Derivations

Jost Amman
Medea with Dragons
1578
woodcut
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Anonymous German Artist
Mermaid bearing Coat of Arms
ca. 1560
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous German Artist
Mythical Sea Creatures Battling
17th century
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Artist after Parmigianino
Jason with the Golden Fleece
ca. 1590
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous Ferrarese Artist
Theseus abandoning Ariadne
ca. 1540
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Nicolaes Berchem
Death of Dido
1678
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Anonymous European Artist
Bacchanal
17th century
oil on canvas
Museum de Fundatie, Zwolle, Netherlands

Anonymous French Artist
Iphigénie en Tauride
17th century
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Brest

Charles Brocas
Aristides
(as described by Herodotus)
1806
oil on canvas
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

attributed to Domenico Campagnola
Bacchic Scene
ca. 1520-25
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Heinrich Friedrich Füger
Mythological Scene
ca. 1800
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Tommaso Piroli
Theseus with slain Minotaur
(series, Antiquities of Herculaneum)
1789
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Pierre Brébiette
Amphitrite assisting Venus descending from Shell Chariot
ca. 1640
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Marco Carlone
Mythological Figures
ca. 1775-80
watercolor and gouache on paper
(after antique wall painting from the Baths of Titus, Rome)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Laurent-Honoré Marqueste
Perseus and Medusa
1875
plaster
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Rudolf Jettmar
Liberation of Prometheus
1910
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

The Greek revolution deserves its fame.  It is unique in the annals of mankind.  This should be acknowledged even by those who side with Plato in their taste for the archaic and ritualistic.  What makes it unique is precisely the directed efforts, the continued and systematic modifications of the schemata of conceptual art, till making was replaced by the matching of reality through the new skill of mimesis.  We mistake the character of this skill if we speak of the imitation of nature.  Nature cannot be imitated or "transcribed" without first being taken apart and put back together again.  This is not the work of observation alone but rather of ceaseless experimentation.  For here too, the term "observation" has tended to mislead rather than enlighten.  

There is no reason to think Greek artists offered a more complete or more accurate visual inventory of the world than did the art of Egypt, Mesopotamia, or Crete.  On the contrary, in these early cultures the schemata of animals and plants were often refined to an astounding degree.  . . .  After all, Greek art of the classical period concentrated on the portrayal of man almost to the exclusion of other motifs, and even in the portrayal of man it remained wedded to types. This does not apply only to the idealized type of physique which we all associate with Greek art.  Even in the rendering of movement and drapery the repertoire of Greek sculpture and painting has turned out to be strangely limited.  There are a restricted number of formulas for the rendering of figures standing, running, fighting, or falling, which Greek artists repeated with relatively slight variations over a long period of time.  Perhaps if a census of such motifs were taken, the Greek vocabulary would be found to be not much larger than the Egyptian.  

It is not even necessarily true that individual observations, such as the existence of shadows or of foreshortening, were never made by pre-Greek artists.  There are certain striking examples of such observations in Mexican art that would refute [Heinrich] Shäfer's contention that all such departures from conceptual modes are directly dependent on the Greek revolution.  But it was Shäfer himself who rightly pointed out that what is interesting in the isolated instances of such deviations, which can even be found in Egypt, is that they remained without consequence.  They do not become part of the tradition to be improved and extended, as they do in Greece.  On the contrary, one has the impression that they are accidents, random mutations, which are weeded out by a process of natural selection.  . . .  Maybe taboos played their part in this sorting-out process.  But most of all, we may assume, tradition itself had this effect.  Nothing succeeds like success, and nothing survives like survival.  The very fact that certain images had survived for immeasurable periods must have appeared as a token of their magic potency. 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Derivations

attributed to Simone Bianco
Idealized Classical Head
ca. 1540
marble
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Carl Friedrich Lessing
Study of Classical Head
1825
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Annibale Carracci
Classical Figure with Vessel
ca. 1595
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Arvid Fougstedt
Classical Motif
1931
etching
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Baccio Bandinelli
Frieze of Classical Figures
ca. 1519-25
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Marcantonio Raimondi after Francesco Francia
Bathing Scene with Classical Frieze Figures
ca. 1510
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Augustus John
Four Figures in Antique Dress
ca. 1891
drawing
Swindon Museum and Art Gallery, Wiltshire

