Stasis

Eva Lundsager
As Beginning
2000
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

John MacAskill
"Of Life and Leaf Bereft"
ca. 1928
gelatin silver print
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Robert Macpherson
The Apoxyomenos
(antique sculpture in the Vatican Museum)
ca. 1858-63
albumen silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Macrino d'Alba (Gian Giacomo d'Alladio)
Portrait of a Knight of Malta
(Border Inscription: By the hand of Macrino I shall live after Death)
1499
tempera on panel
Morgan Library, New York

Francesco Maffei
Joseph sold by his Brothers
ca. 1657-58
oil on canvas
San Diego Museum of Art, California

attributed to Alessandro Maganza
Sheet of Studies
before 1630
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Alessandro Magnasco
Meditating Monk
ca. 1730
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Frank Majore
Dreamsville
1986
C-print
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Cornelis de Man
Portrait of pharmacologist Ysbrand Ysbrandsz
ca. 1667
oil on canvas
Leiden Collection, New York

Lee Mary Manning
Fructi
2023
mounted C-prints
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Sally Mann
Leah and her Father
ca. 1990
gelatin silver print
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Andrea Mantegna
Virgin and sleeping Child
ca. 1455-60
tempera on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans von Marées
Youths in an Orange Grove
ca. 1878-83
tempera and oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Frederick Marschall
Château de Fontainebleau -
Decoration of Chinese Room
ca. 1885
watercolor on paper
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

David Marsden
New Garden
1985
color woodblock print
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Evert Marseus van Schrieck
Landscape with Brigands
1634
oil on panel
Bonnefantenmuseum, Maastricht

Simone Martini
The Crucifixion
ca. 1340
tempera and gold on panel
Harvard Art Museums

from The Father of the Family

 
The Father:  "The grape harvest, for example, occurs in the fall and is the greatest and most noble concern that the father of the family can have, for if he is cheated by the peasants who harvest his grain he suffers only inconvenience and damage, but if he is careless in making wine he suffers not only damage but shame besides – especially when some guest honors his house and he is unable to do honor to his table with good wines.  Without wine Venus is cold and even the dishes prepared by the duke's best cook remain insipid.  Therefore I conclude that fall is the most noble and the best of seasons, and the one that is usually most pleasing to the good father of the family.  And I remember hearing from my father – some of whose sayings are still repeated and who, if the truth were known, possessed a more than ordinary understanding of natural and moral philosophy and the study of eloquence – that we ought to believe with most certain faith that the world began in the fall, if it began in any season."

The Visitor:  "That was the opinion of some famous Hebrew and Christian men of learning," I replied, "but since it is not an article of faith, everyone can believe what he wants to.  And as for me, I take a contrary view.  It seems to me more likely that if the world had a beginning, as it is necessary to suppose, it was in the spring.  I shall try to prove the point in the following way.  You must know that the heavens are round and that they are uniform in all their parts so that they reveal no beginning or end, no right or left, no above or below, and no before or behind – the six positions of place – except perhaps with regard to motion, for the right is that side from which motion begins.  Since the sun moves in the opposite direction from the primum mobile, however, one can wonder whether these six different positions of place ought to be determined in relation to the primum mobile or the sun.  But because everything in this mutable and corruptible world of ours depends principally on motion, which is the cause of generation and corruption and the father of living beings, it is reasonable that the motion of the sun should determine relationships of place.  Relative to the motion of the sun, then, our pole is the upper one, while it would be the lower one if we took our bearings by the primum mobile.  Given these fundamental considerations, if we want to investigate the question of which season the world began in, we shall see that it is very reasonable to suppose that it began when the sun was approaching us, not receding from us – when it was initiating the process of generation rather than that of corruption, for according to the order of nature the generation of things precedes their corruption."

– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1580), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)