Sixteenth-Century Heads

Andrea del Sarto
St John the Baptist
ca. 1523
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Pietro Faccini
Head
ca. 1590
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Anonymous Artist
Head of a Youth wearing a Turban
16th century
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Heinrich Aldegrever
Head of a Man
ca. 1540
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Artist
Head of Christ
ca. 1500-1550
alabaster
Saint Louis Art Museum

Albrecht Dürer
Portrait of a Clergyman
1516
oil on vellum
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Léonard Thiry after Rosso Fiorentino
Masked Man
with Feminine Mask on the Back of the Head
ca. 1545-59
engraving
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Pseudo Pacchia
Head of a Bearded Man
ca. 1530
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Anonymous Italian Artist
Head of a Bearded Man
16th century
drawing
(purchased by J.P. Morgan as by Correggio)
Morgan Library, New York

Domenico Campagnola
Head of a Bearded Man
ca. 1540
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Domenico Campagnola
Head of a Bearded Man
ca. 1540
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Italian Artist
Head of a Young Man
16th century
drawing
(purchased by J.P. Morgan as by Francesco Salviati)
Morgan Library, New York

Anonymous Italian Artist
(after Andrea del Sarto)
Head of a Young Man
ca. 1530
drawing
(copy of figure from painting)
Morgan Library, New York

Étienne Dumonstier
Portrait Study of a Man
ca. 1580
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Parmigianino (Francesco Mazzola)
Head of a Young Man
ca. 1539-40
drawing
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

attributed to Battista Franco
Head of an Old Man
ca. 1550
drawing
Philadelphia Museum of Art

To a Child Dancing upon the Shore

Dance there upon the shore.

What need have you to care

For wind or water's roar?

And tumble out your hair

That the salt drops have wet.

Being young you have not known

The fool's triumph, nor yet

Love lost as soon as won.

And he, the best warrior, dead

And all the sheaves to bind!

What need that you should dread

The monstrous crying of wind?

– William Butler Yeats (1912)

European Drawings at the Louvre (1537-1655)

Giulio Campi
Sheep Shearing
ca. 1537-38
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Giuseppe Porta (Giuseppe Salviati)
Landscape with Waterfall
before 1575
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Matthijs Bril
House built on Rocks in a River
ca. 1580-82
drawing
(study for ornamental fresco)
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Alessandro Casolani
Sheet of Studies
ca. 1590
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Girolamo Muziano
Landscape with Distant Ruins
before 1592
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Peter Paul Rubens
Figure Bending and Lifting
ca. 1609-1610
drawing
(study for painting, Adoration of the Magi)
Musée du Louvre

Paul Bril
View of Tivoli with the Temple of the Sibyl
before 1626
drawing
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Jan Lievens
Old Man Reading
ca. 1628-29
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Georges Lallemand
The Procuress
before 1636
drawing
Musée du Louvre

François Duquesnoy
Studies of Babies
before 1643
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Rembrandt
Artist in Studio painting the Portrait of a Couple
ca. 1640-45
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Eustache Le Sueur
Woman with a Child
ca. 1647
drawing
(study for painting, now lost)
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Maffei after Michelangelo
Three Figures
before 1660
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Charles Le Brun
Figure Study
ca. 1650
drawing
(study for tapestry)
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Gaspard Dughet
Landscape with Tower
ca. 1650
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Claude Lorrain
Study for Return of the Flock
1651
drawing on vellum
Musée du Louvre

Rembrandt
Woman at a Window
ca. 1655
drawing
Musée du Louvre

from Windows

Those who live there move seldom, and are silent.

Their movements are the movements of a woman darning,

A man nodding into the pages of a paper,

And are portions of a rite, have kept a meaning

That I, that they, know nothing of.

As dead actors on a rainy afternoon

Move in a darkened living room, for children

Watching the world that was before they were –

The looked-at lives, the lives that are not lived,

The windowed ones within their windowy world

Move past me without doubt, and for no reason.

