Cynosures

Marwan (Marwan Kassab Bachi)
Portrait of poet Bader Chaker al-Sayyab
1965
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Daniel Massad
Night Piece
1987
pastel on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Master of the 1540s
Portrait of a Man
1545
oil on panel
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Margrethe Mather
Pierrot (actor Otto Matiesen)
ca. 1920
platinum palladium print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Henri Matisse
Nature Morte avec Livres
ca. 1895
oil on canvas
Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam

Leonard Maurer
Proust
1973
linocut
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Gabriel Max
The Anatomist
1869
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Ludovico Mazzolino
Circumcision of Christ
1526
oil on panel (altarpiece)
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Rollie McKenna
Portrait of art historian Agnes Claflin
ca. 1955
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

William McTaggart
Group of Classical Casts
ca. 1860
drawing
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Mendell & Oberer (Munich)
Gerhard Richter - Neue Bilder Galerie
1967
offset lithograph (exhibition poster)
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

William Menelaws
Portrait of Mrs John Muir
1905
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, British Columbia

Hans Mettler
Venetian Laundry II
2001
C-print
Ottawa Art Gallery, Ontario

Nicolas Mignard
Portrait présumé de
Françoise Marguerite de Sévigné, comtesse de Grignan
before 1668
oil on canvas
Musée d'Art et d'Histoire de Narbonne

Hieronymus van der Mij
Portrait of Johan van den Bergh
1746
oil on panel
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Peter Milton
The Jolly Corner III (Henry James)
1971
etching and engraving
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

George Minne
De Kleine Relikwiedrager
1897
marble
Kunstmuseum, The Hague

from Minturno, or, On Beauty

(Modeled on Plato's Hippias Major, Minturno is a conversation between the philosopher Antonio Minturno and Geronimo Ruscelli, a colorful courtier and dilettante)

Giacomo Ruscelli:  If the beautiful is not what is pleasing to the senses of hearing and sight, what other definition can we find that is equally satisfactory?

Antonio Minturno:  Let's not abandon the search for one.

G.R.:  I have often read that beauty is a proportion between parts that are well arranged.  This opinion, which many have shared, is not easy to dismiss.

A.M.:  There is proportion only where there are dissimilar parts.  But if beauty were a proportion between parts that do not resemble each other, there would be no beauty in simple things, but gold and silver are beautiful, in the judgment of miserable mortals, as well as diamonds, rubies, and other precious stones; colors are beautiful, and light, in which there is no proportion at all, is very beautiful indeed.  Besides, there are times when the proportion between the parts remains – as in bodies grown old and feeble – but not beauty, which is lost with the flower of youth.  For these reasons I am not satisfied with this definition either.

G.R.:  I do not know if I can produce any other that will satisfy you more.  But you must recall the definitions of Plutarch and Plotinus.  The first is that beauty is an ornament or glory of the soul which irradiates the body, the other that it is a victory of form over matter.  To these one could add another that beauty is an appearance or an image of the good, as ugliness is a darkened face of evil.

A.M.:  I remember having read something of these things and heard them spoken about, but I find myself with the same doubts.  For if beauty is an ornament of the soul imparted to the body or a victory of form over matter, then it must exist in bodily and material things, in which there is perhaps no beauty at all, or not the kind we are seeking.  And I wonder at Nifo and the other Peripatetics, who have located beauty in the body and in matter, because by its nature matter is ugly and deformed in the extreme, or rather is ugliness itself, so that the beautiful would be found to exist in the ugly as its proper medium, which is not at all fitting, for the beautiful should issue from the beautiful as flower issues from flower.  Besides, if the opinion of those who have defined it in this way is true, the angels would not be beautiful, since in the angelic nature matter is not overcome by form, and there is no body to which the soul's quality can be imparted.  

– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1593-94), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)

Aloft

Oliviero Gatti after Pordenone
God the Father creating the World
1615
engraving
(after church fresco in Piacenza)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Guglielmo Caccia
God the Father
before 1625
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Bartholomeus Spranger
God the Father with the Holy Spirit
ca. 1582
oil on canvas
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous Genoese Artist
Musical Angels on Clouds
ca. 1650-1700
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Ubaldo Gandolfi
Ceiling Design with Musical Angels
before 1781
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

François Boucher
Three Cherubs
ca. 1750
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Luca Cambiaso
God the Father observing the Martyrdom of a Saint
before 1585
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Samuel Bottschild
Angel
ca. 1675
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Gaspare Diziani
Angel in Clouds
before 1767
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Gaspare Diziani
Flying Putti with Fish Tails
before 1767
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Abraham Bloemaert
Flying Putti
ca. 1590
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Jacob de Wit
Three Cherub-Heads in Clouds
before 1754
pastel on paper
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Giambattista Tiepolo
Foreshortened Figure on Cloud
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giambattista Tiepolo
Foreshortened Figure on Cloud
before 1762
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Giocondo Albertolli
Ceiling Decoration for Palazzo Casnedi in Milan
ca. 1780
hand-colored etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Printmaker
Design for Ceiling Decoration
16th century
woodcut
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

The army of the Peloponnesians marching forward came first to Oenoe, a town of Attica, the place where they intended to break in, and encamping before it, prepared with engines and by other means to assault the wall.  For Oenoe, lying on the confines between Attica and Boeotia, was walled about, and the Athenians kept a garrison in it for defence of the country when at any time there should be war.  For which cause they made preparation for the assault of it, and also spent much time about it otherwise.  

And Archidamus [Lacedaemonian general] for this was not a little taxed as thought to have been both slow in gathering together the forces for the war and also to have favoured the Athenians in that he encouraged not the army to a forwardness in it.  And afterwards likewise his stay in the isthmus and his slowness in the whole journey was laid to his charge, but especially his delay at Oenoe.  For in this time the Athenians retired into the city: whereas it was thought that the Peloponnesians, marching speedily, might but for this delay have taken them all without.  So passionate was the army of Archidamus for his stay before Oenoe.  But expecting that the Athenians, whilst their territory was yet unhurt, would relent and not endure to see it wasted, for that cause (as it was reported) he held his hand. 

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

Unstinting

Bernard van Orley
Pentecost
ca. 1530
oil on panel
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Gilles-Marie Oppenord
Design for Title Page
ca. 1732-42
drawing
Morgan Library, New York

Gordon Onslow-Ford
Determination of Gender
1939
oil on canvas
Tate Modern, London

Elizabeth Olds
Yearlings
1957
gouache, ink and collage on paper
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Georgia O'Keeffe
Only One
1959
oil on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carlo Francesco Nuvolone
The Resurrection
ca. 1650
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Emil Nolde
Still Life (Majolica on Blue Background)
1911
oil on canvas
Art Gallery of Ontario, Toronto

William Millington Nixon
The Lashmar Family
ca. 1857-58
daguerreotype
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Elias Nessenthaler
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1690
mezzotint
Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig

Charles Nègre
Notre Dame - Gargoyle and photographer Henri Le Secq
ca. 1860
collodion print from salted paper negative
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Eglon van der Neer
Young Woman at Breakfast
1665
oil on panel
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Penelope Naylor
The Origin of Flowers II
1986
oil and pastel on paper
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Ernest-Étienne Narjot de Francheville
Mon Brave
1871
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Daniel Mytens the Elder
Portrait of a Young Noblewoman
ca. 1629
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Gabriele Münter
Lower Main Street, Murnau
1910
oil on board
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, California

Benjamin Muñoz
Epilogue
2020
color woodblock print
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

from Minturno, or, On Beauty

(Modeled on Plato's Hippias Major, Minturno is a conversation between the philosopher Antonio Minturno and Geronimo Ruscelli, a colorful courtier and dilettante)

Antonio Minturno:  If beauty exists or is to be found among the things of the world, who would be better able to find it than you?

