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| Hendrik van Balen and Jan Brueghel the Elder Penitent Magdalen ca. 1610 oil on panel Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Louis Finson Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy 1612 oil on canvas Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille |
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| Melchior de La Mars Mary Magdalen in Ecstasy ca. 1622-23 oil on canvas Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Johannes Wyckeasbert St Sebastian tended by St Irene 1655 oil on canvas Palazzo Pretorio, Prato |
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| Anthony van Dyck Martyrdom of St Sebastian ca. 1621-27 oil on canvas Monasterio El Escorial |
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| Anthony van Dyck St Sebastian tended by an Angel ca. 1625 oil on canvas Galleria Sabauda, Turin |
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| Anthony van Dyck St Jerome ca. 1618-20 oil on canvas Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam |
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| Anthony van Dyck Virgin and Child with St Catherine of Alexandria ca. 1630 oil on canvas Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Anthony van Dyck Holy Family with St Elisabeth and St John the Baptist ca. 1620-25 oil on canvas (modified by another hand in the 18th century) Galleria Sabauda, Turin |
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| Anthony van Dyck Christ carrying the Cross ca. 1625 oil on canvas Palazzo Rosso, Genoa |
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| Anthony van Dyck The Crucifixion ca. 1630 oil on canvas Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels |
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| Hendrick de Somer (Enrico Fiammingo) St Jerome 1651 oil on canvas Speed Art Museum, Louisville, Kentucky |
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| Hendrick de Somer (Enrico Fiammingo) Young St John the Baptist before 1656 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Hendrick de Somer (Enrico Fiammingo) Moses before 1656 oil on canvas private collection |
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| Otto van Veen Assumption of the Virgin before 1629 oil on panel Musée des Beaux-Arts de Châlons |
The Elements
You must do battle with Eros I am
more worried about space, pressed for details
collapsed in chaos with my sword holding up the sky the
girl said. They cared not for love lying ever that they loved
But I your leader wounded in gender and bleeding
for Eros fought it away from my true beginning as now.
Always climbing that hill in several ways.
One goes past the Baptist Church and through the ugly
trees, houses I only visualize in dreams
you have no right to pursue me to my origins man
as bipolar as the one candidate, forgettable
as the other. We once lived in a postwar barracks blue
heated by a black stove of assumptions
Eros a youth admits no equal; Aphrodite the slut;
Chaos is whom I admire that keeps forgetting
love in favor of this terrible mixity I am
for example ... these poems. Out of the pre-beginning
a different beauty. They want you to confess
something like in church, that a man will
save you. But I am your leader savior and poet
I am your general out of the desert thee
most ardent void precursor of love
Eros approaches again not the man but quality
sculpted genitals arush with the words
of unreason: I will never die. Which I is I
if I can remain chaotic I'll tell you who you are
that you've never anticipated, but know
the only one. Without a thing. To be is not
to have; nor to belong; nor to have been born.
You are not the child of earth. Beauty still thy name.
– Alice Notley (2015)
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| Erasmus Quellinus the Younger Vision of St Francis Xavier 1656 oil on canvas Indianapolis Museum of Art |