Boxed

Anonymous French Artist
Centaur (Sagittarius)
ca. 1160-70
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Alesso Baldovinetti
Virgin and Child with Eight Saints
1453
tempera on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Garcia Fernandes
The Resurrection
1537
oil on canvas
Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon

attributed to Pietro Francavilla
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1580
bronze plaquette
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Henri Fantin-Latour
Pink and Red Roses
1886
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ernst Würtenberger
Self Portrait
1906
oil on canvas
private collection

Nathan Oliveira
Adolescent by the Bed
1959
oil on canvas
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Eva Hesse
Untitled
1960
oil on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

James Barnor
Cover Girl Erlin Ibreck, Kilburn, London
1966
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Lee Krasner
Imperative
1976
collage, charcoal and oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Gregory Amenoff
Hydra
1984
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

Valerie Jaudon
Constant
1988
oil on canvas
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Albert Oehlen
Untitled
1992
oil and enamel on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Grethe Unstad
Reflections and Living Room
ca. 2000-2002
oil on canvas
private collection

Lisa Liedgren
Le Deuxième Sexe (1948-49)
2003
oil on canvas
Tacoma Art Museum, Washington State

Graciela Iturbide
Chair - Tecali, Mexico
2011
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Paul Yanko
Screen Stack Grid
2021
acrylic paint and assemblage on panel
private collection

from The Wreck of the Deutschland

            Loathed for a love men knew in them,

            Banned by the land of their birth,

        Rhine refused them; Thames would ruin them;

            Surf, snow, river and earth

    Gnashed: but thou art above, thou Orion of light,

    Thy unchancelling poising palms were weighing the worth,

        Thou martyr-master: in thy sight

Storm flakes were scroll-leaved flowers, lily showers – sweet heaven was astrew in them. 

– Gerard Manley Hopkins (1876)

Bronzes

Ancient Greek Culture
Hydria
5th century BC
bronze
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Etruscan Culture
The Goddess Lasa
3rd-2nd century BC
bronze statuette
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Roman Empire
Bust of Plato
1st century AD
bronze relief appliqué
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Roman Empire
Mars
1st century AD
bronze statuette
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Roman Empire
Bust of Youth
1st-2nd century AD
bronze relief appliqué
(furniture ornament)
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Francesco di Giorgio Martini
St Anthony Abbot
ca. 1470-80
bronze plaquette
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Antico (Pier Jacopo Alari Bonacolsi)
Bust of Emperor Marcus Aurelius
ca. 1500
gilt bronze
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Caradosso Foppa
Silenus and Maenads
1500
bronze plaquette
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Andrea Mantegna
St Sebastian
ca. 1500
gilt-bronze statuette
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Pietro Tacca
Tarquin and Lucretia
ca. 1630
bronze
Bode Museum, Berlin

Massimiliano Soldani after Gianlorenzo Bernini
Damned Soul
ca. 1705-1707
bronze
Liechtenstein Museum, Vienna

Anton Mathias Joseph Domanöck
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan
1753
bronze relief
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux
Maenad
ca. 1865
bronze
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Pablo Picasso
Jester
1905
bronze
Pinakothek der Moderne, Munich

Einar Utzon-Frank
Head of Aphrodite
1915
bronze
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Anonymous Artist
 Young Hercules
20th century
bronze
(forgery of Greek antiquity)
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

