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| Monogrammist IB Bookplate for Willibald Pirckheimer (The Heart forged by Hope, Envy, Tribulation, and Tolerance) 1529 engraving British Museum |
Willibald Pirckheimer (1470-1530) – Leading humanist in Nuremberg and close friend of Albrecht Dürer. Grew up in Eichstätt, went to Italy in 1488 to study law for seven years at the universities of Padua and Pavia. Created one of the finest libraries of the period, which was later sold by his descendant Hans Hieronymus Imhof in 1636 to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel (1586-1646). Much ended up in the library of the Royal Society, which sold and dispersed it in the early 20th century (for shame!).
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| Monogrammist IB Genius of History ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Bagpipe Player ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Woman and her Maid buying produce from Farmer ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Marcus Curtius leaping into the Chasm 1529 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Three Putti with Armor ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Two Tritons fighting (with Nereid riders) ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Two Tritons fighting (with vase at center) ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Twelve Gladiators fighting ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Eleven Gladiators fighting ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Twenty Putti picking Grapes 1529 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Triumph of Bacchus 1528 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Satyr between two Dolphins ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
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| Monogrammist IB Busts in Medallions supported by Satyrs ca. 1523-30 engraving British Museum |
Water at Night
Not that I understand things.
Angels don't walk toward the ship, old engraving
where moon throws
a river of light, how angels would walk the ocean
if they wanted to walk.
They don't. They hover. A lot of space
between them and what
shines like waves. Which can't
be a choice, for angels or
the engraver who was in fact
Gustave Doré after sleeping off
the ancient mariner Coleridge left behind under
guilt and regret and an albatross's weight.
Which isn't much, but they are
big animals, four feet across counting
the wind involved
and rain. Doré waking to a room not
really of wings. I guess
a stirring, something in the black expanse
he hoped to razor into
the copper plate – no, a graver,
not a razor at all.
Beauty does terrify, a bare nothing
but stop. As in angels. Abrupt.
Still, to cut them their flight on metal
takes a while. His hands stiff,
Doré under a deadline no doubt like the small
endlessly later rest of us
do what we do and do until
it's not what we do.
Nevertheless, angels. Why did they
keep coming, one by one radiant
dark of a mind paused to
this most desolate given: water at night.
That it floods a future not
even in the picture.
– Marianne Boruch (2015), published in Poetry (Chicago)