Geronimo Ruscelli:  Possibly no one seeks it more than I do, but it has often happened that what I judged beautiful was not considered to be so by others, or not by everyone, as the Furioso is. 

A.M.:  Is there some way we can be sure of this?  It seems to me that just as wise men are wise by wisdom, and just men by justice, so beautiful men, or all beautiful things, are beautiful by beauty, and that beauty – or the beautiful, as we may call it – is that which makes them what they are.  With this observation and rule, as it were, let us try to recognize beauty in such a way that no other thing could be mistaken for it – if indeed it is some other thing that makes horrible and monstrous figures appear beautiful, as with the serpents or devils painted by Raphael or Michelangelo, or the fables of the Cyclops and the Orc [from Orlando Furioso]. 

G.R.:  It is the beauty of poetic genius which allows us to recognize with certainty what is terrible or marvelous in these things.  Still, I'm more inclined to seek it in Marfisa, Bradamante, and Olimpia, whose beauties Ariosto has described with such felicity of language and thought, and if I were forced to say what beauty is, I would say it is a beautiful woman resembling Olimpia, at the moment when, without any robe or veil, she shows herself naked to the eyes of her beholders [another image from Orlando Furioso].

A.M.:  If you remove the veil from beauty, it will perhaps be found to exist only in souls separated from bodies, for bodies are, so to speak, a veil covering the beauty of the soul.  But when Ariosto describes the beauty of Angelica and Olimpia, he resembles that Daedalus you mentioned earlier – or rather he is less artful, for while Daedalus gave movement to statues, Ariosto takes it away from living persons.  As he says of Angelica:

                    And had so far in sorrow gone
                    She seemed turned to senseless stone.

– Torquato Tasso (ca. 1593-94), translated by Dain A. Trafton and Carnes Lord (1982)

Fragments

Anonymous Italian Artist
Classical Architectural Fragments in Landscape
ca. 1700
drawing (bound into album)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Pansies
1967
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Vase with Flower Bouquet
1755
porcelain
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Alligators
1917
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Anonymous Italian Artist
Angel conducting Habakkuk
to succour Daniel in the Lions' Den
ca. 1715
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Green Shadow #2
1998
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Wall Lights
ca. 1760
porcelain and gilt bronze
(made for Madame de Pompadour)
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Paul Helleu lying in a Field
1889
pastel on paper
British Museum

Anonymous Italian Artist
Arms of Pope Alexander VII Chigi
ca. 1655
charcoal and watercolor on album page 
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Lilies against Yellow House
1983
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Vases à oreilles
1758
porcelain
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
En route pour la pêche
1878
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Anonymous Italian Artist after Luca Cambiaso
Holy Family with young St John the Baptist
18th century
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Alex Katz
Tulips
1969
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Sèvres Manufactory
Pot pourri à vaisseau
1760
porcelain
(made for Madame de Pompadour)
Musée du Louvre

John Singer Sargent
Madame Gautreau drinking a Toast
ca. 1883-84
oil on canvas
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Anonymous Italian Artist after Girolamo Mazzola Bedoli
Head of a Woman
16th century
drawing
British Museum

from The Prisoner of Chillon

It might be months, or years, or days,

    I kept no count, I took no note,

I had no hope my eyes to raise,

    And clear them of their dreary mote;

At last men came to set me free;

    I asked not why, and recked not where;

It was at length the same to me,

Fettered or fetterless to be,

    I learned to love despair.

And thus when they appeared at last,

And all my bonds aside were cast,

These heavy walls to me had grown

A hermitage – and all my own!

And half I felt as they were come

To tear me from a second home:

With spiders I had friendship made,

And watched them in their sullen trade,

Had seen the mice by moonlight play,

And why should I feel less than they?

We were all inmates of one place,

And I, the monarch of each race,

Had power to kill – yet, strange to tell!

In quiet we had learned to dwell;

My very chains and I grew friends,

So much a long communion tends

To make us what we are – even I

Regained my freedom with a sigh.

– George Gordon, Lord Byron (1816)