– Randall Jarrell (1954)

Disposing Figure Groups within the Rectangle - I

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Two Figures lifting a Third
ca. 1503-1504
drawing
(study for The Battle of Cascina)
Musée du Louvre

Baccio Bandinelli
Six Seated Women Conversing
ca. 1520
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Giulio Romano
Bacchanal
ca. 1527
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Jacopo Bertoia
Group of Figures
before 1574
drawing
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Maarten van Heemskerck
Prison Scene
before 1576
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jacques Bellange
Group of Women
ca. 1600
drawing
(print study)
Musée du Louvre

Adam Elsheimer
Two Men and a Woman
before 1610
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Adam Elsheimer
Three Women and a Child
before 1610
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Frans Pourbus the Younger
Magistrates of Paris congratulating Louis XIII on his Marriage
ca. 1618
drawing
(study for painting)
Musée du Louvre

Michel Corneille the Younger after Giulio Romano
Group of Figures
ca. 1660
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Salvator Rosa
Group of Soldiers
before 1673
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Antonio Molinari
Group of Figures
before 1704
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Gregorio Lazzarini
Scene of Plague
before 1730
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Fontebasso
Group of Figures
before 1769
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Baptiste Greuze
Departure of the Banished Man
ca. 1775-80
drawing
(study for painting)
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

Dominique Vivant-Denon
Street Scene in Naples
ca. 1780-85
drawing, with added watercolor
Musée du Louvre

Dear Angry Mob,

Oak Wood Trail is closed to you. We

feel it unnecessary to defend our position,

for we have always thought of ourselves

(and rightly, I venture) as a haven for

those seeking a quiet and solitary

contemplation. We are truly sorry

for the inconvenience.

Signed,

                                  Ranger Lil

PS             Ofttimes as the day ends

                       on a wet bed of yellow leaves

                             or the sky densens gray and dark

                  I am brought to imagine

                       the growing disquiet

                              in the hearts of my countrymen

– Joshua Beckman (2009)

Saints Accruing Virtue - Sixteenth/Seventeenth Centuries

Carlo Caliari (Carletto, son of Paolo Veronese)
Penitent Magdalen in a Landscape
ca. 1588
oil on canvas
private collection

Pietro Faccini
Holy Family with St Catherine of Siena and St Dominic
ca. 1590-1600
drawing
(study for painting)
Musée du Louvre

follower of Girolamo Macchietti
Martyrdom of St Lawrence
ca. 1590
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Alessio Gimignani
Martyrdom of St Bartholomew
ca. 1590
oil on canvas
Chiesa di San Bartolomeo in Pantano, Pistoia

Paolo Farinati
St Roch
before 1606
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Paolo Farinati
St John the Baptist reproaching Herod
before 1606
drawing
Musée du Louvre

El Greco
St Matthew
ca. 1610-14
oil on canvas
Indianapolis Museum of Art

Andrea Lilio
St Jerome washing the Feet of Pilgrims
ca. 1610
drawing
Musée Bonnat, Bayonne

Master of Fontanarosa (Giuseppe di Guido)
Penitent St Jerome
ca. 1620-40
oil on canvas
Banco Commerciale Italiana, Naples

Pietro Novelli (il Monrealese)
St James the Greater
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Giovanni Lanfranco
St Peter saved from the Waters by Christ
ca. 1625-28
drawing
(study for altarpiece in St Peter's Basilica)
Musée du Louvre

Giacomo Cavedone
Martyrdom of St Tibertius and St Valerian
ca. 1610
drawing
(study for fresco)
Musée du Louvre

Palma il Giovane
St Jerome in the Wilderness
before 1628
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Palma il Giovane
St Jerome in the Wilderness
before 1628
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Camillo Procaccini
St John the Evangelist and St Peter healing the Sick
before 1629
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Pietro Paolini (il Lucchese)
St George
ca. 1630-40
oil on canvas
private collection

To the Blank Spaces

For longer than by now I can believe

I assumed that you had nothing to do

with each other I thought you had arrived

               whenever that had been

more solitary than single snowflakes

with no acquaintance or understanding

running among you guiding your footsteps

               somewhere ahead of me

in your own time oh white lakes on the maps

that I copied and gaps on the paper

for the names that were to appear in them

               sometimes a doorway or

window sometimes an eye sometimes waking

without knowing the place in the whole night

I might have guessed from the order in which

               you turned up before me

and from the way I kept looking at you

as though I recognized something in you

that you were all words out of one language

               tracks of the same creature

– W.S. Merwin (2002)