Tuesday, December 2, 2025

Ornamental

Lorenzo Costa the Elder
Virgin and Child enthroned
ca. 1495
oil on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid


Albrecht Dürer
Portrait of a Man
1505
drawing
British Museum

Cornelis Norbertus Gijsbrechts
Trompe-l'Oeil
1663
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Guglielmo Cortese
Women in a Garden
before 1679
drawing
British Museum

Aelbert Cuyp
Ruins of a Castle
on the Merwede near Dordrecht

before 1691
drawing
British Museum

Aelbert Cuyp
Ruins of a Castle
on the Merwede near Dordrecht

before 1691
drawing
British Museum

Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich
Portrait of a Man in the manner of Rembrandt
before 1774
drawing
British Museum

John Sell Cotman after J.M.W. Turner
Roman Landscape with Temple of Minerva Medica
ca. 1815
drawing (after Turner's print)
British Museum

Walter Crane 
Scene from Valentine and Orson
1870
watercolor and ink on paper
(design for printed illustration)
British Museum

Kenyon Cox after Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
Copy of Sacra Conversazione in the Louvre
ca. 1878-82
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Alfred J. Frueh
Michio Ito
1918
hand-colored linocut
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alfred J. Frueh
Michio Ito
1918
hand-colored linocut
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

John Steuart Curry
After the Tornado
1930
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Alice Trumbull Mason
The Green Cat's Eye
1955
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Terry Frost
Red Blue Green
1972
lithograph
Tate Modern, London

Jeff Gibson
Constantinople
1997
screenprint
Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney

Ford Crull
Anthem II
2000
oil stick on canvas
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Preface to The Progress of Learning

    My early mistress, now my ancient Muse,
That strong Circean liquor cease t' infuse
Wherewith thou didst intoxicate my youth:
Now stoop with disenchanted wings to truth;
As the dove's flight did guide Aeneas, now
May thine conduct me to the golden bough;
Tell, like a tall old oak, how learning shoots
To heaven her branches, and to hell her roots.

– Sir John Denham (1668)