Saturday, July 1, 2017

Albertina Drawings in their Splendor

Annibale Carracci
Study of lute player Giulio Mascherone
ca. 1593-94
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

ORPHEUS IN THE UNDERWORLD

Thus while the bard melodiously complains,
And to his lyre accords his vocal strains,
The very bloodless shades attention keep,
And, silent, seem compassionate to weep;
Ev'n Tantalus his flood unthirsty views,
Nor flies the stream, nor he the stream pursues;
Ixion's wandering wheel its whirl suspends,
And the voracious vulture, charm'd, attends;
No more the Belides their toil bemoan,
And Sisyphus, reclin'd, sits listening on his stone.

 from the Metamorphoses of Ovid, translated by William Congreve (1717)

Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
Portrait of a boy pointing upward
ca. 1740-45
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Pietro da Cortona
Bust of young woman
1637
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

François Guérin
Madame de Pompadour reading with her daughter, Alexandrine
1748
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Giambattista-Tiepolo
St Fidelis of Sigmaringen & St Joseph of Leonessa
exorcising Demons
ca. 1747-58
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Stefano della Bella
Death on the Battlefield
before 1664
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

AGAINST THE FEAR OF DEATH

What has this bugbear death to frighten man,
If souls can die, as well as bodies can?
For, as before our birth we felt no pain,
When Punic arms infested land and main,
When heaven and earth were in confusion hurled
For the debated empire of the world,
Which awed with dreadful expectation lay,
Sure to be slaves, uncertain who should sway:
So, when our mortal form shall be disjoin'd,
The lifeless lump uncoupled from the mind,
From sense of grief and pain we shall be free;
We shall not feel, because we shall not be.  

 from Lucretius, On the Nature of Things, translated by John Dryden (1690)

Raphael
Young man carrying old man
ca. 1514
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Raphael
Madonna of the Pomegranate
ca. 1504
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Raphael
Two Figures
1515
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Peter Paul Rubens
Portrait of the artist's daughter Clara Serena
ca. 1623
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Peter Paul Rubens
The artist's son Nicolaas wearing red felt cap 
ca. 1625-27
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Heinrich Füger
Friedrich (son of the artist)
ca. 1793
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Honoré Daumier
Portrait of a girl (Jeannette)
ca. 1830
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

Jacques-André Portail
The Embroiderers
before 1759
drawing
Albertina, Vienna

from CHORUS OF CLOUDS

Clouds of all hue,
Rise we aloft with our garments of dew.
Come from old Ocean's unchangeable bed,
Come, till the mountain's green summits we tread,

Come then with me,
Daughters of Mist, to the land of the free.
Come to the people whom Pallas hath blest,
Come to the soil where the Mysteries rest;

Come, where the glorified Temple invites
The pure to partake of its mystical rites.

 from The Clouds, by Aristophanes, translated by Benjamin Bickley Rogers (1852)