Sunday, November 23, 2025

Group Endeavors - II

Léon Belly
Sirens luring Odysseus
1867
oil on canvas
Musée de l'Hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer

Luca Giordano
Abduction of Helen
cs. 1680
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Monogrammist GF after Francesco Primaticcio
Vulcan and his Cyclops-Assistants forging Cupid's Arrows
ca. 1540-50
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Wenceslaus Hollar after Francesco Francia
Scene of Pagan Sacrifice
1638
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Italian Artist
The Taking of Christ
11th century
ivory relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Crossing of the River Berezina in 1812
ca. 1860-65
oil on canvas
Amsterdam Museum

Roman Empire
Cupids hanging Garlands
AD 50-79
fresco
(detached from Pompeian interior)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Jean-Simon Berthélemy
Socrates instructing the Young
1784
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Salvator Rosa
Plato's Academy
1662
etching
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Albrecht Altdorfer
Victory of Charlemagne over the Avars
1518
oil on panel
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Virgil Solis
Battle between Greeks and Trojans
ca. 1550-60
woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Marten van Valckenborch the Elder
The Tower of Babel
1595
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Anonymous German Artist
The Fall of Manna
ca. 1470
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Art

Monogrammist IB
Battle of Gladiators
ca. 1523-30
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jean-Guillaume Moitte
Scene of Pagan Sacrifice
1792
drawing
Musée Magnin, Dijon

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder
Nymphs filling a Cornucopia
1615
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Chorus of Persian Elders:

But what mortal man can escape
the guileful deception of a god? 
Who is so light of foot
that he has power to leap easily away?
For Ruin begins by fawning on a man in a friendly way* 
and leads him astray into her net,
from which it is impossible for a mortal to escape and flee.

For that reason my mind
is clothed in black and torn with fear:
"Woe for the Persian army!" –
I dread that our city may hear this cry –
"The great capital of Susiana is emptied of its manhood!" –

and that the city of the Cissians
will sing in antiphon,
a vast throng of women
howling out that word "woe!"
and their linen gowns will be rent and torn.

For all the horse-driving host
and the infantry too,
like a swarm of bees, having left the hive with the leader of their army,
passing over the projecting spur** that belongs to both continents
and yokes them together across the sea.

And beds are filled with tears,
because the men are missed and longed for:
Persian women, grieving amid their luxury, every one, loving and longing for her husband,
having sent on his way the bold warrior who was her bedfellow,
is left behind a partner unpartnered.

But come, Persians, let us sit down
in this ancient building
and take good thought and deep counsel –
for there is pressing need to do so.

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*as Cerberus does to those arriving at the gates of Hades

**i.e. the bridge of boats, conceived as an artificial promontory which seems at one end like an extension of Asia, and at the other end like an extension of Europe