Visualizing the Warrior - VI

Anonymous Italian Artist
Marcus Curtius leaping into the Chasm
ca. 1510-20
maiolica plate
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Melchior Feselen
Siege of Alesia by Julius Caesar,
with the Battle against Vercingetorix
1533
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
Portrait of Giberto Scardui
1554
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Eugène Delacroix
Scene from Amadis de Gaule
1860
oil on canvas
Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond

Prospero Antichi
Classical Warrior
ca. 1590
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Salvator Rosa
Standing Figure of Soldier
ca. 1656-57
etching
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Francesco Salviati
Roman Soldier
ca. 1550
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Titian
Portrait of a Man in Armour
ca. 1530
oil on canvas
Hammer Museum, Los Angeles

Wallerand Vaillant
Self Portrait with Helmet
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Franz Anton Maulbertsch
Gideon
ca. 1795-96
oil on canvas
(study for ceiling fresco)
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Ancient Greek Culture
Warrior Cutting his Hair
480-470 BC
lekythos
(excavated in Attica)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Ancient Greek Culture
Grave Stele of Aristionos (Hoplite)
510 BC
marble relief
(excavated in Attica)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Ancient Greek Culture
Grave Stele of a Hoplite
500 BC
marble relief
(excavated in Athens)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Ancient Greek Culture
Four Hoplites flanked by Youth and Bearded Man
560-550 BC
hydria
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Ancient Greek Culture
Votive Figure of a Hoplite
600-550 BC
bronze statuette
Worcester Art Museum, Massachusetts

Ancient Greek Culture in South Italy
Cuirass
4th-3rd century BC
bronze
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

 from The Shadowy Waters

Forgael.  And yet I cannot think they're leading me

        To death; for they that promised to me love

        As those that can outlive the moon have known it,
        Had the world's total life gathered up, it seemed,

        Into their shining limbs – I've had great teachers.

        Aengus and Edain ran up out of the wave –

        You'd never doubt that it was life they promised
        Had you looked on them face to face as I did,
        With so red lips, and running on such feet,

        And having such wide-open, shining eyes. 

Aibric.  It's certain they are leading you to death.

        None but the dead, or those that never lived,
        Can know that ecstasy. Forgael! Forgael!
        They have made you follow the man-headed birds,
        And you have told me that their journey lies

        Towards the country of the dead. 

                                         

– W.B. Yeats (1906)

Armstrong - Eakins - Heimbach - Guardi

Maitland Armstrong
Memorial to Charles Frederick Crocker
1891
stained-glass window
Episcopal Church of St-Mary-in-Tuxedo,
Orange County, New York

Maitland Armstrong
Adoration of the Magi
ca. 1905
stained-glass window
Faith Chapel, Jekyll Island, Georgia

Maitland Armstrong
Purgatory Chasm
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Newport Mansions Preservation Society,
Rhode Island

Anonymous Studio Photographer
Maitland and Helen Armstrong
in Renaissance Costume, Rome
1871
albumen silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Model in the Studio
ca. 1889
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Students in Ancient Greek Dress
at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts
1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins and John Laurie Wallace
at Waterside in Artistic Poses
ca. 1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Thomas Eakins
Thomas Eakins posing as Pipe Player
ca. 1883
platinum print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Wolfgang Heimbach
Return of the Holy Family from Egypt
1657
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Oldenburg

Wolfgang Heimbach
Baptism of Christ
1679
oil on canvas
Stadtmuseum, Coesfeld

Wolfgang Heimbach
Kitchen Interior
1648
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Wolfgang Heimbach
Evening Meal
1647
oil on panel
Kunsthalle zu Kiel

Francesco Guardi
Gateway of the Arsenal, Venice
ca. 1780-90
drawing
British Museum

Francesco Guardi
Regatta on the Grand Canal
ca. 1770-75
drawing
British Museum

Francesco Guardi
Santa Maria della Salute and the Dogana
ca. 1783
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Houston

Francesco Guardi
Cannaregio Canal, Venice
ca. 1775-80
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

     Her bedroom was cold, being over the garage, with windows on three sides. Otherwise it was pleasant. Over the bed hung framed photographs of Greek skies and ruins, taken by Dr. Henshawe herself on her Mediterranean trip.
     She was writing an essay on Yeats's plays. In one of the plays a young bride is lured away by the fairies from her sensible unbearable marriage. 
     "Come away, O human child . . ." Rose read, and her eyes filled up with tears for herself, as if she was that shy elusive virgin, too fine for the bewildered peasants who have entrapped her. In actual fact she was the peasant, shocking high-minded Patrick, but he did not look for escape.

     She took down one of those Greek photographs and defaced the wallpaper, writing the start of a poem which had come to her while she ate chocolate bars in bed and the wind from Gibbons Park banged at the garage walls.

                                                        Heedless in my dark womb
                                                        I bear a madman's child . . .

