Outlines

Joseph Anton Adolph
Apotheosis of St Nicholas
ca. 1760
wash drawing
(design for ceiling painting)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Gösta Adrian-Nilsson
Boxing (Jack Dempsey)
1922
watercolor and printed-paper collage on paper
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Per Formo
Coat of Arms 3
2005
acrylic paint on shaped wooden panel
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Ellsworth Kelly
Ellsworth Kelly Invitation - Betty Parsons Gallery
1957
screenprint
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

František Kupka
Abstraction
ca. 1928
gouache on paper
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Fernand Léger
Composition with Profile
1948
lithograph
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Roy Lichtenstein
Explosion I
1965
enamel on steel
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Lucebert (Lubertus Jacobus Swaanswijk)
Mask
1989
oil on canvas
Dordrechts Museum, Netherlands

Wilhelm Müller
White Green
1981
lacquer on panel
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

Louise Nevelson
Untitled
1967
lithograph
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Emil Pirchan
Ruby Betteley appearing in Munich
1912
lithograph (poster)
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Antonio Scarpa
Cranial Nerves
1794
engraving (book illustration)
Universitätsbibliothek, Heidelberg

Gino Severini
Still Life against Pink
1918
oil on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

David and Sophie Sibire after Raphael
The Creation
ca. 1740
etching (printed in sepia)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Nils Wedel
Leda
ca. 1940
lithograph
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Valentin Metzinger
St Lucy
ca. 1741
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Slovenia, Ljubljana

[Enter Xerxes from the west. He is alone, on foot, his royal robes in rags, and carrying nothing but an empty quiver.]

Xerxes:

Ió, ió!

Hapless that I am, to have met

this dreadful fate, so utterly unpredictable!

How cruelly the god has trodden

on the Persian race! What am I to do, wretched me?

The strength is drained out of my limbs

when I see these aged citizens.

Would to Zeus that the fate of death

had covered me over too

together with the men who are departed!

Chorus of Persian Elders:

Ototoi, my King, for that fine army,

and for the great honour of Persian empire

and the men who adorned it,

whom now the god has scythed away!

The land laments its native youth

killed by Xerxes, who crammed Hades

with Persians: many men

who were marched away, the flower of the land, 

slayers with the bow, thronging

myriads of men, have perished and gone. 

Aiai, aiai, for our brave defenders!

King of our country, the land of Asia

is terribly, terribly down on her knees!

Xerxes:

Here am I – oioi! – one to grieve for:

wretch that I am, I see I have been a bane

to my nation and my fatherland.

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)