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| James McNeill Whistler La Marchande de Moutarde 1858 etching Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Anonymous Italian printmaker working in Rome Woman on Rearing Horse ca. 1599-1622 engraving Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian printmaker after Parmigianino Allegorical Figure of Faith ca. 1525-1600 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
from EPITAPH FOR BICE DONETTI
Here eyes toward the rain and the spirits of night,
there, in field fifteen at Musocco,
lies the Emilian woman I loved
in the sad hours of youth.
Death prevailed over her, not long ago,
while she was quietly watching
the autumn wind shake the branches
and leaves of the plane trees
from her gray house on the edge of town.
Her face is still alive with surprise,
as surely it was in childhood, struck
by the fire-eater high up, on the wagon.
O you who pass by, drawn by other deaths,
stop for a moment before grave
eleven-sixty to speak a word
. . .
– written by Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968), translated by Adam Giannelli
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| Anonymous Italian printmaker after Parmigianino The Sacrifice of Mucius Scaevola ca. 1525-1600 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Monogrammist YHS after Baldassare Tommaso Perruzzi The Lonely Man ca. 1520-50 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| attributed to Rembrandt Beheading of St John the Baptist 1629-30 etching Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
from EARTH AND DEATH
Death will come and will have your eyes –
this death that accompanies us
from morning till evening, unsleeping,
deaf, like an old remorse
or an absurd vice. Your eyes
will be a useless word,
a suppressed cry, a silence.
That's how you see them each morning
when alone with yourself you lean
toward the mirror. O precious hope,
that day we too will know
that you are life and you are nothingness.
Death has a look for everyone.
Death will come and will have your eyes.
It will be like renouncing a vice,
like seeing a dead face
resurface in the mirror,
like listening to a lip that's shut.
We'll go down in the maelstrom mute.
– written by Cesare Pavese (1908-1950), translated by Geoffrey Brock
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| E. Le Tellier (designer) Playing Card - Seven of Diamonds ca. 1875 lithograph Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Albrecht Dürer The Sea Monster ca. 1498 engraving Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
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| Adolfo De Carolis The Archer Symbolist Allegory - The Spirit Survives ca. 1917-20 chiaroscuro woodcut National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
from THE SAND AND THE ANGEL
We didn't need the crumbling temples on the deserts' edge,
With lopped columns and stairs that lead nowhere;
Nor the sand-covered wreckage, the bleached bones along the sea.
Not even the violence of fire against our fields and homes.
It was enough that the shadow rose from the quietest corner of the room
Or kept its vigil behind our half-closed doors –
The fine rain against the windowpanes, a piece of tin moaning in the wind:
We knew already we belonged to death.
– written by Margherita Guidacci (1921-1992), translated by Ruth Feldman
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| Anonymous Italian artist working in Padua Plaquette - Bacchus discovering Ariadne on Naxos (copy of an ancient gem, then in the Gonzaga Collection, Mantua) 15th century bronze Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Master ND after Raphael Massacre of the Innocents ca. 1544 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Master ND Holy Family ca. 1544 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Master ND Holy Family ca. 1544 chiaroscuro woodcut Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Firmin Perlin Homage to a Hero 1772 watercolor, gouache Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum |
RETURN
I came again
to where I'd never been.
Nothing was changed from what it wasn't.
On the table (on the waxed
checkered tablecloth) half-emptied
I found the glass that had never
been filled. Everything
still remained just as
I had never left it.
– written in 1975 by Giorgio Caproni (1912-1990), translated by David Goldstein