Nymphs

Roman Empire
Nymph
AD 125-150
marble
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Victor Müller
Model posed as Wood Nymph
ca. 1862
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Jean-Baptiste Regnault
Sleeping Nymph spied upon by Satyr
ca. 1775-85
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Agostino Carracci
Satyr and sleeping Nymph
(Lascivie Series)
ca. 1590-95
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Hans Thoma
Faun and Nymph
1888
watercolor on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Alexander Keirincx (landscape) and Dirck van der Lisse (figures)
Nymphs at Rest
ca. 1635
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Carcassonne

François Boucher
Nymphs and River Gods
ca. 1735-40
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

attributed to Benedetto Bordone
Nymph leading Poliphilo
1499
woodcut and letterpress
(from the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili of Francesco Colonna
published by Aldus Manutius in Venice)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Marco Dente
Vulcan with Nymph and Putti
(series, Antike Basreliefs)
ca. 1510-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Christos Karas
Centaur and Nymph
1930
screenprint
National Gallery, Athens

Pietro Rotari
Marsyas discovered by Nymphs and Satyrs
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Anselm Feuerbach
Children making Music while Nymph listens
1864
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Felice Torelli
Diana with Nymphs
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Diana with her Nymphs
1659
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop
Diana and Nymphs departing for the Hunt
ca. 1615
oil on canvas
Cleveland Museum of Art, Ohio

Jean-Antoine Watteau after Peter Paul Rubens
Satyr embracing Nymph
ca. 1714
drawing
Cabinet d'Arts Graphiques des Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Leonardo was obviously dissatisfied with the current method of drawing trees.  He knew a better way.  "Remember," he taught, "that wherever a branch divides, the stem grows correspondingly thinner, so that, if you draw a circle round the crown of the tree, the sections of every twig must add up to the thickness of the trunk."  I do not know if this law holds.  I do not think it quite does.  But as a hint on "how to draw trees," Leonardo's observation is invaluable.  By teaching the assumed laws of growth he has given the artist a formula for constructing a tree – and so he can still feel like the creator, "Lord and Master of all things," who knows the secrets of nature and can "make" trees as he hoped to "make" a bird that would fly.   

I believe what we call the Renaissance artists' preoccupation with structure has a very practical basis in their need to know the schema of things.  For in a way our very concept of "structure," the idea of some basic scaffolding or armature that determines the "essence" of things, reflects our need for a schema with which to grasp the infinite variety of this world of change.  No wonder these issues have become somewhat clouded by a metaphysical fog which settled over the discussions of art in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.  

– E.H. Gombrich, Art and Illusion: a Study in the Psychology of Pictorial Representation (Princeton University Press, 1960)

Museum Porcelain

Josef Hoffmann for Vienna Porcelain Manufactory 
Melon-shaped Creamer from Mocha Set
1929
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Josef Hoffmann for Vienna Porcelain Manufactory
Melon-shaped Sugar Bowl from Mocha Set
1929
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Josef Hoffmann for Vienna Porcelain Manufactory
Melon-shaped Cup and Saucer from Mocha Set
1929
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Josef Hoffmann for Vienna Porcelain Manufactory
Melon-shaped Mocha Pot from Mocha Set
1929
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Anonymous Chinese Potter
Ewer
Qing Dynasty, 18th-19th centuries
porcelain
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Meissen Manufactory (Dresden)
Vinegar Pot
ca. 1730-35
porcelain
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Meissen Manufactory (Dresden)
Tea Cup and Saucer
ca. 1730-40
porcelain
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Nikolai Fyodorovich Lapshchin
Cup and Saucer
ca. 1921
porcelain
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Sergey Chekhonin for State Porcelain Manufactory, Petrograd
Teapot
(with text, We Are Hardworking - We Are Truthful)
1921
porcelain
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Maxim Gorky
ca. 1950-60
bisque porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Chess Set with Whites versus Reds
ca. 1922-32
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Chess Set - detail of Whites
ca. 1922-32
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Chess Set - detail of Reds
ca. 1922-32
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Red Army Cavalryman
ca. 1925
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Red Army Soldier playing Accordion
ca. 1950
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Lomonosov Porcelain Factory (Saint Petersburg)
Woman embroidering Soviet Banner
1920
porcelain
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Sèvres Manufactory
Bathing Nymph
(after a sculpture by Étienne-Maurice Falconet)
ca. 1765-75
porcelain
New Orleans Museum of Art

Niderviller Manufactory (Lorraine)
Nymphs garlanding Cupid
ca. 1750
bisque porcelain
Newport Mansions Preservation Society, Rhode Island

On Wenlock Edge the wood's in trouble;

    His forest fleece the Wrekin heaves;

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

    And thick on Severn snow the leaves.

