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| Rogier van der Weyden Portrait of a Woman ca. 1435-40 drawing British Museum |
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| Master of the Castello Nativity Portrait of a Woman ca. 1450-60 tempera on panel, transferred to canvas (flat appearance due to past overcleaning) Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
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| Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio Portrait of a Girl crowned with Flowers ca. 1495-99 oil on panel North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh |
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| Raphael Portrait of a Lady (La Muta) ca. 1505-1510 oil on panel Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, Urbino |
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| Girolamo di Benvenuto Portrait of a Woman ca. 1508 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Ridolfo Ghirlandaio Portrait of Lucrezia Sommaria ca. 1510 oil on panel National Gallery of Art, Washington DC |
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| Palma il Vecchio Portrait of a Woman ca. 1520-30 oil on panel El Paso Museum of Art, Texas |
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| Albrecht Dürer Portrait of a Peasant Woman 1525 drawing British Museum |
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| Andrea del Sarto Portrait of a Woman ca. 1525-30 drawing Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
-Antique-Figure-seated-in-a-Garden-1537-engraving-Graphische-Sammlung-ETH-Z%C3%BCrich.jpg) |
| Monogrammist F.G. Antique Figure seated in a Garden 1537 engraving Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich |
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| Jan Cornelisz Vermeyen Portrait of a Woman 1545 etching Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna |
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| follower of François Clouet Portrait of Beatrix Pacheco, Countess of Montbel and Entremonts ca. 1550 oil on panel Städel Museum, Frankfurt |
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| attributed to Bernaert de Ryckere Portrait of a Woman ca. 1562 drawing British Museum |
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| Léonard Limosin Portrait of Anna d'Este ca. 1563-66 enamel on copper, in 19th-century frame British Museum |
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| Santi di Tito Portrait of a Woman 1565 oil on panel Seattle Art Museum |
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| attributed to Francesco Montemezzano Portrait of a Woman with a Squirrel ca. 1565-75 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
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| George Gower Portrait of Mary Denton 1573 oil on panel York City Art Gallery, North Yorkshire |
For instance, I wrote a poem which only had two verses and sent the two verses to Anthony Thwaite, and when he wrote back asking for more, I'd already written four more verses. It's about my sister having a stroke. I'll just run through it.
I was a beautiful plant, I stood in the garden supreme,
Till there came a blight that fell on each leaf,
How I wish this had not been,
Oh how I wish this had not been.
I can feel the sun and my blighted leaves
In an elderly way grow glad,
But oh in my depths I bleed, I bleed,
From a heart that is youthful and sad,
A heart that is fiercer than sad.
Well, that's the end. I thought it was enough, and then I went on:
Oh, feeling of youth, you had better go,
You are trapped by my age and deceased too.
Goodbye, goodbye, I will send you away,
There is nothing here now to please you.
Then my feeling of youth said, 'No, I will not go;
I will comfort you with love and pain.
And also, if you like, I can procure for you a potion
That you will not take in vain.
The torpors of age could not seize the notion
To drink of the freeing grain, to measure the freeing grain.
All the same, I should not take it if I were you,
As you always can, but rather see life with me through.
Then the last verse is:
It is not very long compared with geological time,
It is heaven to think of geological time,
The weight lifts . . . and this gives you a happy mind . . .
– Stevie Smith, quoted in 1970 during a taped interview with Kay Dick