Drowse

Ippolito Marracci
Allegory of Sleep with Cupid, Diana, Endymion and Hebe
ca. 1690-1710
ceiling fresco
Palazzo Mansi, Lucca

Tim Gardner
Untitled (Ryan in Bed)
2002
watercolor on paper
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

James Tissot
Woman Sleeping
ca. 1871-73
watercolor and gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Louis-Claude Vassé
Sleeping Shepherd
1751
marble
Musée du Louvre

Lee Friedlander
Helen Levitt, New York City
1959
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Philip-Lorca diCorcia
Auden, Emma and Dogs
1989
C-print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Virgin and sleeping Child with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1605
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Henri Decaisne
Guardian Angel
(after poem by Lamartine)
ca. 1825
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

François Le Moyne
Daphnis with sleeping Chloe
ca. 1721
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

François-Nicolas Delaistre
Cupid and Psyche
ca. 1790
marble
Musée du Louvre

Juan Antonio Escalante
Angel with prophet Isaiah in the Wilderness
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous French Photographer
Clinique vétérinaire Malvezin, Paris
ca. 1905
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paris Bordone
Sleeping Warrior
before 1571
drawing
British Museum

Marlene Dumas
Jen
2005
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

attributed to Ubaldo Gandolfi
Sleeping Child
ca. 1760
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Anne-Louis Girodet
Sleeping Bacchus
ca. 1790-91
oil on panel
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Conrad Marca-Relli
Sleeping Figure
1953-54
collage of painted canvas elements on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from In Time of War

Wandering lost upon the mountains of our choice,

Again and again we sigh for an ancient South,

For the warm nude ages of instinctive poise,

For the taste of joy in the innocent mouth.

Asleep in our huts, how we dream of a part

In the glorious balls of the future; each intricate maze

Has a plan, and the disciplined movements of the heart

Can follow for ever and ever its harmless ways.

We envy streams and houses that are sure:

But we are articled to error; we

Were never nude and calm like a great door,

And never will be perfect like the fountains;

We live in freedom of necessity,

A mountain people dwelling among mountains.

– W.H. Auden (1938)

Cousins

Joseph Cornell
Home, Poor Heart
ca. 1962
printed paper collage under blue glass
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Sam Francis
Blue Balls
1962
gouache on paper
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Richard Aldrich
Art and Language II
2014
enamel and charcoal on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Yves Klein
Anthropometrie: Princess Helena
1960
oil on paper, mounted on panel
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Georgia O'Keeffe
Pelvis I
1944
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Wilhelmina Barns-Graham
Homage to Johnny
2002
screenprint
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Peter Agostini
Untitled
1956
watercolor on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Raoul Dufy
The Landing
1928
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Susan Rothenberg
Untitled no. 84
1979
acrylic and charcoal on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Joel Shapiro
Untitled
1979
painted wood
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Serge Poliakoff
Untitled
1969
gouache on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Roman Empire
Cup
1st century AD
blown glass
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Cy Twombly
The Ceiling
2010
ceiling painting for the Salle des Bronzes
Musée du Louvre

Sharon Ellis
Winter Bouquet
2009
alkyd on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Llyn Foulkes
Les Beaux
1989
mixed media on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Marguerita Mergentime for Linens by Dewan
Food-for-Thought Tablecloth
ca. 1936
printed linen
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Clarence H. White
Alfred Stieglitz
ca. 1907-1910
cyanotype
Princeton University Art Museum

from Argument

    Remember not what we thought during the frost, what we said in the small hours, what we did in the desert.  Spare us, lest of our own volition we draw down the avalanche of your anger: lest we suffer the tragic fate of the insects,

            O Four Just Men, spare us.

    From the immense bat-shadow of home; from the removal of landmarks: from appeals for love and from the comfortable words of the devil,

            O Dixon Hawke, deliver us. 

    From all opinions and personal ties; from pity and shame; and from the wish to instruct,

            O Sexton Blake, deliver us.

    From all nervous excitement and follies of the will; from the postponed guilt and the deferred pain; from the oppression of noon and from the terror in the night,

            O Bulldog Drummond, deliver us.

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)

Aloft

Oliviero Gatti after Pordenone
God the Father creating the World
1615
engraving
(after church fresco in Piacenza)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Guglielmo Caccia
God the Father
before 1625
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Bartholomeus Spranger
God the Father with the Holy Spirit
ca. 1582
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Genoese Artist
Musical Angels on Clouds
ca. 1650-1700
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Ceiling Design with Musical Angels
before 1781
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

François Boucher
Three Cherubs
ca. 1750
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Luca Cambiaso
God the Father observing the Martyrdom of a Saint
before 1585
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Samuel Bottschild
Angel
ca. 1675
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Gaspare Diziani
Angel in Clouds
before 1767
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Gaspare Diziani
Flying Putti with Fish Tails
before 1767
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Abraham Bloemaert
Flying Putti
ca. 1590
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jacob de Wit
Three Cherub-Heads in Clouds
before 1754
pastel on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Giambattista Tiepolo
Foreshortened Figure on Cloud
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giambattista Tiepolo
Foreshortened Figure on Cloud
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giocondo Albertolli
Ceiling Decoration for Palazzo Casnedi in Milan
ca. 1780
hand-colored etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Design for Ceiling Decoration
16th century
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

The army of the Peloponnesians marching forward came first to Oenoe, a town of Attica, the place where they intended to break in, and encamping before it, prepared with engines and by other means to assault the wall.  For Oenoe, lying on the confines between Attica and Boeotia, was walled about, and the Athenians kept a garrison in it for defence of the country when at any time there should be war.  For which cause they made preparation for the assault of it, and also spent much time about it otherwise.  

And Archidamus [Lacedaemonian general] for this was not a little taxed as thought to have been both slow in gathering together the forces for the war and also to have favoured the Athenians in that he encouraged not the army to a forwardness in it.  And afterwards likewise his stay in the isthmus and his slowness in the whole journey was laid to his charge, but especially his delay at Oenoe.  For in this time the Athenians retired into the city: whereas it was thought that the Peloponnesians, marching speedily, might but for this delay have taken them all without.  So passionate was the army of Archidamus for his stay before Oenoe.  But expecting that the Athenians, whilst their territory was yet unhurt, would relent and not endure to see it wasted, for that cause (as it was reported) he held his hand. 

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