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| Balthasar van der Ast Still Life with Seashells ca. 1630 oil on copper Centraal Museum, Utrecht |
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| Jacob Marrel Still Life with Flowers on a Stone Shelf ca. 1645 oil on panel Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem |
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| Jacob van Walscapelle Still Life with Fruit 1675 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin Still Life with Attributes of the Architect c. 1725-27 oil on canvas Princeton University Art Museum |
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| Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin Basket of Plums 1765 oil on canvas Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia |
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| Berthe Morisot The Mother and Sister of the Artist ca. 1869-70 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Gustav Wentzel Kitchen Interior 1879 oil on canvas National Gallery of Norway, Oslo |
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| Martin Johnson Heade Giant Magnolias on a Blue Velvet Cloth ca. 1890 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| William Merritt Chase A Friendly Call 1895 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Charles Courtney Curran At the Sculpture Exhibition (New York) 1895 oil on canvas Yale University Art Gallery |
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| Vilhelm Hammershøi Interior with the Artist's Wife 1902 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| Vilhelm Hammershøi Interior with the Artist's Easel 1910 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| William McGregor Paxton The House Maid 1910 oil on canvas National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Emil Nolde Figures and Dahlias 1919 oil on canvas Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen |
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| Pablo Picasso Still Life 1927 oil on canvas National Gallery of Norway, Oslo |
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| Giorgio Morandi Still Life 1960 oil on canvas Tate Gallery |
Summoning the Personal Devil
I
Ink, fire, quintuple mirrors . . .
By means bizarre enough,
I convoked the multiple eye
And saw from claw to scruff
The growth my being nurtured:
The subtle bully, whose Days –
His Furies and his bearers –
Hang like the dozing flies
Whose billions in bog or orchard
Gorge with a daylong sigh.
II
My charms and vague elixirs
Held, though the spell was thin:
Gaze broad as death's; hide grey
And swollen as self; self's bane
And opposite, his Furies
Themselves less blank of face –
Though he showed, this once, fly's features,
Then faded while I took place,
Crystalline, in the iris
Of the huge dissolving eye.
– Robert Pinsky (1969)