Group Endeavors - III

Hieronymus Francken III
Massacre of the Innocents
ca. 1640
oil on panel
Staatsgalerie im Schloss Johannisburg, Aschaffenburg

Anonymous German Artist
The Immaculate Conception and Her Defenders
ca. 1490-95
oil on panel (altarpiece)
Historisches Museum, Frankfurt

Juan de Juanes
Procession to Monte Gargano
ca. 1570
oil on panel
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Pau

Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Joseph sold by his Brothers
1817
detached fresco
(originally  in Casa Bartholdy in Rome)
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Giovanni Andrea de Ferrari
Joseph sold by his Brothers
ca. 1640
oil on canvas
Galleria Nazionale di Parma

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
The Stoning of Stephen
before 1662
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anonymous German Artist
Christ with Disciples
ca. 1625-50
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Jean-Jacques Lagrenée
Vestals conducting a Sacrifice
1776-77
oil on panel
private collection

Jacob de Wit
Vestal Virgins tending an Altar
1749
oil on canvas (grisaille)
Musée Ingres Bourdelle, Montauban

Enea Vico after Perino del Vaga
Ancient Roman Sacrifice
1542
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Andries Cornelis Lens
Scene of Ancient Sacrifice
ca. 1770
drawing
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Anton Kern
Sacrificial Scene
1747
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Fortunato Duranti
Antique Religious Ritual
ca. 1820
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Jean Restout the Younger
Exaltation of the Cross
1748
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Giambattista Moroni
The Calumny of Apelles
ca. 1565-75
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nîmes

Monogrammist AP
Perseus and the Nymphs
ca. 1800
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

[A carriage is seen approaching. Seated in it is the Queen, magnificently attired and attended. The Chorus rise.]

Chorus of Persian Elders:

But look, here comes the mother of the King,

my Queen, a light as brilliant as that which shines

in the eyes of the gods! I fall down before her –
 
[The Chorus prostrate themselves.]

All hail, my Queen, most exalted among the slim-waisted women of Persia, venerable mother of Xerxes and wife of Darius! You were the spouse of one who was a god to the Persians, and you are the mother of their god too, unless our old protecting power has now changed sides against our army.

Queen:  It is for that reason that I have come here, leaving my gold-bedecked palace and the bedchamber I once shared with Darius, and that my heart is torn by anxiety. I will tell you a saying which is not my own creation but has come down from our ancestors and which causes me to be very fearful, my friends, that great wealth may make the dust rise from the ground by tripping up* the prosperity that Darius, not without the aid of some god, had built up. For that reason there is in my mind an indescribable anxiety, a twofold one. For those who are without wealth, the light of success does not shine in proportion to their physical power; but neither do men revere and honour an accumulation of wealth without men to defend it.** Our wealth is ample, but I fear for our very eye; for I consider the master, when present, to be the eye of his house. In view of this, considering the situation to be as I have said, be my counsellors about this matter, you venerable, trusty Persians; for all the good advice I receive comes from you.

– Aeschylus, from Persians (472 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

*literally, "overturning with its foot," a metaphor from wrestling; the dust rises because the tripped man has fallen heavily, probably on his back

**in other words, human and material resources are alike essential to the acquisition and maintenance of political power, and a regime that is strong in only one of these respects may well be in danger

Mars - I

Donato Creti
Astronomical Observations - Mars
1711
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Edmund Joseph Sullivan
Mars at the Telephone
1901
drawing
(print study)
Morgan Library, New York

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée
Bellona presenting Mars with the Reins of his Horses
1766
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Carlo Lasinio after Raphael
Mars
ca. 1810
engraving
Harvard Art Museums

Nicolas Guinier
Mars battling the Constellation Centaurus
1601
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Hans Weiditz
Mars
ca. 1520
woodcut
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous Roman Artist
Mars
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Master of 1515
Mars bound and blindfolded by Cupid
ca, 1515-20
drypoint
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Jan van Bijlert
Mars bound by Amoretti
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Agostino Carracci after Jacopo Tintoretto
Minerva protecting Peace and Abundance from Mars
1589
engraving
Art Institute of Chicago

Lucas van Leyden
Mars, Venus and Cupid
1530
engraving
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ernest-Louis Lessieux
Mars
ca. 1890
lithographic postcard
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Chelsea Porcelain Manufactory
Mars
ca. 1755
porcelain
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Jan Saenredam after Hendrik Goltzius
Mars presiding over the Art of War
1596
engraving
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres
Mars
1864
oil on canvas
Kunstmuseum, Basel

Antonio Ricciani after Antonio Canova
Napoleon as the God Mars
ca. 1810
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

from Mars

A "seeing night" astronomers would say,
No moon, no mist, a cold tranquillity.
Mars now makes its slow triumphant way
Above the trees, their colours struck, a fee
Of oaks, leaf-legions dead upon the field;
Mars now strides through ruin and defeat.
Bright minister of war, red ant,
Are you assured your carnage is complete?
I recognize those faces on your shield;
Before you, even love must yield:
Your tactic? Feigned retreat. Your orbit? Aberrant.

You double back, a tiger on its spoor,
Your unsuspecting hunters now the prey.
Their dogs are frenzied by the warm allure
Of cunning bait. Your killing's play,
And men no less than dogs are savaged so.
I see you through bare branches now, alone;
Napoleon reviewing Austerlitz,
Alaric reeling through the streets of Rome.
Wherever men have been there is that glow;
Indian jungle or Siberian snow –
Your light recoils through evil transits. 

