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| Anonymous Dutch artist Miniature Portrait of Josina Cornelisdr van Esch 1632 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Dutch artist Miniature Portrait of Cornelia Cornelisdr van Esch 1632 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Dutch artist Miniature Portrait of Maria Cornelisdr van Esch 1632 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Anonymous Dutch artist Children playing with Nest of Birds 1718 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| attributed to Willem Cornelisz Duyster Miniature Portrait of a Woman 1629 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
from The Portrait
This is her picture as she was:
It seems a thing to wonder on,
As though mine image in the glass
Should tarry when myself am gone.
I gaze until she seems to stir, –
Until mine eyes almost aver
That now, even now, the sweet lips part
To breathe the words of the sweet heart: –
And yet the earth is over her.
– Dante Gabriel Rossetti (ca. 1875)
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| Jan Verkolje Portrait of a man 1685 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jan Verkolje Portrait of a woman 1691 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Willem Bartel van der Kooi Portrait of Adriaen Pieter Twent 1809 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jean-Étienne Liotard Portrait of Empress Maria Theresa 1747 enamel on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
PORTRAIT
Quick with your paints and palette there! the color
Ebbs from my languid arteries. Oh, be quick!
I feel my hair grow grey, my eyes grow duller,
And all the youthful contour blurred and thick.
I hear your nervous brushes rub and click,
Racing with time to catch my brief reflection.
Keenly I hear the numbered minutes tick,
Outdistancing your patience for perfection.
Can you retrace the masque of life, the section
Of universal chaos that was I?
The scars of flame, the gleams of resurrection
From loves that wither into lusts that die?
O then be quick! before those vanish hence,
Leaving a shell of blank indifference.
– Robert Hillyer (1926)
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| Cornelis Pronk Miniature Self-portrait ca. 1710-30 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacob Toorenvliet Portrait of Carel Quina, Amsterdam-born explorer of Asia 1669 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jan Maurits Quinkhard Portrait of a Man 1744 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| Jacob Lyon after Michiel Jansz van Mierevelt Miniature Portrait of Maurice, Prince of Orange ca. 1612 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| attributed to Willem van Mieris Miniature Portrait of a Man ca. 1660-81 oil on copper Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
The Portrait
For my little ballads,
those strange, sunset-red laments,
spring paid me a gull's egg.
I bade my lover paint my portrait
on its thick shell.
He painted a new bulb in brown soil –
on the other side, a powdery mound of sand.
– Edith Södergran, translated from Swedish by Brooklyn Copeland (2011)
Poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)