Tuesday, January 4, 2022

Imagining the Classical World in Nineteenth-Century Italy

Pelagio Palagi
Birth of Venus
ca. 1820
oil on canvas
Museo del Settecento Veneziano, Ca' Rezzonico, Venice

Pelagio Palagi
Marriage of Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1808
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Pelagio Palagi
Cleombrotus ordered into Banishment
by Leonidas II, King of Sparta

ca. 1807-1810
oil on canvas
Museo d'Arte Moderna di Bologna

Pelagio Palagi
Mythological Scene
ca. 1812
oil on canvas
private collection

Pelagio Palagi
Diana the Huntress
1835
oil on canvas
Palazzo d'Accursio, Bologna

Egisto Sarri
Pompeian Scene
1880
oil on canvas
Palazzo Pretorio, Prato

Egisto Sarri
Pompeian Scene - Playtime
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
private collection

Egisto Sarri
Pompeian Scene - First Steps
ca. 1880
oil on canvas
private collection

Filippo Palizzi
Study of an Excavation (Pompei)
1864
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna, Rome

Filippo Palizzi
Excavation at Pompei
1870
oil on canvas
private collection

Annibale Gatti
Triumph of Eros
ca. 1868
ceiling painting
Villa Mimbelli, Livorno

Annibale Gatti
Triumph of Eros (detail)
ca. 1868
ceiling painting
Villa Mimbelli, Livorno

Annibale Gatti
Triumph of Eros (detail)
ca. 1868
ceiling painting
Villa Mimbelli, Livorno

Giovanni Demin
Hercules at the Crossroads
1812
ceiling painting
Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice

Giovanni Demin
Hercules at the Crossroads (detail)
1812
ceiling painting
Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice

from Crossroads in the Past

That night the wind stirred in the forsythia bushes,
but it was a wrong one, blowing in the wrong direction.
"That's silly. How can there be a wrong direction?
'It bloweth where it listeth,' as you know, just as we do 
when we make love or do something else there are no rules for."

I tell you, something went wrong there a while back.
Just don't ask me what it was. Pretend I've dropped the subject.
No, now you've got me interested, I want to know
exactly what seems wrong to you, how something could

seem wrong to you. In what way do things get to be wrong?

– John Ashbery (2000)