Sunday, May 26, 2024

Pairs in Pictures

William and Frederick Langenheim
Portrait of Sisters
ca. 1845
daguerreotype
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Giuseppe Cades
Princes Camillo and Francesco Borghese
1778
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

David Wilkie
Daughters of Sir Walter Scott
1817
oil on panel (sketch)
Victoria & Albert Museum,
London

Louis-LĂ©opold Boilly
Furtive Clown and Sleeping Woman
ca. 1820
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Laura Knight
Dressing Room I
1923
etching and aquatint
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Henry Lamb
Phantasy
1912
oil on canvas
Tate Gallery

Giovanni Angelo Canini
Allegorical Composition
ca. 1650
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Nicolas Mignard
Venus and Adonis
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Jusepe de Ribera
A Potentate
accompanied by Halberd-Bearer

ca. 1625-30
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Andrea Soldi
Portrait of Mother and Child
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

David Teniers the Younger
Abraham's Sacrifice
1653
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Thomas Eakins
Wrestlers
ca. 1899
oil on canvas (sketch)
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg
Study for Israelites bearing Burdens
ca. 1812-13
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Frans Floris
Portrait of Two Children
1563
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie, Dresden

Gaetano Gandolfi
Heads of Two Bishops
ca. 1780
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Michel Garnier
The Poorly-Defended Rose
1789
oil on canvas
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Dying

Nothing to be said about it, and everything –
The change of changes, closer or further away:
The Golden Retriever next door, Gussie, is dead,

Like Sandy, the Cocker Spaniel from three doors down
Who died when I was small; and every day
Things that were in my memory fade and die.

Phrases die out: first, everyone forgets
What doornails are; then after certain decades
As a dead metaphor, "dead as a doornail" flickers

And fades away. But someone I know is dying –
And though one might say glibly, "everyone is,"
The different pace makes the difference absolute. 

The tiny invisible spores in the air we breathe,
That settle harmlessly on our drinking water
And on our skin, happen to come together

With certain conditions on the forest floor,
Or even a shady corner of the lawn –
And overnight the fleshy, pale stalks gather,

The colorless growth without a leaf or flower;
And around the stalks, the summer grass keeps growing
With steady pressure, like the insistent whiskers

That grow between shaves on a face, the nails
Growing and dying from the toes and fingers
At their own humble pace, oblivious

As the nerveless moths, that live their night or two –
Though like a moth a bright soul keeps on beating,
Bored and impatient in the monster's mouth.

– Robert Pinsky (1980)