All this while the Athenians at Pylus besieged the Lacedaemonians in the island, and the army of the Peloponnesians in the continent remained still upon the place.  This keeping of watch was exceedingly painful to the Athenians in respect of the want they had both of corn and water, for there was no well but one and that was in the fort itself of Pylus and no great one.  And the greatest number turned up the gravel and drank such water as they were like to find there.  They were also scanted of room for their camp and their galleys not having place to ride in, they were forced by turns some to stay ashore and others to take their victual and lie off at anchor.  But their greatest discouragement was the time which they had stayed there longer than they had thought to have done, for they thought to have famished them out in a few days, being in a desert island and having nothing to drink but salt water.  The cause hereof were the Lacedaemonians, who had proclaimed that any man that would should carry in meal, wine, cheese, and all other esculents necessary for a siege into the island, appointing for the same a great reward of silver; and if any Helot should carry in any thing, they promised him liberty.  Hereupon divers with much danger imported victual, but especially the Helotes, who, putting off from all parts of Peloponnesus, wheresoever they chanced to be, came in at the parts of the island that lay to the wide sea.  But they had a care above all to take such a time as to be brought in with the wind.  For when it blew from the sea, they could escape the watch of the galleys easily; for they could not then lie round about the island at anchor.  And the Helotes were nothing tender in putting ashore, for they ran their galleys on ground, valued at a price in money; and the men of arms also watched at all the landing places of the island.  But as many as made attempt when the weather was calm were intercepted.  There were also such as could dive, that swam over into the island through the haven, drawing after them in a string bottles filled with poppy tempered with honey, and pounded linseed; whereof some at the first passed unseen, but were afterwards watched.  So that on either part they used all possible art, one side to send over food, the other to apprehend those that carried it.  

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

Formerly Sacred

Giovanni Battista Langetti
Samson drinking water from supernatural spring issuing from
cloven tooth of ass's jawbone used to slay 1,000 Philistines
1665
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Giovanni da San Giovanni (Giovanni Mannozzi)
Samson and Delilah
ca. 1634-35
fresco on terracotta
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Gabriel de Saint-Aubin
Samson pulling down the Pillars of the Temple
1767
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rex Whistler
Samson pulling down the Temple of the Philistines
1928
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Pompeo Batoni
Hagar and the Angel
1776
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Francesco Coghetti
Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness
1846
oil on canvas
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo

Anonymous Roman Painter
Angel appearing to Hagar and Ishmael in the Wilderness
17th century
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Herman van Swanevelt
Hagar and the Angel
ca. 1635-36
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Odilon Redon
Hagar and Ishmael
1866
drawing
British Museum

Daniele da Volterra (Daniele Ricciarelli)
Elijah in the Desert
ca. 1543
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Jacob Jacobsz van Geel
Wooded Landscape with Elijah and the Widow of Sarepta
before 1635
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Rutilio Manetti
Elijah reviving the Dead Son of the Widow of Sarepta
ca. 1625
oil on canvas
Collezioni della Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena

Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli (il Morazzone)
Dream of Elijah
before 1625
oil on canvas
Museo Diocesano, Milan

Cosimo Ulivelli
Prophet Elijah carried to Heaven
ca. 1685
drawing (fresco study)
British Museum

Anonymous Venetian Artist
Elijah ascending in the Fiery Chariot
ca. 1490-1500
bronze plaquette
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini
Bathsheba
ca. 1708-1711
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin

Jacopo Zucchi
Bathsheba Bathing
ca. 1573-74
oil on copper
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

from Address for a Prize-Day

    Imagine to yourselves a picked body of angels, all qualified experts on the human heart, a Divine Commission, arriving suddenly one day at Dover.  After some weeks in London, they separate, one passing the petrol pumps along the Great North Road, leaving the dales on his left hand, to take all rain-wet Scotland for his special province, one to the furnace-crowded Midlands, another to the plum-rich red-earth valley of the Severn, another to the curious delta-like area round King's Lynn, another to Cornwall where granite resists the sea and our type of thinking ends, and so on.  And then when every inch of the ground has been carefully gone over, every house inspected, they return to the Capital again to compare notes, to collaborate on a complete report, which made, they depart as quietly as they came.  Beauty of the scenery apart, would you not feel some anxiety as to the contents of that report?  Do you consider their statistics as to the average number of lost persons to the acre would be a cause for self-congratulation?  Take a look round this hall, for instance.  What do you think?  What do you think about England, this country of ours where nobody is well?  

– W.H. Auden, The Orators (1931)