Ascendings

William-Adolphe Bouguereau
Les Oréades
1902
oil on canvas
Musée d'Orsay, Paris

Max Beckmann
Aerialists
1928
oil on canvas
Von der Heydt Museum, Wuppertal

Daniel Nikolaus Chodowiecki
The Great Hourglass of Time
1778
etching
Museum Folkwang, Essen

Laura Knight
Swing Boats
1923
etching and aquatint
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Vilhelm Tveteraas
Around the Fire
1948
color woodblock print
Stavanger Kunstmuseum, Norway

Nikolai Stepanovich Trosjin
Cigarette Butts into the Receptacle
1930
lithograph (poster)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Giovanni Battista Gaulli (il Baciccio)
Thanks-Offering of Noah
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Thomas Ruff
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2006
C-print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Juan de Valdés Leal
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1658-60
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Pierre Puget
Assumption of the Virgin
ca. 1664-65
marble relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Otto Gebhard
Apotheosis of St Odile of Alsace
ca. 1735
oil on canvas
(modello for fresco)
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joseph Anton Koch
Abduction of Ganymede
ca. 1820-30
oil on panel
Landesmuseum Hannover

Antonio Campi
Resurrection of Christ
ca. 1560-70
oil on panel
Galleria Sabauda, Turin

Jacopo Tintoretto
Risen Christ
ca. 1540
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hans Thoma
Mercury in Flight
1897
lithograph
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Walter Hirsch
Untitled
2002
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

As he spoke, he pressed into Nausikles' hand one of the royal rings.  A magnificent, sublime thing it was, its hoop inset with amber, its bezel aflame with an Ethiopian amethyst as big in circumference as a maiden's eye and in beauty far surpassing the amethysts of Iberia and Britain, in which the bloom of crimson is pale and weak: they are like rosebuds just breaking into flower and blushing pink for the first time in sunlight, but from the heart of an Ethiopian amethyst blazes a pure radiance, fresh as springtime.  If you held one and turned it in your hands, it would throw off a shaft of golden light that did not dazzle the eye with its harshness but illuminated it with its brilliance.  Furthermore, there resides in it a power more authentic than in the stones of the west: its name is no misnomer, it truly is amethysos, "proof against intoxication," and keeps its owner sober at drinking parties.*

Every amethyst from India or Ethiopia is as I have described, but the stone the Kalasiris was now presenting to Nausikles was far superior to all others, for it had been incised and deeply carved to represent living creatures.  The scene depicted was as follows: a young boy was shepherding his sheep, standing on the vantage point of a low rock, using a transverse flute to direct his flock as it grazed, while the sheep seemed to pasture obediently and contentedly in time to the pipe's melody.  One might have said that their backs hung heavy with golden fleeces; this was no beauty of art's devising, for art had merely highlighted on their backs the natural blush of the amethyst.  Also depicted were lambs, gamboling in innocent joy, a whole troop of them scampering up the rock, while others cavorted and frolicked in rings around their shepherd, so that the rock where he sat seemed like a kind of bucolic theater; others again, reveling in the sunshine of the amethyst's brilliance, jumped and skipped, scarcely touching the surface of the rock.  The oldest and boldest of them presented the illusion of wanting to leap out through the setting of the stone but of being prevented from doing so by the jeweler's art, which had set the collet of the ring like a fence of gold to enclose both them and the rock.  The rock was a real rock, no illusion, for the artist had left one corner of the stone unworked, using reality to produce the effect he wanted: he could see no point in using the subtlety of his art to represent a stone on a stone!  Such was the ring.

*This etymology is specifically rejected by Pliny and Plutarch (Table Talk), who suggests that the amethyst was so called because its color was like that of wine so watered down as to remove any threat of inebriation.

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)

Descendings

Gerhard Richter
Ema (Nude on a Staircase)
1966
oil on canvas
Museum Ludwig, Cologne

attributed to Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Perimele thrown from a Cliff
by her father Hippodamus
(scene from Ovid)
ca. 1780
drawing
Yale University Art Gallery

Håkon Bleken
Icarus
1971
drawing
Nasjonalmuseet, Oslo

Alexandre-Denis Abel de Pujol
Figure of Ignorance
1819
drawing
(study for ceiling painting, Renaissance of the Arts)
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Valenciennes

Fernand Léger
The Divers
1945
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Mannheim

Anonymous Italian Artist
Falling Youth
ca. 1575-1600
drawing
Princeton University Art Museum

Théodore Chassériau
Study of the model Joseph
(also employed by Géricault for Raft of the Medusa)
1839
oil on canvas
Musée Ingres-Bourdelle, Montauban

Lennart Forsberg
Severe Thunderstorm
ca. 1970
linocut
(book illustration)
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Harold Edgerton
Water flowing from Faucet
ca. 1950
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Carl Curman
Untitled (Waterfall)
ca. 1890
cyanotype
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Hans Thoma
Falls of the Rhine at Schaffhausen
1876
oil on canvas
Kunsthalle Bremen

Aelbert Cuyp
Conversion of Saul
ca. 1645-48
oil on panel
Dordrechts Museum

Jacob Philipp Hackert
Eruption of Vesuvius
1774
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Anonymous Italian Artist
Fall of Phaeton
ca. 1700
drawing
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Théodore Géricault
Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1818
drawing
Cantor Arts Center, Stanford University

Edmund Joseph Sullivan
Icarus
1906
drawing
Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

"Different nations make different claims about Homer's origins, my friend, and it may be true that the wise man is a native of every city.  But the fact of the matter is that Homer was a compatriot of mine, an Egyptian, and his hometown was Thebes, 'Thebes of the hundred gates,' to borrow his own phrase.  Ostensibly he was the son of a high priest, but in actual fact his father was Hermes, whose high priest his ostensible father was: for once when his wife was sleeping in the temple in the performance of some traditional rite, the god coupled with her and sired Homer, who bore on his person a token of this union of human and divine, for, from the moment of his birth, one of his thighs was covered with a shaggy growth of hair.  Hence, as he begged his way around the world, particularly through Greece, performing his poetry, he was given the name ho meros, 'the thigh.'  He himself never spoke his true name, never mentioned his city or his origins, but the name Homer was coined by those who knew of his physical deformity."

