Unstinting

Bernard van Orley
Pentecost
ca. 1530
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Title Page
ca. 1732-42
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Gordon Onslow-Ford
Determination of Gender
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Elizabeth Olds
Yearlings
1957
gouache, ink and collage on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Georgia O'Keeffe
Only One
1959
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone
The Resurrection
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Emil Nolde
Still Life (Majolica on Blue Background)
1911
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

William Millington Nixon
The Lashmar Family
ca. 1857-58
daguerreotype
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Elias Nessenthaler
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1690
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Charles Nègre
Notre Dame - Gargoyle and photographer Henri Le Secq
ca. 1860
collodion print from salted paper negative
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Eglon van der Neer
Young Woman at Breakfast
1665
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Penelope Naylor
The Origin of Flowers II
1986
oil and pastel on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ernest-Étienne Narjot de Francheville
Mon Brave
1871
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Daniel Mytens the Elder
Portrait of a Young Noblewoman
ca. 1629
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Gabriele Münter
Lower Main Street, Murnau
1910
oil on board
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Benjamin Muñoz
Epilogue
2020
color woodblock print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

from Minturno, or, On Beauty

(Modeled on Plato's Hippias Major, Minturno is a conversation between the philosopher Antonio Minturno and Geronimo Ruscelli, a colorful courtier and dilettante)

Antonio Minturno:  If beauty exists or is to be found among the things of the world, who would be better able to find it than you?

Geronimo Ruscelli:  Possibly no one seeks it more than I do, but it has often happened that what I judged beautiful was not considered to be so by others, or not by everyone, as the Furioso is. 

A.M.:  Is there some way we can be sure of this?  It seems to me that just as wise men are wise by wisdom, and just men by justice, so beautiful men, or all beautiful things, are beautiful by beauty, and that beauty – or the beautiful, as we may call it – is that which makes them what they are.  With this observation and rule, as it were, let us try to recognize beauty in such a way that no other thing could be mistaken for it – if indeed it is some other thing that makes horrible and monstrous figures appear beautiful, as with the serpents or devils painted by Raphael or Michelangelo, or the fables of the Cyclops and the Orc [from Orlando Furioso]. 

G.R.:  It is the beauty of poetic genius which allows us to recognize with certainty what is terrible or marvelous in these things.  Still, I'm more inclined to seek it in Marfisa, Bradamante, and Olimpia, whose beauties Ariosto has described with such felicity of language and thought, and if I were forced to say what beauty is, I would say it is a beautiful woman resembling Olimpia, at the moment when, without any robe or veil, she shows herself naked to the eyes of her beholders [another image from Orlando Furioso].

A.M.:  If you remove the veil from beauty, it will perhaps be found to exist only in souls separated from bodies, for bodies are, so to speak, a veil covering the beauty of the soul.  But when Ariosto describes the beauty of Angelica and Olimpia, he resembles that Daedalus you mentioned earlier – or rather he is less artful, for while Daedalus gave movement to statues, Ariosto takes it away from living persons.  As he says of Angelica:

                    And had so far in sorrow gone
                    She seemed turned to senseless stone.

– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1593-94), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)