Necks

François Clouet
Portrait of Sir William Kirkcaldy of Grange
ca. 1555-56
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Giambattista Moroni
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Federico Barocci
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1570-75
oil on paper
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

George Gower
Portrait of Richard Drake,
brother of Sir Francis Drake
ca. 1577
oil on panel
National Maritime Museum, Greenwich

Ludovico Carracci
Portrait of Lucrezia Bentivoglio Leoni
1589
oil on canvas
Collezione d’Arte di Franco Maria Ricci, Fontanellato

Scipione Pulzone (il Gaetano)
Ferdinando I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany
ca. 1590
oil on copper
Galleria Palatina, Florence

Giannino Bahuet
Vincenzo I Gonzaga, Duke of Mantua
ca. 1595
oil on copper
private collection

Paulus van Somer
Portrait of Christian, Lady Cavendish,
later Countess of Devonshire, with her Daughter
1619
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Cornelius Johnson
Miniature Portrait of a Man
ca. 1619
oil on copper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Giovanni Antonio Galli (Lo Spadarino)
Self Portrait
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Bartolomé González
Elisabeth de Bourbon, Queen Consort of Spain
1626
oil on canvas
Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona

Michiel van Miereveld
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1630
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

Thomas de Keyser
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1630-33
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Frans Hals
Young Woman with Glass and Flagon
1635
oil on canvas
Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem

Samuel Hofmann
Portrait of an Old Man
1638
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Johannes Cornelisz Verspronck
Portrait of a Young Woman
1650
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Jean Le Blond
Catherine de Boulainvilliers de Courtenay
ca. 1660-65
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

World's Joys are Toys

The weary mariner so fast not flies

An howling tempest, harbor to attain,

Nor shepherd hastes, when frays of wolves arise,

So fast to fold to save his bleating train,

As I (winged with contempt and just disdain)

Now fly the world and what it most doth prize,

And sanctuary seek, free to remain

From wounds of abject times and envy's eyes.

Once did this world to me seem sweet and fair,

While senses' light mind's prospective kept blind;

Now like imagined landscape in the air

And weeping rainbows her best joys I find:

    Or if ought here is had that praise should have

    It is a life obscure, and silent grave. 

– William Drummond of Hawthornden (1623)