'Twould blow like this through holt and hanger

    When Uricon the city stood:

'Tis the old wind in the old anger,

    But then it threshed another wood.

Then, 'twas before my time, the Roman

    At yonder heaving hill would stare:

The blood that warms an English yeoman,

    The thoughts that hurt him, they were there.

There, like the wind through woods in riot,

    Through him the gale of life blew high;

The tree of man was never quiet:

    Then 'twas the Roman, now 'tis I.

The gale, it plies the saplings double,

    It blows so hard, 'twill soon be gone:

To-day the Roman and his trouble

    Are ashes under Uricon.

– A.E. Housman (1896)

Group Endeavors - II

Léon Belly
Sirens luring Odysseus
1867
oil on canvas
Musée de l'Hôtel Sandelin, Saint-Omer

Luca Giordano
Abduction of Helen
cs. 1680
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Caen

Monogrammist GF after Francesco Primaticcio
Vulcan and his Cyclops-Assistants forging Cupid's Arrows
ca. 1540-50
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Wenceslaus Hollar after Francesco Francia
Scene of Pagan Sacrifice
1638
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Anonymous Italian Artist
The Taking of Christ
11th century
ivory relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Lawrence Alma-Tadema
Crossing of the River Berezina in 1812
ca. 1860-65
oil on canvas
Amsterdam Museum

Roman Empire
Cupids hanging Garlands
AD 50-79
fresco
(detached from Pompeian interior)
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Jean-Simon Berthélemy
Socrates instructing the Young
1784
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Salvator Rosa
Plato's Academy
1662
etching
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Albrecht Altdorfer
Victory of Charlemagne over the Avars
1518
oil on panel
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Virgil Solis
Battle between Greeks and Trojans
ca. 1550-60
woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wulfenbüttel

Marten van Valckenborch the Elder
The Tower of Babel
1595
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Anonymous German Artist
The Fall of Manna
ca. 1470
oil on panel
Detroit Institute of Art

Monogrammist IB
Battle of Gladiators
ca. 1523-30
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jean-Guillaume Moitte
Scene of Pagan Sacrifice
1792
drawing
Musée Magnin, Dijon

Peter Paul Rubens and workshop of Jan Brueghel the Elder
Nymphs filling a Cornucopia
1615
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Chorus of Persian Elders:

But what mortal man can escape

the guileful deception of a god? 

Who is so light of foot

that he has power to leap easily away?

For Ruin begins by fawning on a man in a friendly way* 

and leads him astray into her net,

from which it is impossible for a mortal to escape and flee.

For that reason my mind

is clothed in black and torn with fear:

"Woe for the Persian army!" –

I dread that our city may hear this cry –
"The great capital of Susiana is emptied of its manhood!" –

and that the city of the Cissians

will sing in antiphon,

a vast throng of women

howling out that word "woe!"

and their linen gowns will be rent and torn.

For all the horse-driving host

and the infantry too,

like a swarm of bees, having left the hive with the leader of their army,

passing over the projecting spur** that belongs to both continents

and yokes them together across the sea.

And beds are filled with tears,

because the men are missed and longed for:

Persian women, grieving amid their luxury, every one, loving and longing for her husband,

having sent on his way the bold warrior who was her bedfellow,

is left behind a partner unpartnered.

But come, Persians, let us sit down

in this ancient building

and take good thought and deep counsel –

for there is pressing need to do so.

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

*as Cerberus does to those arriving at the gates of Hades

**i.e. the bridge of boats, conceived as an artificial promontory which seems at one end like an extension of Asia, and at the other end like an extension of Europe