Appearances

Anonymous Florentine Sculptor
Idealized portrait of Emperor Galba
ca. 1470-80
relief in pietra serena
Musée du Louvre

Gregorio di Lorenzo (Master of the Marble Madonnas)
Idealized Portrait of Emperor Hadrian
ca. 1472
painted marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Gian Cristoforo Romano
State Medallion of Isabella d'Este
ca. 1505
bronze
Musée du Louvre

Hieronymus Hopfer
Portrait of Wolfgang Jörger
before 1563
etching
British Museum

Alessandro Ardenti
Portrait of Pietro Machiavelli
before 1595
gilt-bronze medallion
Musée du Louvre

Lorenzo Bartolini
Portrait of Napoleon with Laurel Wreath
1805
bronze herm
Musée du Louvre

Thomas Stothard
Portrait Study of William Burns
(son of poet Robert Burns)
1811
drawing
British Museum

John Henning
Portrait of Princess Charlotte Augusta
ca. 1812
plaster silhouette relief
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Carl Rauch after Andréas Léonhard Moeglich
Portrait of painter Angelica Kauffmann
ca. 1820-30
stipple engraving
British Museum

Alfred Edward Chalon
Portrait of opera singer Maria Malibran
1830
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Jules Breton
Portrait of Jeanne Calvet
1865
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Michele Gordigiani
Portrait of Contessa Bastogi
1895
oil on canvas
Museo Civico Giovanni  Fattori, Livorno

Odilon Redon
Profile
ca. 1895
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Tobey
Winthrop Pankhurst
1916
drawing
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Daisy Fellowes
ca. 1920
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Seated Figure with Hat
1967
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jock McFadyen
New York Subway
1988
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

from Fragment on Evil

"When I consider the subject with the utmost impartiality and take the most comprehensive view of it, I find myself more inclined to think that evil predominates in the world, and am apt to regard human life as a scene of misery, according to the sentiments of the greatest sages as well as of the generality of mankind from the beginning of the world to this day.  I am sensible, however, that there are many circumstances which are apt to pervert my judgement in this particular and make me entertain melancholy views of things.  What is evil alarms us more and makes more lasting impression than what is agreeable, which we readily receive without inquiry and which we think ourselves in some measure entitled to.  Besides, the greater intenseness of our pains has a much more powerful influence on the imagination that the frequency of our pleasures, and it is almost impossible for us to make a just compensation betwixt them.  Should I enumerate all the evils incident to human life and display them with eloquence in their proper colours, I should certainly gain the cause with most readers, who would be apt to despise as frivolous all the pleasures which could be placed in opposition to them.  Victuals, wine, a fiddle, a warm bed, a coffee-house conversation make a pitiful figure when compared with racks, gravels*, infamy, solitude, and dungeons."

– David Hume (ca. 1740)

*kidney stones