Opaque

Lennart Durehed
Long Island
1975
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Dirck Hals
Stroll in the Garden
ca. 1632
oil on panel
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Hans Heinrich Wägmann
Resurrection of Christ
1580
drawing, with added gouache
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Johann Kenckel after Johann Martin Schuster
Draped Figure
ca. 1710-20
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Henry Fuseli
Siegfried after slaying Fafner
(from the Nibelungenlied)
1806
drawing
Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

Robert Frederick Blum
Half-Length Figure Study
ca. 1877-87
etching
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Georg Lemberger
Noah's Ark
1524
hand-colored woodcut
(illustration to the "Luther" Bible)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Eustache Le Sueur
Figure Study
ca. 1640
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Carlo Maratti
St Sebastian tended by Holy Women 
ca. 1670
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hendrik Hondius the Elder after Hans Vredeman de Vries
Perspective Interior with Staircases
1605
engraving
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Hans-Christian Schink 
Bach Ma (1A)
2005
C-print
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Rembrandt
The Ship of Fortune
1633
etching
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Polidoro da Caravaggio
Landscape with Figures
1527-28
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pier Francesco Mola
Mourning Figure with Tablet supported by Putto
ca. 1640
drawing
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Antonio Tempesta
La bella Doralice
(character in Ariosto's Orlando Furioso)
1597
etching
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Nikolaus Christopher Matthes
Sculptor carving The Three Graces
ca. 1770
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

The Candle a Saint

Green is the night, green kindled and apparelled.
It is she that walks among astronomers. 

She strides above the rabbit and the cat,

Like a noble figure, out of the sky,

Moving among the sleepers, the men,

Those that lie chanting green is the night.

Green is the night and out of madness woven,
The self-same madness of the astronomers

And of him that sees, beyond the astronomers,
The topaz rabbit and the emerald cat,

That sees above them, that sees rise up above them,
The noble figure, the essential shadow,

Moving and being, the image at its source,
The abstract, the archaic queen. Green is the night.

– Wallace Stevens (1942)