Painted Figure Studies (Nineteenth Century)

Giulio Bargellini
Ulysses
ca. 1895
oil on canvas (sketch)
private collection

Viscardo Carton
Académie
ca. 1883-86
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Verona

Angelo Dall'Oca Bianca
Académie
1876
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna Achille Forti, Verona

Annunziato Vitrioli
Académie
ca. 1850-70
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Civica di Reggio Calabria

Hippolyte Flandrin
Youth by the Sea
1836
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Théodore Géricault
Shipwreck Survivor (detail)
ca. 1817-18
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Pieter Christoffel Wonder
Personification of Time
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Pierre-Paul Prud'hon
Young God Zephyr dropping into a Pool
ca. 1814
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jacques-Louis David
Cupid and Psyche (detail)
1817
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

François-Édouard Picot
Cupid and Psyche (detail)
1817
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot
St Sebastian
ca. 1850-55
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Edward Burne-Jones
The Wheel of Fortune (detail)
1883
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Edward Burne-Jones
The Wheel of Fortune (detail)
1883
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Dante and Virgil in Hell
with Capocchio and Gianni Schicchi
1850
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Dante and Virgil in Hell
with Capocchio and Gianni Schicchi (detail)
1850
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

from To the One Who is Reading Me

You are invulnerable. Didn't they deliver

(those forces that control your destiny)
the certainty of dust? Couldn't it be
your irreversible time is that river
in whose bright mirror Heraclitus read
his brevity? A marble slab is saved
for you, one you won't read, already graved
with city, epitaph, dates of the dead.
And other men are also dreams of time,
not hardened bronze, purified gold. They're dust
like you . . . 

– Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), translated by Tony Barnstone (2012)

Painted Figure Studies in Sacred Guise (Italian)

attributed to Nicola Vaccaro
St Sebastian
ca. 1680-90
oil on canvas
Palazzo Lanfranchi, Matera

Eliseu Visconti
Reward of St Sebastian
1898
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro

attributed to Salvator Rosa
St Sebastian
before 1673
oil on canvas
Palazzo Rosso, Genoa

Marco Basaiti
Adam
1504
oil on panel
private collection

Gianlorenzo Bernini
St Sebastian
ca. 1635-45
oil on canvas
private collection

Gianfrancesco Caroto
St Sebastian
before 1555
oil on panel
Chiesa di Santo Stefano, Venice

Matteo Loves
Dead Christ in the Tomb
1640
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Civica, Cento

workshop of il Garofalo (Benvenuto Tisi)
St Sebastian
ca. 1525-50
oil on panel
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Anonymous Bolognese Artist
St John the Baptist in the Wilderness
17th century
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Antonio Molinari
Adam and Eve
ca. 1701-1704
oil on canvas
David Owsley Museum of Art, Muncie, Indiana

Nicolò Rondinelli
St Sebastian
before 1510
oil on panel
(wing of triptych)
Pinacoteca Comunale di Ravenna

Girolamo Siciolante
St Sebastian
ca. 1565
fresco
Chiesa di Santa Maria della Pace, Rome

Filippino Lippi
Pala Lomellini
(St Sebastian with St John the Baptist and St Francis)
1502
tempera on panel
Palazzo Bianco, Genoa

Filippino Lippi
Pala Lomellini (detail)
1502
tempera on panel
Palazzo Bianco, Genoa

Filippino Lippi
Pala Lomellini (detail)
1502
tempera on panel
Palazzo Bianco, Genoa

from Written in a Copy of the Geste of Beowulf

I ask myself from time to time what reasons
Move me to study, as my night comes on
And with no hope of mastery or precision,
The language of the harsh Angles and Saxons.
Wasted by the years, my memory
Keeps letting fall the word repeated in vain,
And in much the same way my life goes on
Weaving and unweaving its weary history.

– Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), translated by R.G. Barnes (1993)

Anatomical and Figure Studies (French)

Anonymous Printmaker after Jean Lepautre
Figure Study (Soldier)
ca. 1682-1706
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Printmaker after Jean Lepautre
Figure Study (Soldiers)
ca. 1682-1706
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Printmaker after Jean Lepautre
Anatomical Study (Legs)
ca. 1682-1706
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Printmaker after Jean Lepautre
Figure Study
ca. 1688-1700
engraving, colored à la poupée
British Museum

Jean-Germain Drouais
Gladiateur assis
before 1788
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Rouen

Michel-François Dandré-Bardon
Académie
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Charles-Antoine Coypel
Study for Christ at Emmaus
ca. 1745-52
drawing
private collection

Chrétien Dubois
Académie
1794
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Bernard Picart
Académie
1723
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Bernard Picart
Académie
1723
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Bernard Picart
Académie
1722
drawing
Teylers Museum, Haarlem

Bernard Picart
Académie
printed 1734
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jean Restout the Younger
Académie
ca. 1740
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean Restout the Younger
Seated Faun
ca. 1753-59
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

 

Jean-Bernard Restout
Sleep
ca. 1771
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Sleep

If sleep is truce, as it is sometimes said,
A pure time for the mind to rest and heal,
Why, when they suddenly wake you, do you feel
That they have stolen everything you had?
Why is it so sad to be awake at dawn?
It strips us of a gift so strange, so deep,
It can be remembered only in half-sleep,
Moments of drowsiness that gild and adorn
The waking mind with dreams, which may well be
But broken images of the night's treasure,
A timeless world that has no name or measure
And breaks up in the mirrors of the day.
Who will you be tonight, in the dark thrall
Of sleep, when you have slipped across its wall?

– Jorge Luis Borges (1899-1986), translated by Robert Mezey (1993)

Flemish Prints (Seventeenth-Eighteenth Centuries)

Cornelis Galle the Elder after Johannes Stradanus
Prophet Malachi
ca. 1633
engraving
British Museum

Cornelis Galle the Elder after Peter Paul Rubens
Samson and the Lion
(frontispiece to Poems by Urban VIII Barberini)
ca. 1634
engraving
British Museum

Cornelis de Wael
Puppet Show in Rome
before 1667
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen van Stalbemt
Landscape with Castle
before 1662
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen van Stalbemt
Landscape with Ruined Abbey
before 1662
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Adriaen van Stalbemt
Landscape with Watermill
before 1662
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan van Troyen after David Teniers the Younger
Christ among the Doctors
before 1670
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan van Troyen after Pordenone
The Raising of Lazarus
ca. 1656-60
etching and engraving
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jan van Troyen after Michiel Sweerts
Iesus Admirabilis (Young Christ)
before 1670
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan van Troyen after Michiel Sweerts
Mater Amabilis (the Virgin)
before 1670
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Vermeulen
after Adriaen van der Werff
Elizabeth I, Queen of England
1697
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Vermeulen
after Louis de Boullogne the Younger
Monument to Louis XIV
1685
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Vermeulen after Anthony van Dyck
Maria Louise von Thurn und Taxis
before 1709
engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Vermeulen after Guido Reni
Erigone
ca. 1700
etching and engraving
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Cornelis Vermeulen after Peter Paul Rubens
Marie de' Medici fleeing the City of Blois
1710
hand-colored etching and engraving
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Le Médecin Malgré Lui

Oh I suppose I should

Wash the walls of my office,

Polish the rust from

My instruments and keep them

Definitely in order;

Build shelves in

The little laboratory;

Empty out the old stains,

Clean the bottles

And refill them; buy

Another lens; put

My journals on edge instead of

Letting them lie flat

In heaps – then begin

Ten years back and 

Gradually

Read them to date,

Cataloguing important

Articles for ready reference.

I suppose I should

Read the new books.

If to this I added

A bill at the tailor's

And the cleaner's

And grew a decent beard

And cultivated a look

Of importance –

Who can tell?  I might be

A credit to my Lady Happiness

And never think anything

But a white thought!

– William Carlos Williams (1918)