Friday, October 17, 2025

Symmetry (with Reservations) - III

Filippino Lippi
Five Sibyls seated in Niches
(Samian, Cumean, Hellespontine, Phrygian and Tiburtine)
ca. 1472-75
tempera and oil on panel
Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford

workshop of Sandro Botticelli
Five Sibyls seated in Niches
(Babylonian, Libyan, Delphic, Cimmerian and Erythraean)
ca. 1472-75
oil on panel
Christ Church Picture Gallery, Oxford

Israel van Meckenem
Mass of St Gregory
ca. 1515-20
oil on panel
(central panel of triptych)
National Museum, Warsaw

Master Francke
Man of Sorrows
ca. 1435
tempera on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella)
The Flagellation
ca. 1490-1510
bronze plaquette
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Moderno (Galeazzo Mondella)
The Crucifixion
ca. 1485-89
gilt-bronze plaquette
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Jacob Apt
The Transfiguration
(epitaph for Johannes Göckerlein)
ca. 1515
oil on panel
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Segna di Bonaventura
The Last Judgment
ca. 1320
tempera on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Musée des Beaux-Arts d'Angers

Cosimo Rosselli
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St Anthony Abbot and St Nicolas of Bari

ca. 1470
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Luca Signorelli
Virgin and Child with Saints
ca. 1515
oil on panel
National Gallery, London

Gerard David
Virgin among the Virgins
1509
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Mystic Marriage of St Catherine
ca. 1515-20
oil on panel
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Penitent Magdalen in Glory
15th century
tempera on vellum
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Giulio Benso
The Blood of Christ redeems the World
ca. 1628-32
drawing
(study for altarpiece)
Morgan Library, New York

Conrad Laib
The Crucifixion
1449
tempera on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Bernard van Orley
Christ among the Doctors
ca. 1513
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Electra:

What can we say that will hit the mark? Should it be
the pains we have suffered, and from a parent, too?
She may fawn on us, but they cannot be soothed;
for like a savage-hearted wolf, we have a rage,
caused by our mother, that is past fawning.

Chorus [beating their heads and tearing at their hair:

I strike myself blows like an Arian and in the manner
of a Cissian wailing woman; 
my arms stretch out, hitting and grasping,
beating thick and fast, making many a smirch to behold,
from above, from high above, and my wretched head
rings with the sound of my battering.

Electra:

Ió, ió, cruel mother
of limitless audacity, it was a cruel funeral
when you had the hardihood to bury your husband,
a king, without the presence of his city's people,
without mourning and with no lamentation!

Chorus [to Orestes]:
 
And – so you may know this – he was mutilated* as well;
and the perpetrator was she who buried him thus, 
striving to make his death
unbearable for you to live with.
Do you hear these degrading sufferings of your father?

Orestes:

You tell a tale of utter degradation!
Well, she shall pay for degrading my father,
with the help of the gods
and with the help of my hands.
Then, when I have removed her, let me die!

– Aeschylus, from The Libation-Bearers (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*by cutting off his extremities (hands and feet, sometimes also nose and ears), stringing them together and tying them around his neck and under his armpits, with a view, inter alia, to disabling his ghost from pursuit and vengeance