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 |