She never wrote any more of it, and wondered sometimes if she had meant headless. She never tried to rub it out, either. 

– Alice Munro, from The Beggar Maid (1978)

Visualizing the Warrior - V

Pietro Bernini
Marcus Curtius casting himself into the Chasm
fragment of antique horse, 2nd century AD, 
extended and supplied with new rider, 1617
marble
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Jacopo Tintoretto
Sebastiano Venier, Commander at Lepanto
ca. 1571-72
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Helen Verhoeven
Soldiers from a Calvary Scene
2017
acrylic on linen
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

Constantin Guys
Old Soldiers of the Empire
ca. 1856
drawing, with watercolor
Yale University Art Gallery

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
The Warrior
ca. 1770
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
The wounded Porus before Alexander the Great
ca. 1708-1710
drawing
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Master of the Egmont Albums
Battle Scene
ca. 1590-95
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Bartholomeus Spranger
Minerva
ca. 1590-95
drawing, with watercolor
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Sèvres Manufactory
Catherine the Great as Minerva
1906
(after model of ca. 1780)
porcelain
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Pietro della Vecchia
Soldier from the front
ca. 1668-78
oil on canvas
Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara

Pietro della Vecchia
Soldier from the back
ca. 1668-78
oil on canvas
Palazzo dei Diamanti, Ferrara

Giorgio de Chirico
Achilles on the Shore of the Aegean Sea
ca. 1952
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

workshop of Jacques-Louis David
Roman Warrior
1824
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Martino Altomonte
Study of Roman Soldiers
ca. 1690
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hyacinthe Rigaud
Portrait of Man in Armour
ca. 1710
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Roman Empire
Helmet
3rd century AD
bronze
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

 from The Shadowy Waters

                                         All would be well

Could we but give us wholly to the dreams,

And get into their world that to the sense

Is shadow, and not linger wretchedly

Among substantial things; for it is dreams
that lift us to the flowing, changing world

That the heart longs for. What is love itself,

Even though it be the lightest of light love, 

But dreams that hurry from beyond the world

To make low laughter more than meat and drink,

Though it but set us sighing? Fellow-wanderer,

Could we but mix ourselves into a dream,

Not in its image on the mirror!

– W.B. Yeats (1906)

Privately Related

James Earl
Portrait of Frances Hortin
1792
oil on canvas
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Rachel Echenberg
Portrait de Famille avec Divan
2014
inkjet print
Musée National des Beaux-Arts du Québec

Sydenham Edwards
Embothrium speciosissimum (Waratah)
1808
hand-colored engraving
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Nicole Eisenman
Sketch for a Fountain
2017
bronze
Nasher Sculpture Center, Dallas

Willard Frederic Elms
Art Institute by the Elevated Lines
ca. 1924
lithograph (poster)
Art Institute of Chicago

Robert Engels
Le Passant
1898
lithograph
(illustration to poem by Edmond Pilon)
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Prosper d'Epinay
Georges d'Epinay, fils de l'artiste
ca. 1884
painted terracotta
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

Erté (Romain de Tirtoff)
Number Nine
1968
lithograph
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Hans Eworth
Portrait of Mary Neville, Lady Dacre
ca. 1555-58
oil on panel
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

attributed to Jan van Eyck
Portrait of a Monk
ca. 1420
oil on panel
(formerly owned by the painter Ingres)
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Conrad Faber von Creuznach
Portrait of Heinrich vom Rhein zum Mohren
ca. 1525-30
oil on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous Artist
The Messel Mica Fan
ca. 1665-1700
painted mica panels mounted on ivory sticks
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Henri Fantin-Latour
Still Life with Peaches and Grapes
1873
oil on canvas
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Dixon Farley
Untitled
1997
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Julian Faulhaber
Ceiling
2006
C-print
Princeton University Art Museum

Johann Christian Fiedler
Portrait of painter Johann Alexander Thiele
ca. 1730
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Wise Old Men 

In our society, old men are not considered to be wise, but, rather, odd eccentric, opinionated, sloppy, foolish, forgetful, stubborn, weak, confused, clumsy, etc. This old man standing in front of me in line, that old man over there trying to open the door – what a bother, get out of our way, with your slow shuffling feet and your hesitation and your uncertainty, we say. Can't you get all the way across the street before the light changes? In another society, it is different. He is an old man, they say, ask him. 

from The People in My Dreams

I am trying to help an Englishman cross a small lake. He needs to reach a certain street on the other side. The Englishman is fussy and old, and clings to me in a way that bothers me. I leave him for a moment standing on the pier and walk up a gangplank into a large boat. Its gangways are full of mad and senile old people. I want to see if the old man might cross the lake in this large boat.
     But my dream ends abruptly there, and so the old man is left standing on the pier, alone, perhaps even more agitated and frightened, waiting for me to come back. 

– Lydia Davis, from Our Stranger: Stories (2023)