Friday, May 17, 2024

Reverent European Renderings of Antiquities

Pseudo Pacchia
Antique Sculpture Group -
Romulus and Remus with She-Wolf

ca. 1530
drawing
British Museum

Baldassare Peruzzi
Study after the Antique
ca. 1533
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

workshop of Jacopo Tintoretto
Studies of Antique Sculpture
ca. 1570
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Willem Panneels
The Belvedere Antinoüs
ca. 1628-30
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst,
Copenhagen

Anonymous Italian Artist
Study of Antique Torso
ca. 1650
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Luis Paret y Alcázar
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1770
drawing
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Anonymous Italian Artist after Polidoro da Caravaggio
Roman Military Trophies
ca. 1775-1800
drawing
Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Felice Giani
Ancient Sacrifice and Head of Satyr
ca. 1790
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Theodor Kittelsen
Classical Torso
ca. 1875
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Thorolf Holmboe
Classical Torso
1890
drawing
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Jerry Uelsmann
Untitled
1964
gelatin silver print
Yale University Art Gallery

John Skippe
Classical Figure holding Salver aloft
ca. 1781-83
chiaroscuro woodcut
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Nicolas Beatrizet
Antique Sculpture of Oceanus
1560
engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Clodion
Minerva
1766
terracotta
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Artist
Crouching Venus
ca. 1697
lead cast of antique sculpture
National Trust, Knole, Sevenoaks, Kent

Jacob van der Kool
The Spinario
(pastiche of antique sculpture)
ca. 1725-40
faience
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Logic

A trailed and lagging grass, a pin-point island
Drags the clear current's face it leans across
In ripple-wrinkles. At a touch
It has ravelled the imaged sky till it could be
A perplexity of metal, spun
Round a vortex, the sun flung off it
Veining the eye like a migraine – it could
Scarcely be sky. The stones do more, until we say
We see there meshes of water, liquid
Nets handed down over them, a clear
Cross-hatching in the dance of wrinkles that
Re-patterns wherever it strikes.
So much for stones. They seem to have their way.
But the sway is the water's: it cannot be held
Though moulded and humped by the surfaces
It races over, though a depth can still
And a blade's touch render it illegible. 
Its strength is here: it must
Account for its opposite and yet remain
Itself, of its own power get there. 
Water is like logic, for it flows
Meeting resistance arguing as it goes:
And it arrives, having found not the quickest
Way, but the way round, the channel which
Entering, it may come to a level in,
Which must admit, in certain and crowding fusion,
The irrefutable strength which follows it. 

– Charles Tomlinson (1967)