (Andrea Meldolla)
Mars
ca. 1550
etching
British Museum

Jonas Silber
Landscape with Dolphins and Ducks in a Lake
ca. 1572-90
engraving
(decorative design for metalwork drinking vessel)
British Museum

Sebastian Stoskopff
Still Life representing the Four Elements
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum Basel

Bernardo Strozzi after Jacopo Bassano
Pastoral Scene
before 1641
drawing
British Museum

Herman Saftleven
Study of Nightshade
1683
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Sebastiano Ricci
Apotheosis of a Military Figure
ca. 1714
drawing (study for ceiling painting)
British Museum

Thomas Stothard
The Enchanted Garden
(illustration to Boccaccio's Decameron)
1825
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Wilhelm von Schadow
Portrait of Agnes Rauch
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Max Rosenthal
Caricature of Edwin Forrest as Star Fish
1851
chromolithograph
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Charles Ricketts
Centaur and Sleeping Woman
(print study for The Dial)
1893
drawing
British Museum

William Strang
Ex Libris - Edward Stainer
1894
etching
British Museum

William Heath Robinson
Spring Cleaning on Noah's Ark
(print study for The Bystander)
1925
ink and watercolor on paper 
British Museum

Donald Sultan
Butterfly
1996
hand-colored screenprint
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Amy Stevens
Confections #58
2007
C-print
Beaverbrook Art Gallery, Fredericton, New Brunswick

Emily Sundblad
Because he's alone
a sailor is always telling himself who he is

2011
oil on canvas
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

from In Praise of Women in General

He is a parricide to his mother's name,
And with an impious hand murders her fame,
That wrongs the praise of women: that dares write
Libels on saints, or with foul ink requite
The milk they lent us.  Better sex, command
To your defence my more religious hand
At sword, or pen: yours was the nobler birth,
For you of man were made, man but of earth,
The son of dust; and though your sin did breed
His fall, again you raised him in your seed:
Adam in 's sleep a gainful loss sustained,
That for one rib a better self regained;
Who, had he not your blest creation seen,
An anchorite in paradise had been. 

– Thomas Randolph (published 1638)