Monday, November 3, 2025

Tenebrous - I

Sture Ekstrand
Greta Garbo
ca. 1925
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anselm Feuerbach
Amazon Battle
ca. 1870-73
oil on canvas
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Francis Bacon
Pope II
1951
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Anonymous Photographer
Antlers
ca. 1870-80
tintype
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Hans Christoph
North Sea
1923
oil on cardboard
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

William Turner Dannat
Aragonese Smuggler
1883
oil on canvas
Musée Hyacinthe Rigaud, Perpignan

Hugo Henneberg
Villa Torlonia
1906
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

attributed to Jusepe de Ribera
Warrior Saint
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Paul Burty Haviland
Miss Doris Keane
1912
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Giuseppe Badiali
Gothic Forehall by Night
ca. 1830
watercolor on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Gustave Caillebotte
Rue de Paris, Temps de Pluie
1877
oil on canvas
Musée Marmottan Monet, Paris

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Marchesa Casati
1912
photogravure
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Marinus Bonifacius Willem Dittlinger
Still Life
1925
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Albert Edelfelt
Cluny Museum Garden, Paris
1878
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Patrick Faigenbaum
Famille Massimo, Rome
1986
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Roman Egypt
Portrait of a Young Woman
AD 150-200
encaustic on wood
(mummy portrait)
Národní Galerie, Prague

[Enter from the side, the Pythia

Pythia:  First among gods, in this my prayer, I give pride of place to the first of prophets, Earth; and next, to her daughter Themis, who, as a tale has it, was the second to occupy this prophetic seat which had been her mother's.  The third to have the seat assigned to her – with her predecessor's consent and not by the use of force against anyone – was another Titaness and child of Earth, Phoebe; and she gave it as a birthday gift to Phoebus, who bears Phoebe's name as an addition to his own.  Leaving the pool and rocky isle of Delos, and coming to land on Pallas's shores where ships put in, he came to this land and his abode below Mount Parnassus; he was escorted, and shown great reverence, by the road-making children of Hephaestus, who turned an untamed land into a tamed one.  When he came here, he was greatly honoured by our people, and by Delphus, the king and helmsman of this land; and Zeus caused his mind to be inspired with seercraft, and installed him on the throne here* as its fourth prophet.  Loxias is thus the spokesman of his father Zeus.  These are the gods whom I address in my preliminary prayer.  Among those whom I mention,** Pallas Pronaia has pride of place.  I also honour the Nymphs whose home is the Corycian cave, loved by birds, haunt of divinities; nor do I forget that Bromius has dwelt in this place ever since he led his Bacchants in battle and netted Pentheus in death like a hare.  I call also on the stream of Pleistus, and on mighty Poseidon, and on Zeus the Most High, Zeus the Fulfiller, and having done so I go to take my seat on the prophetic throne.  Now may these gods grant me far better fortune than on any of my previous entrances into the shrine!  And if any Greeks are present, let them approach in an order determined by lot, as is the custom, for I prophesy as the god guides me.

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

*The "throne" is the mantic tripod on which the Pythia herself sat to speak on Apollo's behalf.

**The Pythia is distinguishing between, on the one hand, the past and present possessors of the Delphic shrine itself, to whom she prays, and other divinities worshipped in its neighbourhood, of whom she will merely make honourable mention.