Shaped to Adorn

Julius Mante
Ideal Head of an American
ca. 1890
oil on panel
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Nicolas de Largillière
La belle Strasbourgeoise
1703
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg

Lié-Louis Périn
Portrait of military surgeon Jean-Baptiste Duquenelle
ca. 1795
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Johann Kaspar Heilmann
Self Portrait
ca. 1748
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Mulhouse

Alfred Cheney Johnston
Lady in Green Velvet
ca. 1930-40
carbro print
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

August Sander
Soldier
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hippolyte Berteaux
La Bretonne
1900
oil on canvas
Musée du Château des ducs de Bretagne, Nantes

Anonymous German Artist
Portrait of Margarethe von der Saale
1539
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Giambattista Tiepolo
Head of Turbaned Man
1760
drawing
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Harald Sohlberg
Girl with Hat
ca. 1890
drawing
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Tom Kosmo
The Experiment
2009
mezzotint
KORO (Public Art Norway), Oslo

Joseph-Laurent Bouvier
The Egyptian
ca. 1868
oil on canvas
(exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1869)
Musée de Grenoble

Lovis Corinth
Merchant and art collector Arthur Kraft
costumed as Cesare Borgia
1914
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joseph Edward von Gillern
Portrait of Frau Manheimer
1824
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jan van Eyck
Portrait of Margareta van Eyck
1439
oil on panel
(earliest surviving portrait of an artist's spouse)
Groeninge Museum, Bruges

Jean-Léon Gérôme
Tête de Femme coiffée de Cornes de Bélier
1853
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nantes

Chorus:

And at first I would say that what came

to Ilium's city was a spirit

of windless calm,

a gentle adornment of wealth,

a soft glance darted from the eyes,

a flower of love to pierce the soul.

But she swerved aside and brought about

a bitter end to the marriage,

having come to the family of Priam

as an evil settler, an evil companion,

sent by Zeus god of hospitality,

a Fury who made brides weep.

There is a hoary saying, long spoken among mankind,

that a man's prosperity,

ripened and grown great,

has offspring and does not die childless,

that from his good fortune there springs

insatiable woe for his family.

But I differ from others, and have a belief of my own:

it is the impious deed

that breeds more to follow,

resembling their progenitors:

for a house that keeps the straight path of justice

breeds a fortune that is always fair.

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

Robert Bruce Inverarity

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Morris Graves and Malcolm Roberts
ca. 1936
tricolor carbro print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Morris Graves
1938
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Self Portrait
1938
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Carl Morris
1939
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Joe Knowles
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Suzy Perit
ca. 1940
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Hilaire Hiler
1947
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Howard Warshaw
1947
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
James Fitzsimmons
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Jane Inverarity
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Helen Lundberg
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Dorothea Tanning
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Man Ray
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Stanton Macdonald-Wright
1948
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
John Haley
1949
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Robert Bruce Inverarity
Dorothy Royer
1949
gelatin silver print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Chorus from Thyestes

 
'Tis not wealth that makes a king,

Nor the purple's colouring,

Nor a brow that's bound with gold,

Nor gates on mighty hinges rolled.

The king is he, who void of fear,

Looks abroad with bosom clear;

Who can tread ambition down,

Nor be sway'd by smile or frown;

Nor for all the treasure cares,

That mine conceals, or harvest wears,

Or that golden sands deliver,

Bosom'd in a glassy river.

What shall move his placid might?

Not the headlong thunderlight,

Nor the storm that rushes out

To snatch the shivering waves about,

Nor all the shapes of slaughter's trade

With forward lance or fiery blade.

Safe, with wisdom on his crown,

He looks on all things calmly down,

He welcomes fate, when fate is near,

Nor taints his dying breath with fear.

– Seneca (4 BC-AD 65), translated by Leigh Hunt (1814)

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).

Belle Époque - III

Artur Nikodem
Lady with Hat
ca. 1910
drawing
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Edvard Munch
Recital
1903
lithograph
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Joseph-Paul Meslé
Portrait of Mademoiselle Marie P.
1896
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Constant Montald
Dancing Nymphs
1898
tempera and oil on canvas
Musée Fin de Siècle, Brussels

Peder Severin Krøyer
Portrait of Marie Krøyer
1890
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Karl Gussow
Portrait of a Young Woman
1881
oil on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Flagg & Plummer
Woman with Winged Dress
ca. 1900
collodion silver print
(cabinet card)
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Jan Toorop
Woman with Parasol
1888
oil on canvas
Musée d'Ixelles, Brussels

Alfred Stieglitz
Woman placing Garland on Herm
1895
platinum print
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

Thérèse Schwartze
Portrait of Marie Louise Treub
1912
oil on canvas
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Hans Olde
Portrait of Adelheid von Schorn
1906
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Félicien Rops
Flore
ca. 1890
watercolor on cardboard
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Théo van Rysselberghe
Portrait of Margareta von Kühlmann-Stumm
1913
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Edward Penfield
Harper's - July
1896
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Oskar Zwintscher
Woman seated among Flowers
1904
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Anders Zorn
Night Effect
1895
oil on canvas (sketch)
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

The twenty-fourth book present Azoulis as narrator and then Dinias adding Azoulis's stories to the tales he has already told Cymbas.  We learn how Azoulis discovered the method of enchantment whereby Paapis had employed his magic to cause Dercyllis and Mantinias to come to life at night but during the day to be corpses, and how he freed them from the affliction when he found the secret of the punishment inflicted, and also the antidote to it, in Paapis's bag, which Mantinias and Dercyllis had brought with them.  He also discovered how Dercyllis and Mantinias should free their parents from the great curse to which they had fallen victim.  On the advice of Paapis, who led them to believe that they would be acting for their parents' good, they themselves had injured their parents grievously by causing them to lie like corpses for a long time. 

Then Dercyllis and Mantinias hurried home to revive and save their parents.  Dinias, along with Carmanes and Meniscus – for Azoulis had separated from them – extended their journey beyond Thule.  This is the journey in which he saw the wonders beyond Thule, according to the report he is now presented as making to Cymbas.  He says he saw things that enthusiasts of stargazing maintain, such as that it is possible for some people to live at the North Pole, and that a night there lasts a month, sometimes less, sometimes more, or six months, or in the extreme case twelve months, and not only is night drawn out to such an extent, but days correspond in duration to the nights.

– 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).