Saturday, December 6, 2025

Compositions with Ordeals

Fernando Gallego
Ecce Homo
ca. 1480-90
oil on panel (altarpiece fragment)
University of Arizona Museum of Art, Tucson


Rueland Frueauf the Elder
The Crucifixion
ca. 1490-91
oil on panel (altarpiece fragment)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Giovanni Agostino da Lodi
The Way to Calvary
ca. 1500
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

Albrecht Dürer
Man of Sorrows and Drapery Study
ca. 1511
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni di Pietro (Lo Spagna)
Study for Dead Christ
ca. 1515
drawing
British Museum

Battista Franco (il Semolei)
The Deluge
ca. 1540-50
etching and engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Pietro Faccini
Angel supporting dead Christ with mourning Virgin
ca. 1580-1600
drawing
British Museum

Hans Ulrich Franck
Scene of War
ca. 1643-56
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Gaspare Diziani
The Expulsion from Paradise
ca. 1730
watercolor and ink on paper
Morgan Library, New York

workshop of Francesco Fontebasso
Martyrdom of St Dorothy
ca. 1750
drawing
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Cipriani
Tityus chained to the Rock
ca. 1779
drawing
British Museum

Simon Fokke
Deathbed of an Ancient Ruler
before 1784
etching
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Étienne-Barthélemy Garnier
Hippolytus reacts with Horror to Phèdre's confession of Love
1793
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres-Bourdelle, Montauban

Gaetano Gandolfi
The Entombment
before 1802
drawing
British Museum

Felice Giani
Assassination of Julius Caesar
before 1823
drawing
British Museum

Mariano Fortuny
Scene of Desecration in a Sacristy with Battling Figures
ca. 1860
drawing
British Museum

Élie Delaunay
Plague at Rome
1869
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

from The Passion of Dido for Aeneas

                        The Queen with rage inflamed
Thus greets him, 'Thou dissembler, wouldst thou fly
Out of my arms by stealth perfidiously?
Could not the hand I plighted, nor the love,
Nor thee the fate of dying Dido move?
And in the depth of winter, in the night, 
Dark as thy black designs to take thy flight, 
To plow the raging seas to coasts unknown,
The kingdom thou pretend'st to not thine own;
Were Troy restored, thou shouldst mistrust a wind
False as thy vows, and as thy heart unkind.
Fly'st thou from me? By these dear drops of brine
I thee adjure, by that right hand of thine,
By our espousals, by our marriage bed,
If all my kindness aught have merited;
If ever I stood fair in thy esteem,
From ruin me and my lost house redeem.'

– Sir John Denham (1642)