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| Giovanni Antonio Galli (Lo Spadarino) Christ showing his Wound ca. 1630 oil on canvas Perth Museum and Art Gallery, Scotland |
Grain Field
Scarlet the poppies,
Blue the corn-flowers,
Golden the wheat.
Gold for the Eternal,
Blue of Our Lady,
Red for the five
Wounds of her Son.
– Adelaide Crapsey (published 1915)
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| Pietro Paolini (il Lucchese) The Necromancer ca. 1630 oil on canvas Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi, Ferrara |
from Il Penseroso
Or let my lamp at midnight hour
Be seen in some high lonely tower
Where I may oft out-watch the Bear
With thrice-great Hermes, or unsphere
The spirit of Plato, to unfold
What worlds, or what vast regions hold
Th' immortal mind that hath forsook
Her mansion in this fleshly nook:
And of those daemons that are found
In fire, air, flood, or under ground,
Whose power hath a true consent
With planet, or with element.
– John Milton (1632)
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| Matteo Loves Mary Magdalen contemplating the Crucifix ca. 1630 oil on canvas Fondazione Cavallini-Sgarbi, Ferrara |
from Eloisa to Abelard
See in her cell sad Eloisa spread,
Propped on some tomb, a neighbour of the dead.
In each low wind methinks a spirit calls,
And more than echoes talk along the walls.
Here, as I watched the dying lamps around,
From yonder shrine I heard a hollow sound.
"Come, sister, come!" (it said, or seemed to say)
"Thy place is here, sad sister, come away!
Once like thyself, I trembled, wept and prayed,
Love's victim then, though now a sainted maid:
But all is calm in this eternal sleep,
Here grief forgets to groan, and love to weep;
E'en superstition loses ev'ry fear,
For God, not man, absolves our frailties here."
– Alexander Pope (1717)
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| Dionisio Guerri Portrait of a Lady ca. 1630 oil on canvas Museo di Castelvecchio, Verona |
from Our Lady of the Homilies
And you know as well
as you know that if wishes
were horses, we'd all
be trampled to death
in our dreams
that what will be will be
other than what you thought
you saw coming
by the time
it gets here . . .
– Paul Grant (2003)
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| attributed to Gérard Douffet The Raising of Lazarus ca. 1630 oil on canvas private collection |
from Tenebrae
Requite this angel whose
flushed and thirsting face
stoops to the sacrifice
out of which it arose.
This is the lord Eros
of grief who pities
no one; it is
Lazarus with his sores.
– Geoffrey Hill (1978)
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| Cecco Bravo (Francesco Montelatici) Semiramis receiving word of the revolt of Babylon 1630 oil on canvas Palazzo Pretorio, Prato |
from The Tenth Muse
Semiramis to her is but obscure,
More infamy than fame she did procure.
She placed her glory but on Babel's walls,
World's wonder for a time, but yet it falls.
– Anne Bradstreet (1650)
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| Giovanni Lanfranco Alexander the Great refusing Water ca. 1630 oil on canvas Fondazione Manodori, Palazzo del Monte, Reggio Emilia |
from The Anabasis of Alexander
"At this point a noble deed of Alexander's, perhaps his noblest, should not, it seems to me, be forgotten, whether it was performed in that region or even earlier among the Paropamisadai (as some have reported). The army was marching across the sands in the already scorching heat, as it had to cover the distance to a source of water that lay ahead. Alexander himself, though badly afflicted with thirst, was nevertheless leading the way, on foot, so that the other soldiers might bear their toils more lightly, as they generally do when hardship is shared equally. Then some of the light-armed troops who had split off from the army to search for water found a shallow gully in which there was a small, scanty spring. After taking pains to collect the water, they went in haste to Alexander as though bearing great treasure; when they drew near him, they poured the water into a helmet and took it to the king. Alexander is said to have received it and praised the men who had brought it, but then to have taken it and poured it out in the sight of all. And the army was so encouraged by this gesture that one would have guessed that everyone had drunk the water that Alexander had poured out. For this deed, a testament to his endurance and his leadership, I especially commend Alexander."
