Vellum

Cosmè Tura
St Francis receiving the Stigmata
ca. 1470-80
tempera and gold on vellum (manuscript illumination)
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jan Baptist Weenix
The Three Fates among Ruins
ca. 1645
gouache on vellum
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Johan Thopas
Portrait of Gijsbert van der Hoven
1657
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Samuel Cooper
Miniature Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1660-65
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Samuel Cooper
Miniature Portrait of Henry Jermyn, Baron Dover
1667
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1670
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Simon de Vos
The Taking of Christ
before 1676
oil on vellum
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Man
1684
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Johan Thopas
Portrait of a Woman
1684
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Anonymous English Artist
Miniature Portrait of a Man
ca. 1685
watercolor on vellum
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johan Thopas
Portrait of Ida Block
1688
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Thomas Forster
Miniature Portrait of Margaret Harcourt
1708
graphite on vellum (plumbago)
British Museum

Cornelis Troost
Self Portrait
1745
gouache on vellum
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Elisabeth Geertruida Wassenbergh
Self Portrait
1754
watercolor on vellum
Groninger Museum, Netherlands

Phoebe Anna Traquair
Two Illuminated Leaves - Sonnets from the Portuguese by Elizabeth Barrett Browning
ca. 1894-96
watercolor and gold on vellum
National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh

Phoebe Anna Traquair
Illuminated Leaf from
Collection of Reproductions of Medallions
1897
watercolor and gold on vellum
University of Edinburgh Library

Idelle Weber
It's a Business
ca. 1967-69
watercolor, collage and chalk on vellum
private collection

Crossing alone the nighted ferry

        With the one coin for fee,

Whom, on the wharf of Lethe waiting,

        Count you to find?  Not me.

The brisk fond lackey to fetch and carry,

        The true, sick-hearted slave,

Expect him not in the just city

        And free land of the grave.

– A.E. Housman (1859-1936)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1992)

Robert Ebendorf
Beach Necklace
1992
plastic and metal
Racine Art Museum, Wisconsin

Victor Costa
Cocktail Dress
1992
polyester taffeta and nylon
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Dirk de Herder
Greenhouse
1992
gelatin silver print
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Jane Hammond
Untitled
1992
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Brigid Toole Grant
Carcass of a Female Right Whale
1992
watercolor on paper
New Brunswick Museum, Saint John

Leon Golub
Interrogation
1992
screenprint
Lowe Art Museum, University of Miami

Nan Goldin
Self Portrait on the Train, Germany
1992
C-print
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Ad Gerritsen
Reproduction of the Species III
1992
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Rimma Gerlovina and Valeriy Gerlovin
Birth of Aphrodite
1992
C-print
Nasher Museum of Art, Durham, North Carolina

James Garrett Faulkner
Exposition
1992
collage on paper
Madison Museum of Contemporary Art, Wisconsin

Marlene Dumas
The Messengers
1992
oil on canvas (four panels)
Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston

Rineke Dijkstra
Brighton, England, August 21, 1992
1992
C-print
Art Institute of Chicago

Ben Culwell
I Can't Believe He's Dead
1992
watercolor and ink on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Tillman Crane
Back Yard
1992
gelatin silver print
Farnsworth Art Museum, Rockland, Maine

Alighiero Boetti
Extra Strong
1992
mixed media on paper, mounted on canvas
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

Robert Cottingham
Art
1992
lithograph
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

from In Praise of Limestone

     They were right, my dear, all those voices were right

And still are; this land is not the sweet home that it looks,

     Nor its peace the historical calm of a site

Where something was settled once and for all: A backward

     And dilapidated province, connected

To the big busy world by a tunnel, with a certain

     Seedy appeal, is that all it is now? Not quite:

It has a worldly duty which in spite of itself

     It does not neglect, but calls into question

All the Great Powers assume; it disturbs our rights. The poet,

     Admired for his earnest habit of calling

The sun the sun, his mind Puzzle, is made uneasy

     By these marble statues which so obviously doubt

His antimythological myth; and these gamins,

     Pursuing the scientist down the tiled colonnade

With such lively offers, rebuke his concern for Nature's

     Remotest aspects: I, too, am reproached, for what

And how much you know. Not to lose time, not to get caught,

     Not to be left behind, not, please! to resemble

The beasts who repeat themselves, or a thing like water

     Or stone whose conduct can be predicted, these

Are our Common Prayer, whose greatest comfort is music

     Which can be made anywhere, is invisible,

And does not smell. In so far as we have to look forward

     To death as a fact, no doubt we are right: But if

Sins can be forgiven, if bodies rise from the dead,

     These modifications of matter into

Innocent athletes and gesticulating fountains,

     Made solely for pleasure, make a further point:

The blessed will not care what angle they are regarded from,

     Having nothing to hide. Dear, I know nothing of 

Either, but when I try to imagine a faultless love

     Or the life to come, what I hear is the murmur

Of underground streams, what I see is a limestone landscape.