Johann August Nahl the Younger
Two Women in Classical Draperies
before 1825
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Agostino Musi after Giulio Romano
Classical Couple holding Hands
ca. 1515-30
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Printmaker after Franz Ludwig Catel
Roman Woman applying Cosmetics, assisted by Slave
ca. 1798
etching
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Salomon Gessner
Classical Vignette for Winckelmann's Letters
ca. 1802-1803
etching
(posthumously printed)
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Ciro Ferri
Classical Scene before Enthroned Figure
ca. 1675
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Federico Zuccaro
Classical Scene
(unidentified narrative)
ca. 1580
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Auguste-Barthélemy Glaize
Study for Classical Figure
ca. 1870
drawing
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Francisque Millet
Classical Landscape with Water-Carrier
ca. 1660-70
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Étienne Allegrain
Classical Landscape with Ruins
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

There is another famous passage in the writings of Pliny that also concerns an incomplete figure, but this time the appeal to the imagination is even greater: we hear that Timanthes painted the sacrifice of Iphigenia and expressed the grief of those around her in such a masterly way that when he came to represent her father Agamemnon, he had to suggest the climax of sorrow by representing him with his cloak drawn over his face, an enclosed world within the picture's world, which excited the admiration of the classical orators.  

There is a painting on one of the walls of a Pompeian house that reflects this motif.  It is not a great work of art, and the same criticism applies to many other copies of Greek works found in Italy and elsewhere.  But such criticism has tended to obscure the most astounding consequence of the Greek miracle: the fact that copies were ever made at all to be displayed in the houses and gardens of the educated.  For this industry of making reproductions for sale implies a function of the image of which the pre-Greek world knew nothing.  The image has been pried loose from the practical context for which it was conceived and is admired and enjoyed for its beauty and fame, that is, quite simply within the context of art.  For this is the final consequence of that great "chain reaction."  The creation of an imaginative realm led to an acknowledgement of what we call "art" and the celebration of those rare spirits who could explore and extend that realm.

It may sound paradoxical to say that the Greeks invented art, but from this point of view, it is a mere sober statement of fact.  We rarely realize how much this concept owes to the heroic spirit of those discoverers who were active between 550 and 350 B.C.  For the history of these years as it is reflected in Pliny or Quintilian was handed down like an epic of conquest, a story of inventions.  When Quintilian called the contorted attitude of Myron's Discobolos "particularly praiseworthy for its novelty and difficulty," he codified a standard of criticism that linked art with the solution of problems.  The names of the artists who discovered new effects to increase illusion and lifelikeness, the names of Myron and Phidias, Zeuxis and Apelles, lived on in history and have retained their magic despite the fact we do not know one work from their hands.  The legend of their triumphs remained as potent in the history of Western art as did the actual works that were recovered from the soil.  The writers of the Renaissance echoed the anecdotes that extolled the powers of painting to deceive the eye – the very character which made Plato disapprove of art and prefer the immutable laws of the Egyptian canon. 

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Visual Preferences (20th Century: 1944)

Milton Avery
The Baby
1944
oil on canvas
Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio

Eugene Berman
Backdrop Design for Danses Concertantes by George Balanchine
1944
watercolor and gouache on paper
McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, Texas

Arshile Gorky
How My Mother's Embroidered Apron Unfolds in My Life
1944
oil on canvas
Seattle Art Museum

Hans Hofmann
Untitled
1944
gouache on paper
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Walt Kuhn
Acrobat in White and Silver
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Jacques Lipchitz
The Road to Exile
1944
etching, engraving and aquatint
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Barbara Morgan
Berenice Abbott with a Cat
1944
gelatin silver print
Fralin Museum of Art, Charlottesville, Virginia

Max Weber
Woman Carrying Picture
1944
oil on canvas
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Robert Motherwell
The Painter
1944
oil paint, crayon and collage on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Isamu Noguchi
Remembrance
1944
bronze
Walker Art Center, Minneapolis

Carl-Henning Pedersen
Untitled
1944
lithograph
NSU Art Museum, Fort Lauderdale, Florida

Jackson Pollock
Untitled
1944
drawing
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

Birger Sandzén
Autumn (Smoky Hill River, Kansas)
1944
oil on canvas, mounted on panel
Tacoma Art Museum

Houghton Cranford Smith
Near Los Andes
1944
oil on canvas
Wichita Art Museum, Kansas

William Sommer
Portrait of Miss Eunice Merton
1944
watercolor on paper
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Bough Travis
Still Life
1944
oil on panel
Akron Art Museum, Ohio

from Dichtung und Wahrheit (An Unwritten Poem)

                                                              I

Expecting your arrival tomorrow, I find myself thinking I love You: then comes the thought – I should like to write a poem which would express exactly what I mean when I think these words.

