Threes

Agostino Musi (Agostino Veneziano)
Holy Women at the Tomb of Christ
ca. 1510-27
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Odoardo Fialetti
Study of Arms
1608
etching
(plate from drawing manual)
Kupferstichkabinett, Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Italian Lacemaker
Border Fragment
17th century
linen (needle lace)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Joseph Kaltner
Three Vase Designs by Different Artists
1770
engraving
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

De Porceleyne Bijl Manufactory (Delft)
Set of Vases for Mantel Garniture
ca. 1775
tin-glazed earthenware
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

Southworth & Hawes
Josiah Johnson Hawes with two of his Brothers
ca. 1845-48
daguerreotype
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Anonymous Photographer
Three Women
before 1870
ambrotype
National Museum of African American History
and Culture, Washington DC

Herbert Wendell Gleason
Galax aphylla
ca. 1915
hand-colored lantern slide
Archives of American Gardens, Washington DC

Rupert Bunny
La Danse
1920
monotype
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Mike Disfarmer
Untitled
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Mabel Dwight
Ferry Boat
1930
lithograph
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

René Magritte
Voice of Space
1931
oil on canvas
Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Venice

Dickson Reeder
The Dispute
ca. 1943-44
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Wayne Thiebaud
Three Sandwiches
1961
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Reinier Lucassen
Three Variations on the Theme of the Bad Art Critic
1966
acrylic and oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

David Hockney
Three Men
1966
drawing
Phillips Collection, Washington DC

Minna Citron
Formation
1971
lithograph
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Upon the Death of a Gentleman

Faithlesse and fond Mortality,

Who will ever credit thee?

Fond and faithlesse thing! that thus,

In our best hopes beguilest us.

What a reckoning hast thou made,

Of the hopes in him we laid?

For Life by volumes lengthened,

A Line or two, to speake him dead. 

For the Laurell in his verse,

The sullen Cypresse o're his Herse. 

For a silver-crowned Head,

A durty pillow in Death's Bed.

For so deare, so deep a trust,

Sad requitall, thus much dust!

– Richard Crashaw, The Delights of the Muses (1646)