Heavy Titles - III

Anonymous Russian Designer
Strengthening the Revolutionary Front
in Defense of the Soviet Union
ca. 1920-25
lithograph (poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

James Anderson
Fragments of the Claudian Aqueduct on the Roman Campagna
ca. 1865
albumen print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Lucas van Valckenborch
Mountainous Landscape with Porter fleeing Robbers and Ore-Smelter on River Island
ca. 1585
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist
Emperor Heraclius denied Entry to Jerusalem
ca. 1485-95
tempera and oil on panel
Art Institute of Chicago

Pomponio Amalteo
Terrified Apostles at the Scene of the Transfiguration
ca. 1540
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous German Artist after Loy Hering
Romulus and Remus
taken from their mother Rhea Silvia
ca. 1600
bronze plaque
Bode Museum, Berlin

Thomas Jones Barker
Improvised Studio of Salvator Rosa in the Mountains of the Abruzzi
1865
oil on canvas
Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha

Hendrick Andriessen
Still Life with Candlestick, Slow-Match, Letter and Pipe
cs. 1640
oil on panel
Kunsthaus Zürich

Josef Abel (figures) and Johann Christian Reinhart (landscape)
Friedrich Gottlieb Klopstock received among the Poets in Elysium
1803
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

attributed to Flaminio Torri
Mary Magdalen
contemplating the Crown of Thorns
ca. 1650
oil on panel
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller
Interrupted Pilgrimage (The Sick Pilgrim)
1858
oil on panel
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes
Pyrrhus approaching the wounded Philoctetes on the Island of Lemnos
(scene from the Iliad)
1789
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Antonio Zanchi
Nosce Te Ipsum (Know Thyself)
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum Hannover

Christoph Wetzel
The Dead President (Salvador Allende)
1974
mixed media on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Joel-Peter Witkin
Un Santo Oscuro
1987
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Rosemarie Trockel
Less Sauvage than Others
2012
C-print mounted on aluminum
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Before two or three days had gone by I approached Homer the poet, neither of us being occupied, and asked him various questions.  I said his birthplace was a bone of contention on earth to this day.  He replied that he was well aware that some people said he came from Chios, some from Smyrna, and many from Colophon; but the truth was, he was a Babylonian, and his name in his own country was not Homer, but Tigranes – he had changed his name when he was held as a hostage by Greeks.  I asked him also whether the obelized lines were of his composition; he said they were, all of them.  My regard for Zenodotus and Aristarchus and scholars of that sort, with all their pedantry, dropped.*  Having got satisfactory answers to these questions, I then asked him why on earth he had started with the wrath.  He said that was how it had come to him; he had no definite purpose in it.  I was also very anxious to know whether he had written the Odyssey before the Iliad as most people thought; he said he hadn't.  Another thing they say about him is that he was blind, but I knew at once that he wasn't; I could see that, so there was no need for me to ask him.  

*In the earliest editions of Homer, these Alexandrian critics obelized certain lines as spurious.

– Lucian, from A True Story (2nd century AD), translated from Greek by B.P. Reardon (1989)