– W.H. Auden (1948)

Prospect

Walter Dexel
Figuration
1922
woodcut
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig

Stefano della Bella
Death seizing a Young Woman
ca. 1645-50
etching
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Roy De Maistre
Studio Interior with Figures
1935
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of South Australia, Adelaide

Gitte Dæhlin
Without a Ticket
1977
fabric sculpture on steel armature
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Michel-François Dandré-Bardon
Entry of Princess into a City
ca. 1740
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Josef Danhauser
The Glutton
1836
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Jacques-Louis David
Portrait of Jacques-François Desmaisons
(architect, and uncle of the artist)
1782
oil on canvas
Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York

Prosper Debia
Classical and Romantic
1832
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres-Bourdelle, Montauban

Henri Delavallée
View at Marlotte
1884
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

Robert Delaunay
Formes circulaires, Soleil
1912-13
oil on canvas
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Maurice Denis
The Red Beach
1901
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Eugène Delacroix after Peter Paul Rubens
St John the Evangelist on Patmos
1850
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Ignazio Danti
The Battle of Lepanto
ca. 1575-85
fresco
Galleria della Carte Geografiche, Musei Vaticani

Nicolas-Joseph Delin
Portrait of Leonardus van der Aar
1786
oil on canvas
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Edgar Degas
The Fallen Jockey
(scene from the steeplechase)
1866
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giorgio de Chirico
Bowl of Fruit
1926
oil on board
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Antony

     Shall I, who to my kneeling slave could say

     'Rise up, and be a king,' shall I fall down

     And cry, 'Forgive me, Caesar'? Shall I set

     A man, my equal, in the place of Jove, 

     As he could give me being? No; that word

     'Forgive' would choke me up,

     And die upon my tongue. 

Dollabella                              You shall not need it.

Antony

     I will not need it. Come, you've all betrayed me –

     My friend too! – to receive some vile conditions.

     My wife has bought me with her prayers and tears,

     And now I must become her branded slave:

     In every peevish mood she will upbraid

     The life she gave; if I but look awry,

     She cries, 'I'll tell my brother.'

Octavia                                        My hard fortune

     Subjects me still to your unkind mistakes.

     But the conditions I have brought are such

     You need not blush to take. I love your honour

     Because 'tis mine; it never shall be said

     Octavia's husband was her brother's slave.

     Sir, you are free, free even from her you loathe.

     For though my brother bargains for your love,

     Makes me the price and cement of your peace,

     I have a soul like yours; I cannot take

     Your love as alms, nor beg what I deserve.

     I'll tell my brother we are reconciled;

     He shall draw back his troops, and you shall march

     To rule the East: I may be dropped at Athens –

     No matter where, I never will complain.

     But only keep the barren name of wife,

     And rid you of the trouble.

Ventidius

     Was ever such a strife of sullen honour!

     Both scorn to be obliged.

Dollabella

     Oh, she has touched him in the tender'st part;

     See how he reddens with despite and shame,

     To be outdone in generosity!

– John Dryden, All for Love (1677)

Mariolatry

Bob Thompson
The Assumption
1964
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Giovanni Battista Trotti (il Molosso)
Assumption of the Virgin
before 1619
drawing (study for altarpiece)
Royal Collection, Windsor

Vitale da Bologna
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1340-45
tempera and gold on panel
Musée du Louvre

Lorenzo Monaco
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1388-90
tempera and gold on panel
Courtauld Gallery, London

Lorenzo Monaco
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1407-1409
tempera and gold on panel
National Gallery, London

Andrea di Bartolo
Coronation of the Virgin
before 1428
tempera and gold on panel
private collection

Ventura di Moro
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1425-50
tempera on panel
Musei Capitolini, Rome

Antonio Vivarini
Coronation of the Virgin
1444
tempera and gold on panel
Chiesa di San Pantalon, Venice

Bartolomeo di Tommaso
Rospigliosi Altarpiece
(Coronation of the Virgin flanked by The Nativity and Adoration of the Magi)
ca. 1445
tempera on panel
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Sano di Pietro
Coronation of the Virgin with Saints and Angels
before 1481
tempera on panel
Museo Civico Rocca Flea, Gualdo Tadino

Bartholome Zeitblom (paintings) and Niklaus Weckmann (sculptures)
Kilchberger Altarpiece - Coronation of the Virgin with Saints
ca. 1494
tempera and oil on panel with painted wood figures
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Raphael, followed by Giulio Romano and Giovanni Francesco Penni
Coronation of the Virgin - Madonna of Monteluce
begun by Raphael in 1505, completed in 1525 by others after his death
oil on panel
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Innocenzo Tacconi, after design by Annibale Carracci
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Chiesa di Santa Caterina dei Funari, Rome

Gaspare Venturini
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1600
oil on canvas
Chiesa della Madonnina di Ferrara

Arnout Vinckenborch
Coronation of the Virgin
ca. 1617
oil on panel
Sint Pauluskerk, Antwerp

Fra Angelico
Virgin and Child enthroned with Angels and Saints
ca. 1450-55
tempera on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Mariano di Austerio da Perugia
Virgin and Child enthroned with Saints
ca. 1493
tempera on panel
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

from London

Athwart the sky a lowly sigh

From west to east the sweet wind carried;

The sun stood still on Primrose Hill;

            His light in all the city tarried:

The clouds on viewless columns bloomed

Like smouldering lilies unconsumed.

– John Davidson (1857-1909)