Right-Facing - I

Nikolaos Gyzis
Olympic Victor
1896
drawing
National Gallery, Athens

workshop of Thomas de Keyser
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1630-35
oil on panel
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

attributed to Antonio del Pollaiuolo
Portrait of Ottoman Sultan Mehmed II
ca. 1470
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

attributed to Mariotto Albertinelli
Head of a Youth
ca. 1510
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Head of a Young Woman
ca. 1524
drawing
Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe,
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Jan Lievens
Study of an Old Man
ca. 1625-26
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Francesco Montelatici (Cecco Bravo)
Head of a Woman
before 1661
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Antonio Tempesta
Roman Emperor Galba
1596
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Ancient Greek Culture
Grave Stele of an Athlete
(fragment)
550 BC
marble relief
(excavated in Athens)
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

attributed to Benedetto da Maino
Portrait of Beatrice of Aragon,
Queen Consort of Hungary
1476
marble relief
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

William Holman Hunt
Shepherd
ca. 1849
watercolor on paper
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Portrait of Matteo Olivieri
ca. 1430-40
tempera on panel, transferred to canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philipp Otto Runge
Head Study of the Apollo Belvedere
1800
drawing
(after a cast)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Perlascura (Jane Morris)
1871
drawing (colored chalks)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anton Løvenberg
Head Study of the Farnese Hercules
ca. 1850-60
drawing
(after a cast)
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Antonio Durelli
Écorché Head
1837
drawing
Wellcome Collection, London

from Microscript 54

So here was a book again, and again I was introduced to a woman. I've acquired quite a few female acquaintances by reading, a pleasant method of expanding one's sphere of knowledge, though one can certainly, I admit, become lazy in this way. On the other hand, characters in books stand out better, I mean, more silhouettishly, from one another, than do living figures, who, as they are alive and move about, tend to lack delineation. The one who is my subject here found herself, as the wife of a tradesman who trafficked in cattle, not just neglected but downright oppressed. No matter what she said, he knew better. Constantly he corrected her. If she knuckled under, he was bored. If, however, she displayed the least inclination to hold an opinion of her own, he found her out of line. Before her marriage, she'd taken an interest in the beautiful, i.e., art, and the good, by which I mean literature. Now, though, she began to contemplate vile and wicked things and did in fact set out one day in search of adventure, intending to become a rogue. Soon she succeeded in casting her spell on a dancer who became her admirer. He, however, was devoted to another as well, one whose neck was adorned with pearls of great worth. The cattle merchant's wife, who distinguished herself in the dance halls and cabarets by her mysterious behavior, attempted to win the friendship of the lady with the pearls, but this attempt ended in failure.  . . .  The woman wedded to the tradesman soon assumed the name "the lady in green feathers." She called to mind a vision of springtime. But sweet and dear as she looked, her thoughts were hard, and she was set on using them to debauch these insolent debauchees. It was instinctual, this rough treatment of rough characters. As she sank, she dragged him down with her – all the way, in fact, to the bottom-most level of criminality, which is a sort of swamp. 

– Robert Walser (ca. 1930-33), translated by Susan Bernofsky (2010)