Probing

Josef Wawra
Portrait of a Woman
1914
drawing
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Arne Bendik Sjur
The Skeptic
1966
drypoint
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Lucas Cranach the Younger
Portrait of Maurice, Duke of Saxony
ca. 1545-50
tempera on paper
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Inta Ruka
Marija Matvejuka
2005
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Johan Rohde
Self Portrait
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Paula Modersohn-Becker
Self Portrait
ca. 1898
oil on board
Kunsthalle Bremen

Giambattista Moroni
Portrait of Don Gabriel de la Cueva
(Spanish Governor of Milan)
1580
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Ferdinand Hodler
Portrait of Madame de R.
1893
mixed media on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Scott Gentling
George Frideric Handel
1993
watercolor and gouache on paper
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Axel Fridell
Self Portrait VII
1927
drypoint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Uno Falkengren
Berlin
1924
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jean Morin
Portrait of Antoine Vitré, Royal Typographer
1645
etching
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Jean-Étienne Liotard
Portrait of Marie-Antoinette, future Queen of France
1762
watercolor on paper
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Philipp Otto Runge
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1805
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Domenico Tintoretto
Portrait of an Artist
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Eva Schulze-Knabe
Self Portrait
1929
oil on board
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Clytemnestra:  Now you judge me to have incurred exile from the city, the hatred of the community, and loud public curses; but you didn't show any opposition at all to this man at that former time, when, setting no special value on her – treating her death as if it were the death of one beast out of large flocks of well-fleeced sheep – he sacrificed his own child, the darling offspring of my pangs, as a spell to soothe the Thracian winds.  Shouldn't you have driven him from this land in punishment for that unclean deed?  But when you are a spectator of my actions, you judge them harshly.  Well, I tell you, if you make such threats, to make them on the understanding that I am prepared to fight the matter out.  I am content for you to rule, if you defeat me by force in fair fight; but if god decides the issue the other way, then you will be taught, and learn, good sense – though rather late in the day. 

Chorus:

Your cunning is great,

and your words are very proud, just as your mind

is driven mad by your experience of flowing blood –

the flecks of blood show clearly on your eyes.

In time you must pay the price and, stripped of friends,

suffer stroke in return for stroke. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)