Nuptials

Martín Chambi
Wedding of Don Julio Gadea, Cuzco
1926
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Nicolas Vleughels
Marriage at Cana
1728
oil on copper
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Pierre Tetar van Elven
Wedding in the Italian Campagna
ca. 1880
watercolor on paper
private collection

Lodewijk Toeput (Ludovico Pozzoserrato)
Marriage Portrait
before 1605
oil on canvas
Museo Civico di Treviso

Martin Parr
Wedding Preparations, England
1988
inkjet print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Bernaert van Orley
Marriage of the Virgin
ca. 1513
oil on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Domenico Mondo
Marriage of the Virgin
before 1806
drawing
British Museum

Lucas van Valckenborch
Peasant Wedding-Dance
1574
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Everlyn Nicodemus
The Wedding 45
1991
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Guillaume Bodinier
Marriage Contract in Italy
1831
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Jean-Antoine Watteau
Marriage Contract and Country Dance
ca. 1711
oil on canvas
Museo del Prado, Madrid

Eugène-Louis Lami
Marriage of the duc d'Epernon
1872
watercolor and gouache on paper
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Gordon Onslow-Ford
Study for The Marriage
1946
watercolor and gouache on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Kristian Zahrtmann
Mystic Marriage of the Abbess of Pistoia
1894
oil on canvas
private collection

Niccolò Trometta
Marriage of the Virgin
ca. 1565-68
drawing (fresco study)
British Museum

Richard Caton Woodville
The Sailor's Wedding
1852
oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, Baltimore

Anonymous Artist
Medallion to celebrate the Marriage
of Mary, Queen of Scots and Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley
1565
silver
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

from Forefathers

Unrecorded, unrenowned,

        Men from whom my ways begin,

Here I know you by your ground

        But I know you not within –

There is silence, there survives

Not a moment of your lives.

– Edmund Blunden (1920)

Appearances

Anonymous Florentine Sculptor
Idealized portrait of Empress Faustina
ca. 1470-80
relief in pietra serena
Musée du Louvre

Alessandro Araldi
Portrait of Beatrice d'Este
ca. 1491
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Bernardino de' Conti
Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza
ca. 1495
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Giulio della Torre
Portrait of Marcantonio di Girolamo della Torre
ca. 1519
bronze medallion
British Museum

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Idealized Head - Woman with Elaborate Coiffure
ca. 1525-28
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Jean II Pénicaud
Pompey the Great
ca. 1540
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Léonard Limosin
Portrait of Henri II, King of France
ca. 1550
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Sketch of Francesco Maria Carafa della Stadera,
Principe di Belvedere
ca. 1740
drawing
British Museum

John Everett Millais
Portrait of Ford Madox Brown
1853
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

George Du Maurier
Head of a Woman
ca. 1865
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Lucien Pissarro
Portrait of Esther reading
ca. 1892
pastel on blue paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jean-Jacques Henner
Madame Hélène Lyon née Loeb
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Simon Bussy
Chameleon
ca. 1920-30
pastel on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Edward Steichen
John Barrymore
ca. 1922
cyanotype and palladium print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
Fidelma (sister of the artist)
ca. 1926
drypoint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Leonard Baskin
Thomas Eakins House Restoration
1972
silver commemorative medal
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Susan Rothenberg
Black in Place
1976
acrylic and tempera on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

"Hesiod and all ancient mythologists were so struck with this analogy that they universally explained the origin of nature from an animal birth and copulation.  Plato too, so far as he is intelligible, seems to have adopted some such notion in his Timaeus.  The Brahmins assert that the world arose from an infinite spider who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it by absorbing it again and resolving it into his own essence.  Here is a species of cosmogony which appears to us ridiculous, because a spider is a little contemptible animal whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe.  But still here is a new species of analogy, even in our globe.  And were there a planet wholly inhabited by spiders (which is very possible) this inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence."

– David Hume (written ca. 1750, published 1779)

Solids

Ursula von Rydingsvard
Dumna
2015
bronze
New Orleans Museum of Art

Friedrich Hagenauer
Portrait of a Young Man
before 1546
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Hans Arp
Evocation d'une Forme Humaine, Lunaire, Spectrale
created 1950 - this enlarged version cast in 1957
bronze
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Diva Giulia
ca. 1500-1502
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bernard Rosenthal
Rondo
1965
bronze on marble base
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Piero Paolo Galeotti
Bianca Pansana Carcania
before 1587
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Barbara Hepworth
Figure for Landscape
1960
bronze
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

attributed to Giovanni Candida
Maximilian I, Archduke of Austria (later Emperor)
1477
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Albert Paley
Portal Gates for the Renwick Gallery
(winning entry in design competition)
1974
bronze, steel, brass, copper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Guillaume Dupré
Maria Magdalena, consort of Cosimo II de' Medici
1613
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Henri Matisse
Copy after Puget's Écorché
1903
bronze
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Giovanni Battista Cambi (il Bombarda)
Violante Brasavola
ca. 1565-75
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Mark Grotjahn
Untitled (Blue Purple Left Red Streak Mask M15.c)
2011
painted bronze
Whitney Museum of American Art, New York

Giovanni da Cavino
Portrait of Alessandro Bassiano with Self Portrait
before 1570
bronze medallion
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jean Broome-Norton
Woman with Horses
1934
patinated bronze relief
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Pietro Calvi
Ira Aldridge as Othello
ca. 1870
bronze and marble
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Ferdinand Barbedienne
Allegorical Figure
ca. 1880-90
bronze
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

The Defeated

In battles of no renown

My fellows and I fell down,

And over the dead men roar

The battles they lost before.

The thunderstruck flagstaffs fall,

The earthquake breaches the wall,

The far-felled steeples resound,

And we lie under the ground.

O soldiers, saluted afar

By them that had seen your star,

In conquest and freedom and pride

Remember your friends that died.

Amid rejoicing and song

Remember, my lads, how long,

How deep the innocent trod

The grapes of the anger of God.

– A.E. Housman (1936)