Tempera

Domenico di Zanobi
Madonna del Soccorso
ca. 1485
tempera on panel
Basilica di Santo Spirito, Florence

Baldo Sarofini
Madonna della Misericordia
ca. 1500
tempera on panel
Pinacoteca Civica, Civitanova Alta

Bernardo Daddi
Stoning of St Stephen
1337-38
tempera on panel (predella fragment)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Ercole de' Roberti
Wife of Hasdrubal and her Children
ca. 1490-93
tempera on panel
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Fra Angelico and Alesso Baldovinetti
Mystic Wheel with the Vision of Ezekiel
ca. 1450-52
tempera on panel
Museo Nazionale di San Marco, Florence

Bartolomeo della Gatta
The Annunciation
ca. 1480
tempera on panel
Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon

Bartolomeo Caporali
The Annunciation
ca. 1460-65
tempera on panel
Musée du Petit Palais, Avignon

Giovanni dal Ponte
The Annunciation
ca. 1420-25
tempera on panel (altarpiece fragments)
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Francesco Pagano
St Sebastian and St Agatha
ca. 1480
tempera on panel
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

attributed to Martino da Verona
Consecration of St Eligius
before 1410
tempera on panel
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Sandro Botticelli
Three Miracles of St Zenobius
1500-1510
tempera on panel
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Andrea Mantegna
Holy Family with young St John the Baptist
ca. 1490-1500
tempera on panel
National Gallery, London

Carlo Crivelli
Virgin and Child
ca. 1480-83
tempera on panel
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Cosimo Rosselli
Virgin and Child in Glory with St Ambrose and St Francis
ca. 1498-1501
tempera on panel (altarpiece)
Chiesa di Sant'Ambrogio, Florence

Cima da Conegliano
The Crucifixion
ca. 1488-93
tempera on panel
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, University of Birmingham, West Midlands

Marco Zoppo
Man of Sorrows
before 1478
tempera on panel
private collection

Cosmè Tura
St John the Evangelist on Patmos
ca. 1470-75
tempera on panel
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

You talk to your admirers every day

By silted harbors, derelict works,

In strangled orchards, and the silent comb

Where dogs have worried or a bird was shot.

Order the ill that they attack at once:

Visit the ports and, interrupting

The leisurely conversation in the bar

Within a stone's throw of the sunlit water,

Beckon your chosen out. Summon

Those handsome and diseased youngsters, those women

Your solitary agents in the country parishes;

And mobilise the powerful forces latent

In soils that make the farmer brutal

In the infected sinus, and the eyes of stoats. 

Then, ready, start your rumour, soft

But horrifying in its capacity to disgust

Which, spreading magnified, shall come to be 

A polar peril, a prodigious alarm,

Scattering the people, as torn-up paper

Rags and utensils in a sudden gust,

Seized with immeasurable neurotic dread.

– W.H. Auden (1930)

Visage

Walker Evans
Caroline Blackwood
ca. 1954
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Eggleston
Memphis
ca. 1971-74
dye transfer print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Etruscan Culture
Ram's Head
525-480 BC
amber
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous Italian Printmaker
Label for Relic
(fragment of the Holy House of Loreto)
ca. 1820
etching
Ashmolean-Museum-Oxford

Walker Evans
Caroline Blackwood
ca. 1958
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Eggleston
Memphis
ca. 1971-74
dye transfer print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Etruscan Culture
Deity holding Hares
600-550 BC
amber
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous Italian Printmaker
Label for Relic
(fragment of the Holy House of Loreto)
ca. 1820
etching
Ashmolean-Museum-Oxford

Walker Evans
Caroline Blackwood
ca. 1973-74
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Eggleston
Untitled
1974
dye transfer print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Etruscan Culture
Standing Female Figure (Kore)
600-500 BC
amber
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous Roman Printmaker after Lorenzo Vaccari
Street Vendors of Rome
1585
engraving (broadside)
British Museum

Walker Evans
Caroline Blackwood
ca. 1973-74
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Eggleston
Untitled
ca. 1971-73
dye imbibition print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Etruscan Culture
Lion Head
550-500 BC
amber
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Anonymous Italian Printmaker
Antique sculpture called Marforio in Landscape
ca. 1775
etching and engraving
Ashmolean-Museum-Oxford

Walker Evans
Caroline Blackwood
ca. 1973-74
Polaroid
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The earth is disintegrating because its fuel is burning out.  Fuel will continue to give heat for a while, but not very much, and therefore God wants love before the earth loses all heat.  People do not think about stars and therefore do not understand the world.  I often think about stars, and therefore I know who I am.  I do not like astronomy, because astronomy does not give us a conception of God.  Astronomy wants to teach us the geography of stars.  I do not like geography.  I know geography because I have studied it.  I realize that the earth is one state.  The earth is the head of God.  God is fire in the head.  I am alive as long as I have a fire in my head.  My pulse is an earthquake.  I am an earthquake.  I know that if there are no earthquakes, the earth will be extinguished, and with the earth extinguished, the whole life of man will be extinguished too, because man will not have a constant supply of food. 

– from The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, written in Russian in 1919, translated by Kyril FitzLyon and edited by Joan Acocella (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999)

Vaulted

Hans Thoma
Marine Miracle
1881
oil on canvas
Museum der bildenden Künste, Leipzig

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Sketch of Vaulted Interior
before 1766
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Countess Vassilievna Skavronskaya
1796
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Lambert Doomer
Boppard on the Rhine
1663
drawing
British Museum

Sanzo Wada
South Wind
1907
oil on canvas
National Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Altar Design
before 1766
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Madame du Barry
1781
oil on panel
Philadelphia Museum of Art

Lambert Doomer
Cleves viewed from the South
1663
drawing
British Museum

Giorgio Vasari
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
ca. 1551
oil on canvas
(installed in Vasari's family chapel)
Chiesa di Santa Maria delle Grazie, Arezzo

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Design for Sepulchral Monument
before 1766
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of painter Joseph Vernet
1778
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Lambert Doomer
Figures under Trellis
ca. 1663
drawing
British Museum

Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida
Return from Fishing
1904
oil on canvas
Museo Frugone, Genoa

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Design for Sepulchral Monument
before 1766
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun
Portrait of Madame Molé-Reymond
de la Comédie-italienne
1786
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Lambert Doomer
Ferry Boat
ca. 1663
drawing
British Museum

Paul Thek
Untitled (Raft Stars Moon)
ca. 1984
acrylic on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

from The Rape of the Lock

      Poets themselves must fall, like those they sung;

Deaf the praised ear, and mute the tuneful tongue.

Even he, whose soul now melts in mournful lays,

Shall shortly want the generous tears he pays;

Then from his closing eyes thy form shall part,

And the last pang shall tear thee from his heart;

Life's idle business at one gasp be o'er,

The Muse forgot, and thou beloved no more

– Alexander Pope (1714)