Wednesday, June 4, 2025

Martial Costuming

attributed to Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli)
Portrait of a Warrior
ca. 1505-1510
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna


Daniel van den Queborne
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1585-90
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Filippo Napoletano (Filippo Angeli)
Soldier in Motion
(series, Capricci e Habiti Militari)
before 1629
etching
British Museum

Grégoire Huret
Portrait of a Commander
ca. 1645
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Kunstsammlungen der Veste Coburg

Arie de Vois
Standard-Bearer of the Leiden Militia
1664
oil on panel
Museum de Lakenhal, Leiden

Peter Boy
Miniature Portrait of Prince Karl Philipp von Pfalz-Neuburg
1696
enamel on copper
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Antoine Pesne
General Théodore Gigou de Briou
ca. 1711
oil on canvas
Bildgalerie von Sanssouci, Potsdam

Christian Albrecht Jensen
Cadet Cosmus Bornemann
1828
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

William Strutt
The Three Centurions
ca. 1876
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Vincent van Gogh
The Zouave
1888
drawing
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Marie Spartali Stillman
St George
1892
watercolor on paper
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Kenyon Cox
Study for Mural Figure as Allegory of Force
ca. 1899
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Leo Williams
Sailor on the U.S.S. Paducah
ca. 1910
collodion print
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Charles Demuth
Two Sailors
1930
drawing
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Louis Stettner
Sailor on Train, Penn Station
1958
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Jack Shadbolt
Armour
ca. 1970
watercolor and ink on paper
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Luc Tuymans
Soldier
1999
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

from Lost in Translation

Out of the blue, as promised, of a New York
Puzzle-rental shop the puzzle comes –
A superior one, containing a thousand hand-sawn,
Sandal-scented pieces. Many take
Shapes known already – the craftsman's repertoire
Nice in its limitation – from other puzzles:
Witch on broomstick, ostrich, hourglass,
Even (surely not just in retrospect)
An inchling, innocently branching palm.
These can be put aside, made stories of
While Mademoiselle spreads out the rest face-up,
Herself excited as a child; or questioned
Like incoherent faces in a crowd,
Each with its scrap of highly colored
Evidence the Law must piece together.
Sky-blue ostrich? Likely story. 
Mauve of the witch's cloak white, severed fingers
Pluck? Detain her. The plot thickens
As all at once two pieces interlock. 

Mademoiselle does borders – (Not so fast.
A London dusk, December last.
Chatter silenced in the library
This grown man reenters, wearing gray.
A medium. All except him have seen
Panel slid back, recess explored,
An object at once unique and common
Displayed, planted in a plain tole
Casket the subject now considers
Through shut eyes, saying in effect:
"Even as voices reach me vaguely
A dry saw-shriek drowns them out,
Some loud machinery – a lumber mill?
Far uphill in the fir forest
Trees tower, tenses with shock,
Groaning and cracking as they crash groundward.
But hidden here is a freak fragment
Of a pattern complex in appearance only.
What it seems to show is superficial
Next to that long-term lamination
Of hazard and craft, the karma that has 
made it matter in the first place.
Plywood. Piece of a puzzle." Applause
Acknowledged by an opening of lids 
Upon the thing itself. A sudden dread –
But to go back. All this lay years ahead.)

– James Merrill (1976)