Monday, July 31, 2023

World of Fountains - II

Andrea Zoan
Fountain with Statue of Neptune
ca. 1480-84
engraving
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Raffaellino da Reggio (Raffaele Motta)
Design for a Fountain
before 1578
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Domenico Parasacchi
Fountain, Piazza di S. Pietro in Vaticano
1637
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giovanni Battista Falda
Fountain, Piazza di S. Pietro in Vaticano
ca. 1691
etching
British Museum

Anonymous Artist
Design for a Fountain
17th century
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Dutch Printmaker
Fontana della Barcaccia, Piazza di Spagna, Rome
(seen shortly before the building of the Spanish Steps)
ca. 1675-1700
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Italian Artist
Bernini's Fontana dei Quattro Fiumi, Piazza Navona, Rome
ca. 1700-1750
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Belgian Needleworker
Cap Crown with Fountain Motif
ca. 1750
bobbin lace (linen)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Charles-Albert Lespilliez
after Jean-François Cuvilliés
Design for Interior Niche with Fountain
before 1768
engraving
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Antoine-Alexandre-Joseph Cardon
after Antoine-Jean Ansiau
Design for Fountain with Triton
ca. 1772-73
etching
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam



Francis Frith
Fountain, Champs-Élysées, Paris
ca. 1865
albumen print
Princeton University Art Museum

Robert Hope
The Fountain, Princes Street Gardens,
Edinburgh

ca. 1895
oil on board
McManus Gallery, Dundee, Scotland

John Singer Sargent
Fountain of Neptune, Piazza della Signoria, Florence
1902
oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Constant Montald
Fountain of Inspiration
1907
oil on canvas
Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Brussels

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Fountain of Saturn, Versailles 
1912
photogravure
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Blanc et Demilly
Fontaine des Jacobins, Lyon
ca. 1930
photogravure
Art Institute of Chicago
 
Carl Van Vechten
Fountain, Villa Communale, Naples
(copy of antique Castor and Pollux in Madrid)
ca. 1935
gelatin silver print
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Forget How to Remember How to Forget

"I have a rotten memory" began
The American version of that long
French novel; and save for the telling word
Leaping in all its colors out of the
Grayish blank, or for the mad turn of phrase
That I, unyielding judge, committed to
My bedlam memory, I cannot come
Up with exactly what was said even
In a recent conversation. Books can
Remember, for they have written it all
Down – they are in themselves all written down –
And, as Phaedrus was famously told in
That lovely grove (and this was written down),
Writing is remembering's enemy. 

Writing it down – thereby writing it up,
The "it" here being language or event –
Allows what was told to recall itself.
The flux of our experience will dry
Into mere flecks; once-great spots of time now
Are filmy moments of place, on the page,
In the full course – or somewhere on the banks – 
Of all that streams behind me. And the dear
Name of oh, Whatshername, herself – oh, yes
Mnemosyne (lost for a minute in 
An overstuffed, messy drawer, crammed with names)
Is all I have to call on for a guide
To wherever back up the relentless
River I might momently have to go. 

And who, when hindsight frays, would want the most
Obvious compensation of foresight,
Prophecy creeping into the places
Recall was slowly vacating? Only
The young with so much to look forward to
And little to remember could call it
A reasonable deal, and better to
Go on climbing, as steps on steps arise
And it all keeps dissolving into that
Father of Waters that every fresh
Moment originates anew, the while
Some sort of sweet, silent judgment commutes
All that, accessible or not, streams out
Behind you into time already served. 

– John Hollander (1994)