Slice

Jens Fänge
Hans Christian Andersen
1998
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

François-Xavier Fabre
Self Portrait
1835
oil on canvas
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

Uno Falkengren
Berlin
1925
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Peter Fendi
Reclining Model
ca. 1835
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Orazio Fidani
Mythological Scene
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
National Gallery, Athens

Ludvig Find
Portrait of artist Aage Bertelsen
1893
oil on canvas
Skovgaard Museet, Viborg, Denmark

Fillia (Luigi Colombo)
Man and Woman
1929
oil on canvas
Musée de Grenoble

Carel Fabritius
Study of Standing Model
1646
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giovanni Maria Falconetto
Triumph of Roman Emperor
before 1535
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

attributed to Andrea di Piero Ferrucci
Crucifixion with St Jerome
before 1526
marble relief
Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge

Odoardo Fialetti
Legs
(illustration page for drawing manual)
1608
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Napoletano Filippo (Filippo Angeli)
Archer
ca. 1610-20
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Francis Oliver Finch
Timon of Athens
ca. 1840
watercolor on paper
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Anselm Feuerbach
Landscape with Two Ladies
1867
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Johann Falch
Forest Floor Still-Life
ca. 1710-20
oil on panel
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Georg Flegel
Blackcurrants
ca. 1630
watercolor and gouache on paper
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

At the end of the description of the main altar – to the frontal of which he had added three other panels, "so that the whole altar would appear gold all the way round" – Suger goes over to the offensive: "If golden pouring vessels, golden vials, little golden mortars used to serve, by the word of God or the command of the Prophet, to collect the blood of goats or calves or the red heifer: how much more must golden vessels, precious stones, and whatever is most valued among all created things, be laid out, with continual reverence and full devotion, for the reception of the blood of Christ!  . . .  If, by a new creation, our substance were reformed from that of the holy Cherubim and Seraphim, it would still offer an insufficient and unworthy service for so ineffable a victim.  . . .  The detractors also object that a saintly mind, a pure heart, a faithful intention, ought to suffice for this sacred function; and we, too, explicitly and especially affirm that it is these that principally matter.  But we profess that we must do homage also through the outward ornaments of sacred vessels.  . . .  For it behooves us most becomingly to serve our Saviour in all things in a universal way – Him Who has not refused to provide for us in all things in a universal way and without any exceptions."

Remarkable in utterances like these is Suger's use of passages from Scripture as evidence against the Cistercians.  In Hebrews St. Paul had likened the blood of Christ to that of sacrificial animals mentioned in the Old Testament (but solely in order to illustrate the superiority of spiritual over merely magical sanctification): Suger concluded from this comparison that Christian chalices should be more gorgeous than Jewish vials and pouring vessels.  Pseudo-Andrew had apostrophized the Cross of Golgotha as being adorned with the members of Christ "even as with pearls"; Suger infers from this poetic apostrophe that a liturgical crucifix should gleam with a profusion of real pearls.  And when he finishes the description of his new chevet with a magnificent quotation from Ephesians containing the clause: "in Whom all the building groweth unto one holy temple in the Lord," he qualifies the word "building" by the parenthesis "whether spiritual or material," thereby twisting St. Paul's metaphor into a justification of superresplendent architecture. 
 

This does not mean that Suger deliberately "falsified" the Bible and the Apocrypha.  Like all mediaeval writers he quoted from memory and failed to make a sharp distinction between the text and his personal interpretation; so that his very quotations – and this is the reward for verifying them – reveal to us his own philosophy.

– Erwin Panofsky, from Abbot Suger on the Abbey Church of St. Denis and its Art Treasures (1946)