Inside Ovals

John Adams Whipple
Caged Cupids
ca. 1855
salted paper print
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Gaspare Venturini
Young Emperor
1592-93
oil on canvas
Galleria Estense, Modena

Louis-Bertin Parant
Julius Caesar
ca. 1812
enameled terracotta plaque (imitating cameo)
Musée du Louvre

Jacques Lipchitz
Still Life
1918
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Laurent Le Magnier
Combat de l'Art contre la Nature
1667
marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Giovanni Domenico Lombardi (l'Omino)
St Aloysius Gonzaga adoring the Crucifix
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Palazzo Mansi, Lucca

John Smart
Miniature Portrait of Mary Smart
1808
watercolor on ivory
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Antonio Tempesta
Death of Absalom in Battle
ca. 1605-1610
oil on copper
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Nathaniel Marchant
Portrait of Torquato Tasso
ca. 1775
plaster relief
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Joseph Slater
Portrait of a Man
1808
drawing
British Museum

Herman van Swanevelt
Landscape with Goats and Herders
1654
oil on copper
Musée du Louvre

Thomas Rowlandson
Time ravishing Truth
before 1827
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

John Riley
Portrait of James, Duke of York
ca. 1675
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Padovanino (Alessandro Varotari)
Parable of the Wise and Foolish Virgins
ca. 1636-37
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Raffaellino da Reggio (Raffaele Motta)
Portrait of a Youth
ca. 1570
drawing
British Museum

Christian Friedrich Zincke
Miniature Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1730
enamel on copper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Konstantin Somov
Venetian Carnival
1930
gouache on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

from The Prisoner of Chillon

A kind of change came in my fate,

My keepers grew compassionate;

I know not what had made them so,

They were inured to sights of woe,

But so it was: my broken chain

With links unfastened did remain,

And it was liberty to stride

Along my cell from side to side

And up and down, and then athwart,

And tread it over every part;

And round the pillars one by one,

Returning where my walk begun,

Avoiding only, as I trod, 

My brothers' graves without a sod;

For if I thought with heedless tread

My step profaned their lowly bed,

My breath came gaspingly and thick,

And my crushed heart felt blind and sick.

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1816)

Inside Ovals

Léonard Limosin
Venus and Cupid
1555
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Pierre Courteys
The Month of July
ca. 1560
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Lot and his Daughters
ca. 1585-1600
alabaster relief
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Platter with Triumph of Galatea
1589
maiolica
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous French Artist
Platter with modeled Lizard
ca. 1600-1650
glazed earthenware
Musée du Louvre

Michelangelo Cinganelli
Allegory of Faith
ca. 1620-25
ceiling fresco
Galleria Palatina, Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Cristofano Allori
Portrait of a Woman
before 1621
oil on copper
private collection

Leonaert Bramer
Abraham and his Family departing for Canaan
ca. 1635
oil on panel
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Clemente Bocciardo
Self Portrait
cs. 1640-50
drawing (frame drawn by later hand)
British Museum

attributed to Emanuel de Critz
Portrait of John Tradescant the Elder
cs. 1645
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous Dutch Artist
Venus and Cupid with spying Satyrs
17th century
oil on copper
Galleria Palatina, Florence

Pierre Hutinot
Le Temps qui découvre la Vertu et l'amour des Arts
1667
marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Charles de La Fosse (figures) and Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (flowers)
The Annunciation
1688
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous British Artist
Miniature Portrait of Alexandra, Princess of Wales
1853
enamel on copper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Eugène Chauvigné
Roses
ca. 1874
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Konrad Cramer
Synchronist Composition
ca. 1916
gouache on paper
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Vasilij Dmitrovič Ermilov
Oval Composition
ca. 1923
oil on panel
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

The Nile

It flows through old hushed Egypt and its sands,

    Like some grave mighty thought threading a dream,

    And times and things, as in that vision, seem

Keeping along it their eternal stands –

Caves, pillars, pyramids, the shepherd bands

    That roamed through the young world, the glory extreme

    Of high Sesostris, and that Southern beam,

The laughing queen that caught the world's great hands.

Then comes a mighty silence, stern and strong,

As of a world left empty of its throng,

    And the void weighs on us; and then we wake,

And hear the fruitful stream lapsing along

    Twixt villages, and think how we shall take

    Our own calm journey on for human sake. 

– Leigh Hunt (1818)

Likeness

Anonymous Dutch Artist
Portrait of artist Romeyn de Hooghe
ca. 1730-50
watercolor on paper
(after an engraved self-portrait)
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous German Artist
Portrait of Polish statesman Jan Zamoyski
1587
hand-colored woodcut
Herzog August Bibliothek, Wolfenbüttel

Anonymous Swiss Artist
Portrait of artist Johann Caspar Schinz
ca. 1775
etching
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Giovanni Jacopo Caraglio after Titian
Portrait of writer Pietro Aretino
ca. 1533-35
engraving
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Richard Cosway
Portrait of Augustus Cavendish Bradshaw
1790
watercolor miniature on ivory
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Paul Delaroche
Portrait of Delfina Potocka
1849
oil on canvas
National Museum, Warsaw

Gilles Demarteau after Jean-Baptiste Huet
Portrait of Madame Huet
1773
stipple-engraving
Städtisches Museum, Braunschweig

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Mrs Charles Hatchett
ca. 1786
oil on canvas
Frick Collection, New York

Hans Gasser
Study for Medallion Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1850
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Hendrik Goltzius
Portrait of writer Diederik van Batenburg
ca. 1580
etching and engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Robert Nanteuil
Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Budes,
comte de Guébriant (with beauty patch)
ca. 1655
engraving
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Niccolò Nelli
Catherine de' Medici, Regent of France
1567
etching and engraving
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Balthasar Permoser
Elector Johann Georg IV of Saxony
1691-92
ivory relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Ludwig Ferdinand Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Miniature Portrait of a Man
ca. 1825
oil on copper
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

William J. Shew
Portraits of Man and Woman
ca. 1857
daguerreotypes
Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

Johan Wierix
Portrait of Mary, Queen of Scots
ca. 1587
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Thucydides, an Athenian, wrote the war of the Peloponnesians and the Athenians as they warred against each other, beginning to write as soon as the war was on foot, with expectation it should prove a great one and most worthy the relation of all that had been before it; conjecturing so much both from this, that they flourished on both sides in all manner of provision, and also because he saw the rest of Greece siding with the one or the other faction, some then presently and some intending so to do.  For this was certainly the greatest commotion that ever happened among the Grecians, reaching also to part of the barbarians and, as a man may say, to most nations.  For the actions that preceded this and those again that are yet more ancient, though the truth of them through length of time cannot by any means clearly be discovered, yet for any argument that, looking into times far past, I have yet light on to persuade me, I do not think they have been very great, either for matter of war or otherwise. 

For it is evident that that which now is called Hellas was not of old constantly inhabited; but that at first there were often removals, everyone easily leaving the place of his abode to the violence always of some greater number.  For whilst traffic was not, nor mutual intercourse, but with fear, neither by sea nor land, and every man so husbanded the ground as but barely to live upon it without any stock of riches and planted nothing (because it was uncertain when another should invade them and carry all away, especially not having the defence of walls), but made account to be masters, in any place, of such necessary sustenance as might serve them from day to day, they made little difficulty to change their habitations.  And for this cause they were of no ability at all, either for greatness of cities or other provision.    

– from The Peloponnesian War as written by Thucydides (5th century BC) and translated by Thomas Hobbes (1628) and edited by David Grene (1959)