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| Giovan Paolo Lomazzo Draped figure with arms raised ca. 1565-71 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Giulio Romano Jupiter hurling a thunderbolt ca. 1530-37 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| follower of Il Sodoma St Sebastian ca. 1500-1550 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Maso Finiguerra One warrior subduing another ca. 1460-64 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
Black Earth
Openly, yes,
with the naturalness
of the hippopotamus or the alligator
when it climbs out on the bank to experience the
sun, I do these
things which I do, which please
no one but myself. Now I breathe and now I am sub-
merged; the blemishes stand up and shout when the object
in view was a
Renaissance; shall I say
the contrary? The sediment of the river which
encrusts my joints makes me very gray but I am used
to it, it may
remain there; do away
with it and I am myself done away with, for the
patina of circumstance can but enrich what was
there to begin
with. This elephant skin
which I inhabit, fibered over like the shell of
the coco-nut, this piece of black glass through which no light
can filter – cut
into checkers by rut
upon rut of unpreventable experience –
it is a manual for the peanut-tongued and the
hairy-toed. Black
but beautiful, my back
is full of the history of power. Of power? What
is powerful and what is not? My soul shall never
be cut into
by a wooden spear; through-
out childhood to the present time, the unity of
life and death has been expressed by the circumference
described by my
trunk; nevertheless, I
perceive feats of strength to be inexplicable after
all; and I am on my guard; external poise, it
has its centre
well nurtured – we know
where – in pride, but spiritual poise, it has its centre where?
My ears are sensitized to more than the sound of
the wind. I see
and I hear, unlike the
wandlike body of which one hears so much, which was made
to see and not to see; to hear and not to hear,
that tree trunk without
roots, accustomed to shout
its own thoughts to itself like a shell, maintained intact
by who knows what strange pressure of the atmosphere; that
spiritual
brother to the coral
plant, absorbed into which, the equable sapphire light
becomes a nebulous green. The I of each is to
the I of each,
a kind of fretful speech
which sets a limit on itself; the elephant is?
Black earth preceded by a tendril? It is to that
phenomenon
the above formation,
translucent like the atmosphere – a cortex merely –
that on which darts cannot strike decisively the first
time, a substance
needful as an instance
of the indestructibility of matter; it
has looked at the electricity and at the earth-
quake and is still
here; the name means thick. Will
depth be depth, thick skin be thick, to one who can see no
beautiful element of unreason under it?
– Marianne Moore (1918)
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| follower of Stefano da Verona Bearded figure running with shield ca. 1450 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Demon figures from Michelangelo's Last Judgment ca. 1540-50 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Timoteo Viti Youth with arm raised (study for St Sebastian) ca. 1515 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Jacopo Tintoretto Study after Michelangelo's Giorno ca. 1550-55 drawing on blue paper Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Parmigianino Torso with raised arms ca. 1522-24 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Baldassare Peruzzi Crouching figure of Atlas 1536 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Jacopo Pontormo Two studies of seated figure before 1556 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Jacopo Bassano Study for Scourging of Christ ca. 1565 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Studies of the leg of a man and a horse's head ca. 1525-50 drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anonymous Italian artist Two figures after Raphael 16th century drawing Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |