Descenders

Constantin Alajalov
Theater Lobby
ca. 1940
watercolor on paper
(design for magazine cover)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini)
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1518
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Federico Barocci
St Dominic de Guzmán receiving the Rosary
ca. 1590
oil on paper (sketch for painting)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Max Beckmann
Falling Man
1950
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Francesco Clemente
Moon
1980
gouache on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Andrea Commodi
Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1614-17
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Lovis Corinth
Höllenfragment
ca. 1901
oil on canvas
(fragment saved from discarded painting)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Eikoh Hosoe
Kamaitachi #17
1965
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Anonymous Italian Painter
Suor Oretta Pugliesi visited by the Virgin and two Dominican Saints
ca. 1500-1510
fresco
Monastero di San Niccolò, Prato

Yves Klein and Harry Shunk
Yves Klein saut dans la vide, Paris
1960
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dorothea Lange
Indonesian Women
1958
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sebastiano Mazzoni
The Annunciation
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas (altarpiece)
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Adolph Menzel
Falcon attacking Pigeon
1844
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pietro da Rimini
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1325-50
tempera and gold on panel
Musée du Louvre

Edward Poynter
The Age of Gold
1875
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Sebastiano Ricci
Dream of Aesculapius
ca. 1725-30
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Johann Heinrich Roos
The Annunciation to the Shepherds
ca. 1659
drawing
British Museum

The bird goes up and the bat goes down:

The bird will burn and the bat will drown.

– W.H. Auden (1930)

Wild / Tame - I

Anonymous Artist
Decorative Tile with art nouveau Fish Motif
ca. 1900
glazed earthenware
Museum für Kunst und Kulturgeschichte, Dortmund

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Fish
ca. 1580
woodcut and letterpress
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Artist
Studies of Whale stranded in River Scheldt near Antorff
1577
hand-colored etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Giovanni Andrea Maglioli
Sea Monster
1608
engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Rudolf Junk
Menu Card
1905
color woodblock print
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Roger Reboussin
Two Frogs exploring a Crevice
1913
drawing
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Thoma
Lizard
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Hans Thoma
Turtle
ca. 1905
drawing
(study for print illustration to the ABC Bilderbuch)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Artist
Pressmark of Gabriele Giolito de' Ferrari of Venice
ca. 1570
woodcut (phoenix)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Artist
Dead Birds
18th century
design drawing
(ornamental motif for the Wiener Porzellanmanufaktur)
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Louis Albert Schmidt
Still Life with Magpie
ca. 1875
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Édouard Traviès
Brazilian Hummingbirds
1857
lithograph
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Julius Klinger
Hermanns & Froitzheim, Haberdasher
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Natalia Goncharova
Peacocks
1912
oil on canvas
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Such then I find to have been the state of things past, hard to be believed, though one produce proof for every particular thereof.  For men receive the report of things, though of their own country if done before their own time, all alike, from one as from another, without examination.  . . .  So impatient of labour are the most men in search of truth, and embrace the things that are next to hand. 

Now he that by the arguments here adduced shall frame a judgment of the things past and not believe rather that they were such as the poets have sung or prose-writers have composed, more delightfully to the ear than conformably to the truth, as being things not to be disproved and by length of time turned for the most part into the nature of fables without credit, but shall think them here searched out by the most evident signs that can be, and sufficiently too, considering their antiquity: he, I say, shall not err.  And though men always judge the present war where in they live to be greatest, and when it is past, admire more those that were before it, yet if they consider of this war by the acts done in the same, it will manifest itself to be greater than any of those before mentioned. 

. . .  But of the acts themselves done in the war, I thought not fit to write all that I heard from all authors nor such as I myself did but think to be true, but only those whereat I was myself present and those of which with all diligence I had made particular inquiry.  And yet even of those things it was hard to know the certainty, because such as were present at every action spake not all after the same manner, but as they were affected to the parts or as they could remember.  

To hear this history rehearsed, for that there be inserted in it no fables, shall be perhaps not delightful.  But he that desires to look into the truth of things done and which (according to the condition of humanity) may be done again, or at least their like, he shall find enough herein to make him think it profitable.  And it is compiled rather for an everlasting possession than to be rehearsed for a prize.  

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)

Fauna

Alec Soth
Two Towels
2004
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Volker Seding
Double-Wattled Cassowary - San Antonio, Texas
1989
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous French Sculptor
Capital with Birds and Lions
ca. 1150-1200
limestone
Musée du Louvre

Volker Seding
Kudu - Heidelberg, Germany
1989
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Daniel Faust
Flying Squirrel
1982
inkjet print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Volker Seding
Malay Tapir - Brookfield Zoo, Chicago
1985
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Alan Magee
Profile
2000
acrylic on panel
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Volker Seding
Pigmy Hippopotamus - National Zoo, Washington DC
1987
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Hassel Smith
Bird Lover
1957
oil on canvas
San Jose Museum of Art, California

Volker Seding
Sleeping Lion - Jacksonville Zoo, Florida
1986
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Richard Bosman
Struggle
1984
oil on canvas
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College
Poughkeepsie, New York

Volker Seding
Snow Leopard - San Antonio, Texas
1987
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Maggi Hambling
The Holyrood
1987
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Volker Seding
Sykes Monkey - Southport, England
1990
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Joseph Cornell
Aviary with Multiple Birds
1942
wood, glass, printed paper, found objects
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Volker Seding
White Rhinoceros - Chester, England
1990
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Julian Alden Weir
Children Burying a Bird
1878
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from A Hymn to the Name and Honour of the Admirable Saint Teresa 

How kindly will thy gentle heart

Kiss the sweet-killing dart,

And close in his embraces keep

Those delicious wounds that weep

Balsam to heal themselves with! Thus,

When these thy deaths so numerous

Shall all at last die into one,

And melt thy soul's sweet mansion,

Like a soft lump of incense, hasted

By too hot a fire, and wasted

Into perfuming clouds, so fast

Shalt thou exhale to heaven at last,

In a resolving sigh, and then, 

O what? Ask not the tongues of men.

– Richard Crashaw (1648)