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| Rembrandt (Netherlands) Self-portrait 1630 oil on copper Nationalmuseum, Stockholm |
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| Cornelis van Poelenburgh (Netherlands / Rome) The Goddess Calypso rescues Ulysses ca. 1630 oil on copper Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm |
Farre hence, at sea,
There lies an Ile that beares Ogygia's name,
Where Atlas' daughter, the ingenious Dame,
Faire-haird Calypso lives – a Goddesse grave,
And with whom men nor Gods societie have.
Yet I (past man unhappie) liv'd alone
(By heav'n's wrath forc't) her house companion.
For Jove had with a fervent lightning cleft
My ship in twaine, and farre at black sea left
Me and my souldiers – all whose lives I lost.
I in mine armes the keele tooke and was tost
Nine dayes together up from wave to wave.
The tenth grim Night the angry Dieties drave
Me and my wracke on th'Ile in which doth dwell
Dreadfull Calypso, who exactly well
Receiv'd and nourisht me, and promise made
To make me deathlesse, nor should Age invade
My powers with his deserts through all my dayes.
All mov'd not me; and therefore on her stayes
Seven yeares she made me lie: and there spent I
The long time steeping in the miserie
Of ceaslesse teares the Garments I did weare
From her fair hand.
– from Book 7 of Homer's Odyssey, translated into English verse by George Chapman, 1614-15, edited by Allardyce Nicoll for Princeton University Press, 1956
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| Lucio Massari (Bologna) Miracle of the Probatic Pool 1605-06 oil on copper Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Ludovico Carracci (Bologna) Allegory of Providence 1604 oil on copper Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome |
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| Domenichino (Bologna) The Way to Calvary 1610 oil on copper Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Adam Elsheimer (Germany / Rome) Coronis and Apollo ca. 1606-08 oil on copper Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
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| Joachim Wtewael (Netherlands) Mars and Venus surprised by the Gods ca. 1606-10 oil on copper Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Ambrosius Bosschaert (Netherlands) Basket of Flowers 1614 oil on copper Getty Museum, Los Angeles |
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| Ambrosius Bosschaert (Netherlands) Bouquet of Flowers in a Pewter Vase 1617 oil on copper Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm |
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| Carlo Maratti (Rome) Annunciation ca. 1650-90 oil on copper Royal Collection, Great Britain |
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| Jan Baptist Weenix (Netherlands) Italian Landscape with Horsemen at a Spring ca. 1657 oil on copper Centraal Museum, Utrecht |
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| Adriaen van Bloemen (Flanders) In the Draper's Shop 1670 oil on copper Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm |
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| Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Bologna) Landscape with Tobias and the Angel before 1680 oil on copper Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow |
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| Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Bologna) Landscape with St Peter Baptising before 1680 oil on copper National Trust, Great Britain |
Why did I stop? Did some instinct
discern a shape, the artist in me
intervening to stop traffic, as it were?
A shape. Or fate, as the poets say,
intuited in those few long-ago hours –
I must have thought so once.
And yet I dislike the term
which seems to me a crutch, a phase,
the adolescence of the mind, perhaps –
Still, it was a term I used myself,
frequently to explain my failures.
Fate, destiny, whose designs and warnings
now seem to me simply
local symmetries, metonymic
baubles within immense confusion –
– Louise Glück, from the poem Afterword in the volume Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)