– Patrick White (1976)

Literary Figures

Hans Wechtlin
Pyramus and Thisbe
(episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses)
ca. 1510
chiaroscuro woodcut
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Anonymous Netherlandish Artist after Pieter Brueghel the Elder
The Wild Man, or, The Masquerade of Orson and Valentine
(derived from a Carolingian romance)
1566
woodcut
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Paolo Veronese
Leda and the Swan
(episode in Ovid's Metamorphoses)
ca. 1575
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Jacob Jordaens
The Satyr and the Peasant
(fable of Aesop)
ca. 1620-21
oil on canvas
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Benjamin West
Cymon and Iphigenia
(episode in Boccaccio's Decameron)
1773
oil on canvas
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Joseph Wright of Derby
The Corinthian Maid
(legend from Pliny the Elder about the invention of drawing)
ca. 1782-84
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
The Origin of Painting
(the Corinthian Maid legend from Pliny the Elder)
1786
oil on canvas
Château de Versailles

Tommaso Conca
The poet Homer with the Muse Calliope
ca. 1786
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Nicolai Abildgaard
Richard III
(scene from Shakespeare)
1787
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Henry Fuseli
Satan encounters Death and Sin at the Gates of Eden
(scene from Milton's Paradise Lost)
ca. 1792-1802
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Nicolai Abildgaard
Greek poet Anacreon and his beloved Bathyllus
ca. 1808
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

William Ewart Lockhart
Gil Blas and the Archbishop
(scene from novel by Alain-René Lesage)
ca. 1880
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Edvard Munch
Portrait of writer Hans Jæger
1889
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Norway, Oslo

Sylvia Gosse
The author Edmund Gosse in his Study
ca. 1913
etching
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

James A.S. Torrance
Tammie felt the wind of Nuckelavee's clutch
(illustration to Scottish Fairy and Folk Tales)
ca. 1900
gouache on paper
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Danila Vassilieff
Fairytale Study - Shipwreck
1949
gouache on paper
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Le Musée Imaginaire 

An Aztec sacrifice,

        beside the head of Pope:

                eclectic and unresolvable.
We admire the first
        for its expressiveness, the second
                because we understand it –
can re-create
        its circumstances, and share
                (if not the presuppositions)
the aura
        of the civilities surrounding it.
                The other, in point
at any rate, of violence
        touches us more nearly.
                And yet . . . it is cruel
but unaccountably so; for the temper of awe
        demanded by the occasion, escapes us:
                it is not
better than we are –
        it is merely different.
                Expressive, certainly. But of what?
Our loss is absolute, yet unfelt
        because inexact. The head
                of Alexander Pope,
stiller, attests the more tragic lack
        by remaining
                what it was meant to be;

intelligible,

        it forbids us to approach it.  

        

– Charles Tomlinson (1963)

Painted Illustrations for Literary Texts

Laurent de La Hyre
Panthea protected by Cyrus from Araspas
(from the Cyropaedia of Xenophon)
ca. 1631-34
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Anonymous British Artist
The Elopement
(from Clarissa by Samuel Richardson)
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Francesco Guardi
Sophronia imploring the Saracen King Aladine
to release the Christian Prisoners
(from Gerusalemme Liberata by Torquato Tasso)
before 1793
oil on canvas
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston-upon-Hull

Charles Robert Leslie
Uncle Toby with the Widow Wadman
(from Tristram Shandy by Laurence Sterne)
1829-30
oil on canvas
Tate Britain, London

Charles West Cope
Il Penseroso
(from Il Penseroso by John Milton)
1848
oil on panel
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

James Sant
The Bride of Abydos
(from The Bride of Abydos by George Gordon, Lord Byron)
ca, 1850
oil on canvas
Government Art Collection, London

from  The Bride of Abydos

Who hath not proved how feebly words essay
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray?
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight
Faints into dimness with its own delight,
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess
The might, the majesty of Loveliness?
Such was Zuleika, such around her shone
The nameless charms unmarked by her alone:
The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face,
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole –
And, oh! that eye was in itself a soul!

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1814)

William Bell Scott
Una and the Lion
(from The Faerie Queene by Edmund Spenser)
ca. 1860
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Emma Sandys
Elaine
(from The Idylls of the King by Alfred, Lord Tennyson)
ca. 1862-65
oil on panel
National Trust, Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
Dante's Dream
(from La Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri)
ca. 1869-72
oil on canvas
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Edward Burne-Jones
Laus Veneris
(from Laus Veneris by Algernon Charles Swinburne)
1873-75
oil on canvas
Laing Art Gallery, Newcastle-upon-Tyne

William Maw Egley
Florence Dombey in Captain Cuttle's Parlour
(from Dombey and Son by Charles Dickens)
1888
oil on canvas
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

John Collier
Hetty Sorrel
(from Adam Bede by George Eliot)
ca. 1890
oil on canvas
Blackburn Museum and Art Gallery, Lancashire

William Robert Symonds
The Princess and the Frog
(from The Frog Prince by the Brothers Grimm)
1894
oil on canvas
Cartwright Hall Art Gallery, Bradford, Yorkshire

John Duncan
Fand and Manannan
(from the Irish ballad, The Sickbed of Cúchulainn)
ca. 1913
oil on canvas
McLean Museum and Art Gallery, Greenock, Inverclyde, Scotland

Maurice Greiffenhagen
Cophetua
(from the English ballad, The King and the Beggar-Maid)
ca. 1920-25
oil on canvas
Glasgow Museums