Tuesday, January 7, 2020

Herms & Terms - III

Carlo Calderi
Antique Roman Portrait Herm of a Boy
(formerly in Villa Ludovisi, Rome)
ca. 1710-30
drawing
British Museum

Arnold Houbraken
Female Herm in Townscape
ca. 1710-19
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Arnold Houbraken
Female Herm
before 1719
etching
British Museum

Anonymous French Artist
Design for Herm as Atlante
ca. 1725-50
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Doccia Manufactory (Florence)
Pair of Winged Terms
ca. 1745-50
porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Marcantonio Corsi after Giovanni Domenico Campiglia
Antique Term of Pan
ca. 1750
engraving
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Saint James's Factory (London)
Female Term Figure
ca. 1750-55
porcelain
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Salomon Gessner
Forest Landscape with Goat and Herm
ca. 1764
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

That Nature is our worst Guide (excerpt)

Shal she be guide to all Creatures, which is her selfe one? Or if she also have a guide, shall any Creature have a better guide than wee? The affections of lust and anger, yea even to erre is naturall; shall we follow these? Can shee be a good guide to us, which hath corrupted not us onely but her selfe? Was not the first man, by the desire of knowledge, corrupted even in the whitest integrity of Nature? And did not Nature (if Nature did any thing) infuse into him this desire of knowledge, and so this corruption in him, into us? If by Nature wee shall understand our essence, our definition, our Reasonablenesse, then this being alike common to all (the Idiot and the Wizard being equally reasonable) why should not all men having equally all one nature, follow one course? Or if we shall understand our inclinations; alas! how unable a guide is that which followes the temperature of our slimie bodies?

– John Donne (ca. 1592-95)

John Skippe
Two Herms
ca. 1781-83
chiaroscuro woodcut
British Museum

John Skippe
Two Herms
ca. 1781-83
chiaroscuro woodcut
British Museum

attributed to Vincenzo Dolcibene
Antique Herm of Priapus
(formerly in Villa Montalto Negroni, Rome)
1787
drawing
British Museum

Juriaan Andriessen
Putti dancing around a Herm
before 1819
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

J. Loroy (Vienna)
Female Herm as Caryatid
ca. 1875-1900
albumen print
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Paul Wright
Caryatid (False Pillar)
ca. 1990-2000
oil on board
Dingles Fairground Heritage Centre
Cornwall