Named Face

Anonymous Sculptor
Death Mask of John Keats
1816
plaster
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

James Barry
Francis Douce
1803
ink and wash on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Julia Margaret Cameron
Sir Henry Taylor
1864
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Clodion (Claude Michel)
Montesquieu
1783
marble statue
Musée du Louvre

John Dugdale
Maurice Sendak
2000
cyanotype
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

François-Xavier Fabre
Vittorio Alfieri
1793
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

John La Farge
William James
ca. 1859
oil on board
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Alphonse Legros
Thomas Carlyle
1877
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Lucinda Mackay
Professor John Erickson
1999
acrylic on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Man Ray
Nancy Cunard
1925
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Rollie McKenna
James Merrill
1961
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Irving Penn
Rachel Carson
1951
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Irving Penn
T.S. Eliot
1950
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Ellen Emmet Rand
Henry James
1900
oil on canvas
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

John Singer Sargent
Edmund Gosse
1886
oil on canvas
Burton Gallery, University of Leeds, West Yorkshire

Nelson Shanks
Timothy Clifford
2007
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Richard Westall
John Ireland
ca. 1800
ink and watercolor on paper
British Museum

I forgot about the airplane that hit an eagle.  An eagle is a bird of God, and it must not be killed, and therefore tsars, emperors, kings, and others like them must not be killed either.  I am not a predatory bird and will therefore not kill predatory birds.  I know I will be told that predatory birds are harmful creatures, then I will say exactly the same as I have said about lice that are found in peyes.  I like tsars and aristocrats, but their actions are not good.  I will set them an example and will not destroy them.  I will give them a medicine to cure them of drunkenness.  I will help them in every way because I am god, but I will ask everyone to help me do this, because I cannot fulfill all god's desires by myself.  I want everyone to help me, and therefore I ask people to apply to me for help.  I am god and my address is in god. 

– from The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky, written in Russian in 1919, translated by Kyril FitzLyon and edited by Joan Acocella (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1999)

Named Face

Pierre-Michel Alix
Jean-Paul Marat
1793
color aquatint
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Frédéric Bazille
Edouard Blau
ca. 1869
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giuseppe Boschi
Cicero
1793
bronze
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Philippe de Champaigne
Robert Arnauld d'Andilly
1667
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

William Daniell after George Dance
Bennet Langton
1809
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Clae Eastgate
Carol Ann Duffy
2016
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Michele Gordigiani
Francesco Silvio Orlandini
1860
oil on canvas
Galleria d'Arte Moderna, Florence

Augustus John
T.E. Lawrence
1929
oil on canvas
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Ludovico Lipparini
Leopoldo Cicognara
1825
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Man Ray
Marcel Proust
1922
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Norman McBeath
Don Paterson
2002
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Alexander Moffat
Muriel Spark
1984
oil on canvas
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Irving Penn
Truman Capote
1948
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Erasmus Quellinus the Younger
Pope Urban VIII Barberini
ca. 1630
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Alexander Roslin
Jean-François Marmontel
1767
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Walter Sickert
Max Beerbohm
ca. 1912
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jean-Baptiste Stouf
Michel de Montaigne
1800
marble
Musée du Louvre

Comfort to a Youth that had Lost his Love

What needs complaints,

When she a place

Has with the race

        Of saints?

In endless mirth

She thinks not on

What's said or done

        In Earth.

She sees no tears,

Or any tone

Of thy deep groan

        She hears:

Nor does she mind

Or think on 't now

That ever thou

        Wast kind;

But changed above,

She likes not there,

As she did here,

        Thy love.

Forbear therefore,

And lull asleep

Thy woes, and weep

        No more.

– Robert Herrick (1591-1674)

White Elements

Reidun Tordhol
Against Grey Background
1990
oil on canvas
Lillehammer Kunstmuseum, Norway

Peter Karnig
Untitled
ca. 1975
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Valentin Serov
Portrait of Maria Vasilievna Yakunchikova
ca. 1885-88
oil on canvas
Malmö Konstmuseum, Sweden

Luca della Robbia
Virgin and Child with Angels
ca. 1450
glazed terracotta
Bode Museum, Berlin

workshop of Lucas Cranach the Younger
Postmortem Portrait of Martin Luther
ca. 1574
oil on panel
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Otto Friedrich
Heinrich Gallia in Officer's Uniform
ca. 1915
oil on paper (sketch)
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Henri Fantin-Latour
Still Life with Torso and Flowers
1874
oil on canvas
Göteborgs Konstmuseum, Sweden

Anonymous Artisans
Cast of the Farnese Hercules
(after colossal marble original in Naples)
18th century
plaster
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Thomas Gainsborough
Portrait of Miss Ann Ford
1760
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

René de Saint-Marceaux
Charlotte Corday
ca. 1899
marble
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Carl Jacob Malmberg
Stage Personality Helga Frankenfeldt
1870
collodion print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Félix Nadar
Sarah Bernhardt as Pierrot
1883
collodion print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Fernand Khnopff
Madeleine Mabille with Painting Tools
1888
oil on panel
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Louis Bastin
Arrangement of White Objects
1957
etching and aquatint
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Eva Rubinstein
Duane Michals
1972
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Danny Lyon
Two Prisoners from Corpus Christi, Texas
1968
gelatin silver print
Moderna Museet, Stockholm

Deep into the night they talked of many things, naturally enough for two people who believed that after tonight they would never see one another again and who were enjoying one another's company as long as they might.  Eventually they fell to considering the miracle at the stake.  Theagenes was inclined to attribute it to the benevolence of the gods, who had been incensed by Arsake's iniquitous allegations and taken pity on her innocent and blameless victim.  Charikleia seemed to be less certain.

"My bizarre deliverance," she said, "certainly bears all the marks of a supernatural or divine intervention to save me.  But the fact that we are so beset by one misfortune coming directly after another and subject to such various and excessive torments suggests that we are under heaven's curse and the victims of divine malevolence – unless it is the divinity's way of working miracles to plunge us deep in despair and then deliver us from the abyss!"

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