Built

Sylvia Hahn
Model of the Athenian Acropolis in the 5th century BC
1956
plaster, paper, paint
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Todd Hido
#5437
2006
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Antonio Galli-Bibiena
Entrance Façade of a Palace
before 1774
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Franz Hanfstängl
Round Tower, Viktualienmarkt, Munich
1855
albumen print
Stadtmuseum, Munich

Anonymous Italian Painter after Francesco Guardi
Fair in Piazza San Marco, Venice
19th century
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Francesco Guardi
View through Arcade, Venice
before 1793
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Masons
Palace Portal from Cremona
ca. 1475-1500
marble
(purchased and removed to Paris in 1875)
Musée du Louvre

Walter Hege
Parthenon Treasury
ca. 1928-29
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Felice Giani
Temporary Triumphal Arch erected on Ponte Sant'Angelo for Napoleonic Ceremony
1798
oil on canvas
Museo di Roma a Palazzo Braschi

Roger Fry
Le Pont de Saint Goustan, Auray
ca. 1920-30
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Francis Frith
Pyramid at Dahshûr
ca. 1857
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

André Giroux
Santa Trinità dei Monti in the Snow, Rome
ca. 1825-30
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Richard Hough
Bus Queue, Edinburgh
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Claude Lorrain
Tomb of Cecilia Metella outside Rome
1669
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Christo (Christo Javacheff)
Wrapped Reichstag, Berlin
1995
inkjet print mounted on aluminum
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Angelo Inganni
Teatro alla Scala
ca. 1852
oil on canvas
Museo del Teatro alla Scala, Milan

Walter Gropius
Flatiron Building, New York
1928
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

from On the Tombs in Westminster Abbey

Mortality behold, and fear,

What a change of flesh is here!

Think how many royal bones

Sleep within this heap of stones,

Hence removed from beds of ease,

Dainty fare, and what might please,

Fretted roofs, and costly shows,

To a roof that flats the nose:

Which proclaims all flesh is grass;

How the world's fair glories pass;

That there is no trust in health,

In youth, in age, in greatness, wealth;

For if such could have reprieved

Those had been immortal lived.

Know from this the world's a snare,

How that greatness is but care,

How all pleasures are but pain,

And how short they do remain . . .

– attributed to Francis Beaumont (before 1616)

Convergences - III

Károly Markó the Elder
Temple in the Forest
ca. 1820
watercolor and gouache on paper
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Joseph Anton Koch
Arcadian Landscape
1792
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Camille Pissarro
Apple Trees and Poplars, Éragny
1901
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art Moderne André Malraux, Le Havre

Gherardo Cibo
Coastal Landscape
ca. 1590
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hubert Robert
Terrace in an Italian Garden
ca. 1760
drawing
Courtauld Gallery, London

Wilhelm Barth
Terraces at Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam
ca. 1830
gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Wilhelm Ferdinand Bendz
Mountain Landscape
1831
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Jan Brueghel the Younger and workshop of Hendrik van Balen
The Four Elements
ca. 1620-25
oil on panel
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Genève

Louis Eysen
Track through Fields near Kronberg in Taunus
1877
oil on canvas
Staatliche Kunsthalle, Karlsruhe

Theodor von Hörmann
Summer in the Garden, Znojmo
ca. 1893
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Jean-Pierre Norblin
Fête galante
1779
oil on panel
National Museum, Warsaw

Felix Albrecht Harta
Jardin du Luxembourg
1908
oil on board
Leopold Museum, Vienna

workshop of Paul Bril
Landscape with St Francis
ca. 1590
oil on copper
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Jens Hauge
Untitled (Treehouse)
2004
gelatin silver print
Sogn-og-Fjordane Kunstmuseum, Norway

Henri Loubat
The Mower
1909
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Gaillac

Mette Tronvoll
Matthew, Müritz National Park
2000
C-print
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

King, destroyer of the world, they set up this iron statue of thee as being much less precious than bronze, in return for the bloodshed, the fatal poverty and famine and wrath, by which thou destroyest all things owing to thy avarice.

Tell me, I ask you, Hermes, how did the soul of Lollianus go down to the house of Persephone? If in silence, it was a marvel, and very likely he wanted to teach you also something. Heavens, to think of meeting that man even when one is dead!

Thou speakest much, O man, but in a little thou shalt be laid on the ground.  Silence! and while thou yet livest get into practice for death.

Farewell ye whose eyes ever range over the universe, and ye thorn-gathering book-worms of Aristarchus' school. What serves it me to enquire what path the Sun has run, and whose son was Proteus and who Pygmalion? Let me know works whose lines are clear, but let dark lore waste away the devotees of Supercallimachuses. 

Tell me whence comes it that thou measurest the Universe and the limits of the Earth, thou who bearest a little body made of a little earth? Count thyself first and know thyself, and then shalt thou count this infinite Earth. And if thou canst not reckon thy body's little store of clay, how canst thou know the measures of the immeasurable?

You have a face just like an ostrich. Did Circe give you a potion to drink and change your nature into that of a bird?

I sneezed near a tomb and wished to hear of what I hoped, the death of my wife. I sneezed to the winds, but my wife meets with none of the misfortunes of mankind, neither illness nor death.

– from Book XI (Convivial and Satirical Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

Yankee Wallpapers (20th Century)

Anonymous American Designer
Grassy Landscape
1903
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Poppies
ca. 1905-1910
machine-printed wallpaper frieze
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Stylized Blossoms
ca. 1910
screenprinted and stenciled wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Harlequins Smoking
ca. 1920-30
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Greek Key
ca. 1929-30
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Rope Patterns
ca. 1929-32
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Scroll Flag
1936
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Flowers in Squares
ca. 1940
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Floral Repeat
ca. 1940-50
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Lilac
ca. 1945-47
machine-printed wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Thistle Heads
ca. 1950-55
screenprinted wallpaper (simulating resist-dyed textile)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Consulate
1951
screenprinted wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer for Scalamandré
Kitchen Equipment
ca. 1955
machine-printed wallpaper border
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer for Scalamandré
Tulips
ca. 1955
machine-printed wallpaper border
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Fantasy
1967
screenprinted vinyl wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Undulating Ovals
1972
screenprinted wallpaper frieze
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous American Designer
Children Playing
1992
screenprinted vinyl wallpaper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

The half-moon westers low, my love,

    And the wind brings up the rain;

And wide apart lie we, my love,

    And seas between the twain.

I know not if it rains, my love,

    In the land where you do lie;

And oh, so sound you sleep, my love,

    You know no more than I.

– A.E. Housman (1922)