Postures

Adriaen van Ostade
Peasant Dance in a Barn
1635
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Maarten van Heemskerck
Concert of Apollo and the Muses on Mount Helicon
1565
oil on panel
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Dirck Hals
Merry Company
ca. 1614-18
oil on panel
Národní Galerie, Prague

Valentin de Boulogne
Music-Makers and Fortune-Teller
1631
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Daniel Hopfer after Andrea Mantegna
Bacchanal
before 1536
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

attributed to Giovanni Francesco Penni
Putti dancing around a Palm
ca. 1510
drawing
(after Vatican tapestry)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Italian Artist after Andrea Mantegna
Four Dancing Muses
ca. 1497
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jacques de Gheyn II
Masked Revelers
1595-96
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Marcantonio Raimondi
Orpheus and Eurydice
ca. 1500-1503
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Israel van Meckenem
Knight and Lady
ca. 1470
engraving
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Andries Both
Street Musicians
ca. 1635
drawing
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Claude Lorrain
Shepherdess and Shepherd making Music
ca. 1648
drawing
(study for painting)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous French Artist
Bacchus and Father Time
ca. 1700-1750
drawing
(study for theatrical costumes)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pinturicchio (Bernardino di Betto)
Dancing Woman with Tambourine
ca. 1490-1500
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

The Peloponnesians, when they saw the Athenians would not enter the gulf and strait, desiring to draw them in against their wills, weighed anchor and betime in the morning having arranged their galleys by four and four in a rank, sailed along their own coast within the gulf, leading the way in the same order as they had lain at anchor, with their right wing.  In this wing they had placed twenty of their swiftest galleys to the end that if Phormio, thinking them going to Naupactus, should for safeguard of the town sail along his own coast likewise within the strait, the Athenians might not be able to get beyond that wing of theirs and avoid the impression but be inclosed by their galleys on both sides. Phormio, fearing (as they expected) what might become of the town now without guard, as soon as he saw them from anchor, against his will and in extreme haste went aboard and sailed along the shore with the land forces of the Messenians marching by to aid him.  The Peloponnesians, when they saw them sail in one long file, galley after galley, and that they were now in the gulf and by the shore (which they most desired), upon one sign given turned suddenly everyone as fast as he could upon the Athenians, hoping to have intercepted them every galley.  But of those the eleven foremost, avoiding that wing and the turn made by the Peloponnesians, got out into the open sea.  The rest they intercepted and, driving them to the shore, sunk them.  The men, as many as swam not out, they slew; and the galleys some they tied to their own and towed them away empty, and one with the men and all in her they had already taken.  But the Messenian succours on land, entering the sea with their arms, got aboard of some of them and fighting from the decks recovered them again after they were already towing away. 

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)