Friday, March 10, 2023

Mortality Depicted

Jacopo Ligozzi
Death casting a Net over Hunters
before 1626
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Antonio Tempesta
Death of Absalom
(Absalom unhorsed and caught on a tree branch in the background)
before 1630
drawing (print study)
Musée du Louvre

Niccolò Berrettoni
Death of the Virgin
before 1682
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gianfrancesco Modigliani
Death of the Virgin
ca. 1590-1600
oil on canvas
Musei San Domenico,
Chiesa di San Giacomo Apostolo, Forlì

attributed to Bernardino da Asola
Death of St Peter Martyr
before 1540
oil on canvas
National Gallery, London

Antonio Zanchi
Death of King Josiah
ca. 1650-1700
oil on canvas
private collection

Francesco Panini
Funeral Rites in Rome
for King Joseph I of Portugal

1777
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Alessandro Algardi
Design for Tomb with Weeping Infants
before 1654
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giulio Romano
Design for the Tomb of Sigismondo Gonzaga
ca. 1537
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François Masson
Study for the Tomb of a Pope
1795
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Palma il Giovane
The Entombment, with the Virgin swooning
before 1628
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gregorio Lazzarini
Death of Dido
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
Palazzo Buonaccorsi, Macerata

Dead Language Lesson

They lift their half-closed eyes out of the grammar.

What is the object of love? you,
Singular. The subject? I.

Aeneas has nothing to say for himself.
Even the boys confess that he
Didn't intend to come back, the girls
Already know the tale by heart.

They wheedle me for tangents, for
Anything not in a book,
Even though it's all from books:
The many-wiled Penelope,
Orpheus struck dumb with hindsight.

I confiscate a note in which
The author writes, "Who do you love?,"
An agony past all correction.

I think, as they wait for the bell,
Blessed are the young for whom
All languages are dead: the girl
Who twines her golden hair, like Circe,
Turning glib boys into swine.

– A.E. Stallings (1999)

Gabriel-François Doyen
Death of Virginie
(scene from Paul et Virginie by Bernardin de St Pierre)
ca. 1790
drawing (study for painting)
Musée du Louvre

Jan van Somer after Karel Dujardin
Four Figures gathered among Tombs
(scene from The Soldier's Tale, or, The Widow of Ephesus)
ca. 1670-80
mezzotint
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Carlo Maratti
Sick Woman recovering as Saint banishes Death
ca. 1680
drawing
Musée du Louvre
 
Sébastien Bourdon
Tobit giving Burial to the Dead
before 1671
drawing
Musée du Louvre