                                                              II

Of any poem written by someone else, my first demand is that it be good (who wrote it is of secondary importance); of any poem written by myself, my first demand is that it be genuine, recognizable, like my handwriting, as having been written, for better or worse, by me. (When it comes to his own poems, a poet's preferences and those of his readers often overlap but seldom coincide.) 

                                                              III

But this poem which I should now like to write would not only have to be good and genuine: if it is to satisfy me, it must also be true.

     I read a poem by someone else in which he bids a tearful farewell to his beloved: the poem is good (it moves me as other good poems do) and genuine (I recognize the poet's "handwriting"). Then I learn from a biography that, at the time he wrote it, the poet was sick to death of the girl but pretended to weep in order to avoid hurt feelings and a scene. Does this information affect my appreciation of his poem? Not in the least: I never knew him personally and his private life is no business of mine. Would it affect my appreciation if I had written the poem myself? I hope so. 

– W.H. Auden (1959)

Epic

Félix Vallotton
Bust of Homer
before 1925
woodcut
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques
des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Jean Lecomte du Nouÿ
Homer the Blind Wanderer
(left panel, Odyssey - right panel, Iliad)
1881
oil on canvas
(exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1882) 
Musée de Grenoble

James Pradier
Blind Homer with his Guide
1852
plaster
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Andrea del Sarto
Head of Homer and Study of Youth
ca. 1520-21
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Alexander the Great
preserving the writings of Homer
16th century
drawing
(after exterior fresco by Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Georg Pencz
Paris with his first wife, the nymph Oenone
ca. 1539
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Josef Kässmann
Paris with the Golden Apple
1824
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Pierre Courteys
Abduction of Helen
before 1586
enamel on copper
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Lucas van Leyden
Hector of Troy, Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar
ca. 1515-25
woodcut
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Bartolomeo Cavaceppi
Head of Odysseus
ca. 1775
marble
(fragmentary antique head rebuilt by Cavaceppi)
Musée d'Art Classique de Mougins

Ludwig von Schwanthaler
Leukothea rescuing Odysseus from the Storm
1839
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Gerard Hoet
Shipwrecked Odysseus encountering Nausicaä
ca. 1690
oil on panel
Kunstmuseum Basel

Michael Wolgemut and Wilhelm Pleydenwurff
The Witch Circe with Odysseus and his Shipmates
1493
hand-colored woodcut
(illustration from the Nuremberg Chronicle)
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Luca Penni
Return of Odysseus
ca. 1545-55
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Johann August Nahl the Younger
Telemachus recognizing his father Odysseus
ca. 1810
oil on canvas
Schlossmuseum Weimar

Angelica Kauffmann
Telemachus and his Mentor on the Island of Calypso
(scene from Les Aventures de Télémaque by François Fénelon)
before 1784
oil on canvas
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Narrative art is bound to lead to space and the exploration of visual effects, and the reading of these effects in their turn demands a different kind of "mental set" from the magic rune with its enduring potency.  But Plato was right when he felt that something had been sacrificed to this change: the timeless function of the potent image, the Pharaoh forever dominating his foes, had to be discarded in favor of an imaginary fleeting moment of time that might easily tempt an artist into triviality.  To us, the element of sacrifice that is involved in all naturalistic art has become somewhat obscured by the accident that the word "Geek art" conjures up for most of us a picture of sculpture rather than painting.  Yet it is in painting that the reduction to one moment of time and one angle of view will involve the more obvious loss.  We remember that this was one of the shortcomings that Plato held against the painter, who could not represent the couch as it is but only as it appears from one side.  If the painting is to make us into spectators of an imaginary scene, it has to sacrifice that diagrammatic completeness that was demanded by the earlier functions of art.  Pliny has preserved for us the remark of a Hellenistic critic who praised the skill of the famous painter Parrhasios in creating the illusion of roundness by the outlines of his figures.  This, we read, is the most subtle part of painting, "for the outline must go round and so end, that it promises something else to lie behind and thereby shows even what it obscures."  It is a passage which has aroused much puzzled comment.  But I believe that when we compare any conceptual figure of pre-Greek or early Greek art with the miracles of freely moving figures as we know them from classical wall paintings, we may gather wherein the triumph of Parrhasios lay.  His figures suggest what they can no longer show.  We feel the presence even of the features we do not see, and so he can show us a dancing maiden turning into the picture, an image that would have appeared senseless to any pre-Greek artist.  Imagine Pygmalion creating a figure with only one arm, or a head without eyes.  The figure in space can be conceived only when we have learned to see it as a sign referring to an outer, imagined reality.  We are expected to know that the arm must be there but that the artist could not see it from where he stood, and neither can we.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960).