Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Renderings of Antiquities

Maarten van Heemskerck
Studies of Roman Carvings
ca. 1532-36
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin


Polidoro da Caravaggio
Study of Draped Antique Torso
ca. 1530-40
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Antoine Lafréry
Horse-Tamers on Monte Quirinale, Rome (front)
1546
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Antoine Lafréry
Horse-Tamers on Monte Quirinale, Rome (back)
1550
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Claudio Duchetti after Antoine Lafréry
Opus Praxitelis - Opus Fidiae
(assigned titles reflecting wildly erroneous notions about authorship)  
1584
etching and engraving
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Giovanni Battista Cavalieri
Antique Sculpture known as Pasquino
(published in Antiquarum Statuarum Urbis Romae)
1562
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Paolo Farinati
Herm
ca. 1575
drawing
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Willem van Haecht the Younger
Study of Antique Sculpture of Centaur
before 1637
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

François Perrier
Niobid
(part of antique group now in the Uffizi, Florence)
1638
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Constantijn Huygens the Younger
Three Studies of a Classical Bust
1663
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Jan de Bisschop
Bust of Pompey the Great
ca. 1660-70
etching
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

Jan de Bisschop
Bust of Zenon of Kaunos
ca. 1660-70
etching
Staatliche Graphische Sammlung, Munich

Francesco Sesoni
Study of Antique Statue
1746
etching and engraving
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Niccolò Mogalli after Nikolaus Mosmann
The Albani Antinoüs
(antique relief)
1767
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Arthur William Heintzelman
Cavalli di San Marco
1930
drypoint
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Arthur William Heintzelman
Cavalli di San Marco
1930
drypoint
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Fragment 

The Moon has veil'd her Silver Light,
The Pleiades have left the Sky;
It's now the silent Noon of Night,
The Love-sworn Hour is past; yet I
Alone, deserted, pining lie!

– Sappho (7th-6th century BC), translated by Joseph Addison (1735)

The Pleiads now no more are seen,
Nor shines the silver Moon serene,
In dark and dismal Clouds o'ercast;
The love appointed Hour is past:
Midnight usurps her sable Throne,
And yet, alas! I lie alone.

– Sappho (7th-6th century BC), translated by Francis Fawkes (1760)

The weeping Pleiads wester,
    And the moon is under seas;
From bourne to bourne of midnight
    Far sighs the rainy breeze:

It sighs from a lost country
    To a land I have not known;
The weeping Pleiads wester,
    And I lie down alone.

– Sappho (7th-6th century BC), translated by A.E. Housman (1893)

Tonight I've watched

The moon and then
the Pleiades
go down

The night is now
half-gone; youth
goes; I am

in bed alone

– Sappho (7th-6th century BC), translated by Mary Barnard (1958)