 |
| Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini Triumphal Entry of a Roman Emperor ca. 1730-40 gouache on paper Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh |
 |
| Giovanni Battista Pittoni Christ and the Woman taken in Adultery ca. 1730-40 oil on canvas Museums Sheffield |
 |
| Jean-Baptiste Pater Fête Galante ca. 1730 oil on canvas Kenwood House, London |
 |
| Giambattista Tiepolo St Roch ca. 1730-35 oil on canvas Courtauld Gallery, London |
 |
| Willem van Mieris The Greengrocer 1731 oil on panel Wallace Collection, London |
A Disused Shed in Co. Wexford
Even now there are places where a thought might grow –
Peruvian mines, worked out and abandoned
To a slow clock of condensation,
An echo trapped for ever, and a flutter
Of wildflowers in the lift-shaft,
Indian compounds where the wind dances
And a door bangs with diminished confidence,
Lime crevices behind rippling rain barrels,
Dog corners for bone burials;
And in a disused shed in Co. Wexford,
Deep in the grounds of a burnt-out hotel,
Among the bathtubs and the washbasins
A thousand mushrooms crowd to a keyhole.
This is the one star in their firmament
Or frames a star within a star.
What should they do there but desire?
So many days beyond the rhododendrons
With the world waltzing in its bowl of cloud,
They have learnt patience and silence
Listening to the rooks querulous in the high wood.
They have been waiting for us in a foetor
Of vegetable sweat since civil war days,
Since the gravel-crunching, interminable departure
Of the expropriated mycologist.
He never came back, and light since then
Is a keyhole rusting gently after rain.
Spiders have spun, flies dusted to mildew
And once a day, perhaps, they have heard something –
A trickle of masonry, a shout from the blue
Or a lorry changing gear at the end of the lane.
There have been deaths, the pale flesh flaking
Into the earth that nourished it;
And nightmares, born of these and the grim
Dominion of stale air and rank moisture.
Those nearest the door grow strong –
'Elbow room! Elbow room!'
The rest, dim in a twilight of crumbling
Utensils and broken pitchers, groaning
For their deliverance, have been so long
Expectant that there is left only the posture.
A half-century, without visitors, in the dark –
Poor preparation for the cracking lock
And creak of hinges; magi, moonmen,
Powdery prisoners of the old regime,
Web-throated, stalked like triffids, racked by drought
And insomnia, only the ghost of a scream
At the flash-bulb firing-squad we wake them with
Shows there is life yet in their feverish forms.
Grown beyond nature now, soft food for worms,
They lift frail heads in gravity and good faith.
They are begging us, you see, in their wordless way,
To do something, to speak on their behalf
Or at least not to close the door again.
Lost people of Treblinka and Pompeii!
'Save us, save us,' they seem to say,
'Let the god not abandon us
Who have come so far in darkness and in pain.
We too had our lives to live.
You with your light meter and relaxed itinerary,
Let not our naive labours have been in vain!'
– Derek Mahon (2011)
 |
| François Boucher Mercury confiding the Infant Bacchus to the Nymphs ca. 1732-34 oil on canvas Wallace Collection, London |
 |
| Antonio Balestra Raising of Lazarus ca. 1733 oil on canvas Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool |
 |
| Giambattista Tiepolo Virgin and Child enthroned with St Dominic and St Hyacinth ca. 1735 oil on canvas Art Institute of Chicago |
 |
| Charles Jervas Portrait of Captain The Honourable William Egerton ca. 1735 oil on canvas National Trust, Belton House, Lincolnshire |
 |
| Joseph Highmore Portrait of the Right Honourable Edward Thompson of Marston 1735 oil on canvas York Art Gallery |
 |
| attributed to William Hoare Portrait of Charles Fitzroy, 2nd Duke of Grafton ca. 1735-40 oil on canvas National Portrait Gallery, London |
 |
| William Hogarth Act I, Scene 2 from The Tempest by Shakespeare ca. 1736 oil on canvas National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire |
 |
| Barthélemy Guillibaud Three d'Hervart Children as the Infant Bacchus and Attendants with a Goat 1737 oil on canvas National Trust, Nostell Priory, Yorkshire |
 |
| Aureliano Milani St John the Baptist Preaching 1738 oil on canvas National Trust, Hinton Ampner, Hampshire |
 |
| Andrea Casali Portrait of Sir Charles Frederick 1738 oil on canvas Ashmolean Museum, Oxford |