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)

Pisceans - IV

Johanne Hansen-Krone
Young Man by the Sea
1981
oil on canvas
Stortingets Kunstsamling, Oslo

Josef Hegenbarth
Bathers on a Raft
ca. 1945
oil on board
Galerie Neue Meister (Albertinum), Dresden

workshop of Nicolaes Maes
Bathing
ca. 1655-60
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Max Liebermann
Swimmers
1875-77
oil on canvas
Dallas Museum of Art

Paul Cézanne
Bathers
ca. 1879-82
oil on canvas
(formerly owned by Henri Matisse)
Musée du Petit Palais, Paris

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi
Landscape with Scene under an Awning
ca. 1678
oil on copper
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Landscape with Bathing Shepherds
ca. 1630
oil on copper
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Eugène Boudin
Herd Drinking
ca. 1880-95
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Abraham Govaerts
Scene around a Pond with Animals
ca. 1620
oil on copper
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Domenichino (Domenico Zampieri)
Landscape with a Ford
ca. 1605-1607
oil on canvas
Palazzo Doria Pamphilj, Rome

Jan Siberechts
The Ford
1665
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Jan Brueghel the Elder
Jonah and the Whale
ca. 1597-98
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Anders Zorn
Bathers
1917
etching
Prins Eugens Waldemarsudde, Stockholm

Karl Friedrich Schinkel
Landscape with Children Bathing
1812
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Peder Severin Krøyer
Skagen - Summer Day
1884
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Peder Severin Krøyer
Skagen - Summer Evening
1893
oil on canvas
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Theagenes and Charikleia, and Knemon too, suddenly took stock of all the troubles that beset them.  They seemed to want to form a plan, but the extent of their past woes, the hopelessness of their present predicament, the uncertainty of the future, clouded their intellects.  For a long time they stared at one another, each expecting the others to speak; but meeting only with silence, they averted their eyes towards the ground, then raised their heads and drew a deep breath, easing with a sigh the pain that pressed heavy on their hearts.  Finally Knemon lay down on the ground.  Theagenes slumped onto a rock, and Charikleia flung herself on top of him.  For as long as they could they kept at bay the sleep that assailed them, for they wanted desperately to devise a strategy against their present plight; but eventually they were compelled to obey the law of nature and yield to their lassitude and fatigue.  They slipped into a sweet slumber, so intense was their sorrow.  Thus it is that sometimes the conscious mind consents to accede to bodily pain.

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989) 

Pisceans - III

Oscar Björck
Launching the Boat
1888
oil on canvas
Skagens Museum, Denmark

Carl Bloch
Young Sailor
1874
oil on copper
Hirschsprung Collection, Copenhagen

Ditlev Conrad Blunck
Infancy
(Four Ages of Man)
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Ditlev Conrad Blunck
Youth
(Four Ages of Man)
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Ditlev Conrad Blunck
Manhood
(Four Ages of Man)
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Ditlev Conrad Blunck
Old Age
(Four Ages of Man)
ca. 1840-45
oil on canvas
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Arnold Clementschitsh
Over the Water
ca. 1920-30
oil on board
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Solomon Corrodi
Coast of the Island of Capri
1835
watercolor on paper
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Hendrik Jacobsz Dubbels
Seascape
ca. 1655-60
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Albert Edelfelt
At Sea
1883
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Carl Locher
Fishing Boats in Moonlight
1888
oil on canvas
Skagens Museum, Denmark

Sebastiano Ricci
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
ca. 1695-97
oil on canvas
Detroit Institute of Arts

Karl Schnebel
Sport im Bild
(magazine)
ca. 1910
lithograph (poster)
Kunstbibliothek, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Keelmen heaving in Coals by Moonlight
1835
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Claude-Joseph Vernet
Fishing Port at Dawn
1774
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Anders Zorn
In My Gondola
1894
oil on canvas
Zornmuseet, Mora, Sweden

It was to Thisbe that Thermouthis was hurrying, confident that she had escaped the perils of war.  He landed on the island and ran as fast as his legs would carry him to the huts, of which nothing now remained but ashes.  With some difficulty Thermouthis located the entrance to the cave by the stone that lay across it.  Making a torch from the few, still smoldering reeds that were left, he scrambled down into the cave as quickly as he could, calling Thisbe by name – for her name was the one word of Greek he knew.  But the sight of her dead body struck him dumb.  A long time he stood there, but eventually he became aware of the hum and murmur of voices floating upwards from the bowels of the cave, for Theagenes and Knemon were still engaged in conversation.  He concluded that these were Thisbe's murderers, but now he was in a quandary: on the one hand he had the hot blood of all brigands and the quick temper of all savages, which, aggravated by his frustrated passion, impelled him to close with the supposed culprits there and then; on the other hand he had no weapon, no sword.  Reluctantly he was constrained to control his impulses: better, he thought, to conceal his hostile intentions for the first encounter, then to wreak vengeance on his foes the moment he could lay his hands on a weapon.  Thus resolved, he presented himself to Theagenes and the others.  But the wild and cruel way he regarded them made all too plain that purpose hidden in his heart.  

– Heliodorus, from The Aethiopica, or, Theagenes and Charikleia (3rd or 4th century AD), translated from Greek by J.R. Morgan (1989)