– Arrian (ca. AD 130), translated by Pamela Mensch (2010)
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| Bernardo Strozzi Feast in the House of Simon the Pharisee ca. 1630 oil on canvas Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice |
from the Book of Luke, chapter 7
"And one of the Pharisees desired him that he would eat with him. And he went into the Pharisee's house, and sat down to meat. And, behold, a woman in the city, which was a sinner, when she knew that Jesus sat at meat in the Pharisee's house, brought an alabaster box of ointment. And stood at his feet behind him weeping, and began to wash his feet with tears, and did wipe them with the hairs of her head, and kissed his feet, and anointed them with the ointment. Now when the Pharisee which had bidden him saw it, he spoke within himself, saying, This man, if he were a prophet, would have known who and what manner of woman this is that toucheth him: for she is a sinner."
– King James Bible (1611)
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| Bernardo Strozzi Portrait of a Young Man 1635 oil on canvas Musée du Louvre |
from It Must Be Abstract
Begin, ephebe, by perceiving the idea
Of this invention, this invented world,
The inconceivable idea of the sun.
* * *
The lion roars at the enraging desert,
Reddens the sand with his red-colored noise,
Defies red emptiness to evolve his match . . .
– Wallace Stevens (1942)
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| Guido Reni Madonna and Child in Glory with Saints ca. 1630 oil on canvas Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna |
Quite Frankly
They got old, they got old and died. But first –
okay but first they composed plangent depictions
of how much they lost and how much cared about losing.
Meantime their hair got thin and more thin
as their shoulders went slumpy. Okay but
not before the photo albums got arranged by them,
arranged with a niftiness, not just two or three
but eighteen photo albums, yes eighteen eventually,
eighteen albums proving the beauty of them (and not someone else),
them and their relations and friends, incontrovertible
playing croquet in that Bloomington yard,
floating on those comic inflatables at Dow Lake,
giggling at the Dairy Queen, waltzing at the wedding,
building a Lego palace on the porch,
holding the baby beside the rental truck,
leaning on the Hemingway statue at Pamplona,
discussing the eternity of art in that Sardinian restaurant.
Yes! And so, quite frankly – at the end of the day –
they got old and died okay sure but quite frankly
how much does that matter in view of
the eighteen photo albums, big ones
thirteen inches by twelve inches each
full of undeniable beauty?
– Mark Halliday (2013)
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| Guido Reni Christ crowned with Thorns ca. 1630-35 oil on copper Detroit Institute of Arts |
from Stand Up!
Stand up, but not for Jesus!
It's a little late for that.
Stand up for justice and a jolly life.
I'll hold your hat.
– D.H. Lawrence (1929)
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| Guido Reni St Michael Archangel vanquishing Lucifer ca. 1635 oil on canvas Chiesa di Santa Maria della Concezione dei Cappuccini, Rome |
from The American Way
I see standing on the skin of the Way
America to be as proud and victorious as St.
Michael on the neck of the fallen Lucifer –
– Gregory Corso (1970)
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| Emilio Savonanzi (il Raniano) Baptism of Christ ca. 1630-35 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon |
from Paradise Lost
. . . to his great baptism flocked
With awe the regions round, and with them came
From Nazareth the son of Joseph deemed
To the flood of Jordan, came as then obscure,
Unmarked, unknown . . .
– John Milton (1667)
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| Cesare Dandini Allegory of Constancy ca. 1634 oil on panel Blanton Museum of Art, Austin, Texas |
The Lady and the Tramp
As my mother's memory dims
she's losing her sense of smell
and can't remember the toast
blackening the kitchen with smoke
or sniff how nasty the breath of the dog
that follows her yet from room to room,
unable, himself, to hear his own bark.
It's thus they get around,
the wheezing old hound stone deaf
baying like a smoke alarm
for his amnesiac mistress whose back
from petting him is bent forever
as they shuffle towards the flaming toaster
and split the cindered crisp that's left.
– Bruce Guernsey (2007)
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| Andrea Vaccaro David with the Head of Goliath ca. 1635 oil on canvas Los Angeles County Museum of Art |
from Autobiography: New York
he was no fool
when he took off the helmet
and put down the sword and the spear and the shield
and said, The weapons you have given me are good,
but they are not mine:
I will fight in my own way
with a couple of pebbles and a sling.
– Charles Reznikoff (1941)