Showing posts with label antiquity. Show all posts
Showing posts with label antiquity. Show all posts

Thursday, August 28, 2025

Architectural Fragments

Anonymous Flemish Artist
Capriccio of Ruins on a Coast
ca. 1610-20
oil on copper
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

workshop of Bartholomeus Breenbergh
Italian Landscape with Ruins of the Aurelian Wall
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Paul Bril
Religious Procession among Ruins, Rome
ca. 1600-1610
oil on copper
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Claude Lorrain
Roman Ruins on the Aventine Hill
before 1682
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Caspar David Friedrich
Ruins of the Temple of Juno at Agrigento
ca. 1828
oil on canvas
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Giovanni Ghisolfi
Capriccio with Ruins
ca. 1650
drawing
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Svein Johansen
Roman Ruins
ca. 1983
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Jules Laurens
Ruins of a Roman Roadhead in Bithynia
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Marseille

Jean Lemaire
Artists studying Ruins
ca. 1630
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Giovanni Battista Mercati
Domes of the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore rising behind Roman Ruins
1629
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Gian Paolo Panini
Capriccio of Roman Ruins with the Pantheon
ca. 1740
oil on canvas
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Marco Ricci
Capriccio of Antique Ruins
ca. 1720-25
tempera on vellum
Staatsgalerie Stuttgart

Marco Ricci
Capriccio of Antique Ruins
ca. 1720-30
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Modena

Hubert Robert
Artist among Ruins on the Palatine Hill, Rome
ca. 1760-65
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Louise Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont
Ruins of Roman Theater at Taormina
1825
oil on paper
Morgan Library, New York

Jan Baptist Weenix
Study of Ruins
ca. 1646
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

He recounts that he saw other similar things, and he tells marvelous stories of having seen men and other things that no one else says he has seen or heard, and that no one else has even imagined.  The most wondrous thing of all is that in traveling north they came close to the moon, which was like a completely stripped land, and that while there they saw things that it was natural for a man to see who had invented such an exaggerated fiction.

Then the Sibyl picked up her art of divination again, with Carmanes.  After this, each person made his own prayer, and everything turned out for each of the others in accordance with his prayer, but in his case, after he woke up, he was found in Tyre in the temple of Hercules, and after he got up, he found Dercyllis and Mantinias.  They were safe and had released their parents from the long sleep or, rather, death, and were prospering in other ways as well.

These things Dinias told to Cymbas and provided cyprus tablets on which he asked Cymbas's companion Erasinides, since he was a skillful writer, to record the account.  He also showed Dercyllis to them – it was in fact she who brought the cypress tablets.  He ordered Cymbas to have the accounts written down on two sets of cypress tablets, one of which Cymbas would keep and the other of which Dercyllis was to place in a small box and set down near Dinias's grave at the time of his death.

– Antonius Diogenes, from The Wonders Beyond Thule, written in Greek, 1st-2nd century AD.  A detailed summary of the book was composed (also in Greek) in the 9th century by Photius, Patriarch of Constantinople.  The original text by Antonius Diogenes was subsequently lost; only the summary by Photius has survived.  This was translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989).

Tuesday, August 19, 2025

Pensive - IV

Pablo Picasso
Harlequin
1923
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Palma il Vecchio
Salvator Mundi
ca. 1518-22
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Lütfi Özkök
Portrait of poet Tomas Tranströmer
ca. 1965
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Amedeo Modigliani
Portrait of writer Beatrice Hastings
1914
oil on canvas
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Jean Fautrier
Visage Violet
1947
color etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giorgione (Giorgio Barbarelli)
Portrait of a Young Man
(the so-called Broccardo Portrait)
ca. 1508-1510
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Joshua Reynolds
Portrait of Captain William Hamilton
ca. 1762
oil on canvas
Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio

Henri Doucet
Young Woman
ca. 1910
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Henry Goodwin
Greta Garbo
1926
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Louis Kolitz
Study of a Young Woman
wearing an 18th-century Wig

ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Bertold Löffler
Portrait of artist Melitta Feldkircher
ca. 1910
oil on canvas (unfinished)
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Giuseppe Signorini
Boy in Rome
ca. 1880
watercolor on paper
Morgan Library, New York

George Minne
Bust of Model
1910-11
painted plaster
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Oscar Gustave Rejlander
Lord Elcho with his Son
ca. 1860
albumen print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Laurits Andersen Ring
The artist's son Ole at the Window
1930
oil on canvas
Randers Kunstmuseum, Denmark
 
Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Mrs Charles Purvis
ca. 1775-80
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

While King Antiochus was perpetrating these atrocities, a very wealthy young man of Tyrian stock, named Apollonius, arrived by ship in Antioch.  He set out to the king and saluted him thus. "Greetings, my lord, King Antiochus." And he said: "Because you are a dutiful father, I have hurried here to comply with your will.  I am descended from a royal family, and I seek your daughter's hand in marriage." When the king heard these unwelcome words, he gave the young man an angry look and said to him, "Young man, do you know the conditions of marriage?" He said, "I know them, and I saw them on the city gate." The king said: "Listen to the riddle, then: I ride on crime; I feed on a mother's flesh; I seek my brother, my mother's husband, my daughter's son; I do not find them."* 

After hearing the riddle, the young man left the king for a short time.  By subjecting the riddle to his intelligent consideration he found the solution to it by the grace of God.  He set out to the king and spoke thus. "My lord king, you set a riddle for me; therefore, hear its solution.  When you said 'I ride on crime,' you did not lie: look to yourself.  When you said 'I feed on a mother's flesh,' you did not lie about this either: look to your own daughter."

The king realized that the young man had found the solution to the riddle and spoke to him thus: "You're wrong.  Nothing you've said is true.  You'll surely earn a beheading for yourself, but you have thirty days: think some more.  When you return with the solution to the riddle, you'll have my daughter's hand in marriage." The young man was greatly disturbed.  He boarded the ship that he had been keeping in readiness and set sail for his native Tyre.

*None of the story's riddles is invented by the author; all are found elsewhere in antiquity (or late antiquity), which was fond of such puzzles.

– from The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, after anonymous Latin manuscripts of the 5th-6th century AD translating a lost Greek text of the 2nd-3rd century AD, and translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989) 

Paul Caponigro

Paul Caponigro
Scotch Thistle and Heather, Rochester N.Y.
1958
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum


Paul Caponigro
Fishbone (Maine)
1962
gelatin silver print
Princeton University Art Museum

Paul Caponigro
Dutch Pipe Leaves
1963
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Cabbage Leaf, Winthrop, Massachusetts
1964
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Running White Deer, County Wicklow, Ireland
1967
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Paul Caponigro
Donegal
1967
gelatin silver print
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Stonehenge
1967
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Redding Woods, Connecticut
1968
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Paul Caponigro
Redding Woods, Connecticut
1969
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago
 
Paul Caponigro
Callanish Stone Circle, Hebrides
1972
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Paul Caponigro
Bridal Veil Falls, Yosemite
1974
gelatin silver print
Minneapolis Institute of Art

from Metamorphoses

Narcissus on the grassy Verdure lies:
But whilst within the Crystal Fount he tries
To quench his Heat, he feels new Heat arise.
For as his own bright Image he survey'd,
He fell in love with the fantastick Shade;
And o'er the fair Resemblance hung unmov'd,
Nor knew, fond Youth! it was himself he lov'd.
The well turn'd Neck and Shoulders he descries,
The spacious Forehead, and the sparkling Eyes;
The hands that Bacchus might not scorn to show,
And hair that round Apollo's Head might flow;
With all the Purple Youthfulness of Face,
That gently blushes in the wat'ry Glass.
By his own Flames consum'd the Lover lies,
And gives himself the Wound by which he dies.
To the cold Water oft he joins his Lips,
Oft catching at the beauteous Shade he dips
His Arms, as often from himself he slips.
Nor knows he who it is his Arms pursue
With eager Clasps, but loves he knows not who.

– Ovid (43 BC-AD 17), translated by Joseph Addison (1794)

Monday, August 18, 2025

Pensive - III

Ivan Aguéli
Half-Length Study of Model
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Fra Angelico
Virgin Annunciate
ca. 1450-55
tempera on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Detroit Institute of Arts 

Giovanni Bastianini
Bust of Piccarda Donati
(character in the Purgatorio of Dante)
1855
marble
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio
Penitent Magdalen
1597
oil on canvas
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Domenico di Paris
Ludovico III Gonzaga, Marquis of Mantua
ca. 1450-53
bronze
Bode Museum, Berlin

Henri Fantin-Latour
Study (Mlle. Charlotte Dubourg)
1882
pastel on linen
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

attributed to Bartolomeo Montagna
Head of a Woman
ca. 1480-90
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

François-Joseph Navez
The Virgin in Contemplation
ca. 1820
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Antoine-Julien Potier
Académie
ca. 1815-20
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Roman Empire
Head of Venus
AD 160-180
marble
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Hans Thoma
Portrait of a Young Woman
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Vincent van Gogh
Portrait of Père Tanguy
1887
oil on canvas
Musée Rodin, Paris

Jakob Weidemann
Skjalg
1943
oil on panel
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Giovanni Bellini
Virgin and Child
ca. 1510
oil on panel
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Wilma Björling
Untitled
ca. 1970
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Jacques-Louis David
Head of a Young Woman
ca. 1810
drawing
Musée Bonnat-Helleu, Bayonne

In Antioch there was a king named Antiochus.  Indeed, from him the city derived its name.  He had one daughter, a very lovely young woman in whom Nature's only mistake was making her mortal.  When she reached the age of marriage and was becoming more and more beautiful, many suitors started to come for her hand in marriage and to press their suit with promises of large dowries.  While her father tried to decide to whom it would be most advantageous to give his daughter in marriage, the shameful flames of desire and lust compelled him to fall in love with his daughter and to have feelings towards her that a father should not have.  Though he struggled against his passion and fought against his emotions, he was overcome by love.  He lost all sense of propriety and, forgetting that he was a father, took on the role of her husband.

*      *     *

He kept his feelings disguised and passed himself off to his subjects as a dutiful parent, but within the walls of his palace he took delight in being his daughter's husband.  So that he could always enjoy the sinful fruits of her bed he would propose riddles to drive away her suitors, saying "Whichever of you finds the solution to my riddle will have my daughter in marriage.  Whoever does not will be beheaded."  Anyone who was knowledgeable enough to happen to find the solution to the riddle was beheaded as if he had not answered it, and his head was hung from the top of the city gate.  Still, many kings and princes from everywhere hurried to defy death because of the girl's incredible beauty.  

– from The Story of Apollonius, King of Tyre, after anonymous Latin manuscripts of the 5th-6th century AD translating a lost Greek text of the 2nd-3rd century AD, and translated into English by Gerald N. Sandy (1989)