Appearances

Anonymous Florentine Sculptor
Idealized portrait of Empress Faustina
ca. 1470-80
relief in pietra serena
Musée du Louvre

Alessandro Araldi
Portrait of Beatrice d'Este
ca. 1491
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Bernardino de' Conti
Portrait of Bianca Maria Sforza
ca. 1495
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Giulio della Torre
Portrait of Marcantonio di Girolamo della Torre
ca. 1519
bronze medallion
British Museum

Michelangelo Buonarroti
Idealized Head - Woman with Elaborate Coiffure
ca. 1525-28
drawing
British Museum

attributed to Jean II Pénicaud
Pompey the Great
ca. 1540
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Léonard Limosin
Portrait of Henri II, King of France
ca. 1550
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Pier Leone Ghezzi
Sketch of Francesco Maria Carafa della Stadera,
Principe di Belvedere
ca. 1740
drawing
British Museum

John Everett Millais
Portrait of Ford Madox Brown
1853
watercolor on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

George Du Maurier
Head of a Woman
ca. 1865
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Lucien Pissarro
Portrait of Esther reading
ca. 1892
pastel on blue paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Jean-Jacques Henner
Madame Hélène Lyon née Loeb
ca. 1900
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Simon Bussy
Chameleon
ca. 1920-30
pastel on paper
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Edward Steichen
John Barrymore
ca. 1922
cyanotype and palladium print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Paul Cadmus
Fidelma (sister of the artist)
ca. 1926
drypoint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Leonard Baskin
Thomas Eakins House Restoration
1972
silver commemorative medal
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Susan Rothenberg
Black in Place
1976
acrylic and tempera on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

from Dialogues concerning Natural Religion

"Hesiod and all ancient mythologists were so struck with this analogy that they universally explained the origin of nature from an animal birth and copulation.  Plato too, so far as he is intelligible, seems to have adopted some such notion in his Timaeus.  The Brahmins assert that the world arose from an infinite spider who spun this whole complicated mass from his bowels and annihilates afterwards the whole or any part of it by absorbing it again and resolving it into his own essence.  Here is a species of cosmogony which appears to us ridiculous, because a spider is a little contemptible animal whose operations we are never likely to take for a model of the whole universe.  But still here is a new species of analogy, even in our globe.  And were there a planet wholly inhabited by spiders (which is very possible) this inference would there appear as natural and irrefragable as that which in our planet ascribes the origin of all things to design and intelligence."

– David Hume (written ca. 1750, published 1779)

Appearances

Desiderio da Settignano
Julius Caesar
ca. 1455-60
marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Bernardino de' Conti
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1500-1510
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Agnolo di Polo
Bust of Young Man
(fragment of Adoration of the Magi scene)
ca. 1515-20
painted terracotta
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

attributed to Jean II Pénicaud
Cleopatra
ca. 1540
enamel on copper
Musée du Louvre

Titian
Portrait of Doge Nicolò Marcello
ca. 1542
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

attributed to Baccio Bandinelli
Profile Head of a Man
ca. 1550
marble relief
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Wenceslaus Hollar after Karel Škréta
Head of Youth
1635
etching
British Museum

Jan van Bronckhorst
Portrait of artist Jacob van der Does
1655
drawing
British Museum

Nicolas de Plattemontagne
Portrait of artist Jean-Baptiste Champaigne
with his wife Geneviève
1677
charcoal and colored chalks on paper
British Museum

Antonio Perfetti
Cameo Portrait of sculptor Antonio Canova
ca. 1805-1810
engraving
British Museum

Georges Jacquot
Une jeune nymphe descendant dans l'eau
1824
marble
Musée du Louvre

Arnold Böcklin
Portrait of Angela Böcklin
1863
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Antonio Salvetti
Reading
1894
oil on canvas
Museo San Pietro, Colle di Val d'Elsa

Rudolf Eickemeyer
Elsie Whelen
1903
platinum print
National Museum of American History, Washington DC

Robert Hardmeyer
Waschanstalt Zürich AG
1904
lithograph (poster for commercial laundry)
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Nickolas Muray
Rose Rolanda Covarrubias
ca. 1930
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

L.S. Lowry
Lady on a Crossing
1964
oil on canvas
Milwaukee Art Museum, Wisconsin

draft passage for the Treatise on Human Nature

"When you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing but that from the particular constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it.  Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects but perceptions in the mind.  And this discovery in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a mighty advancement of the speculative sciences: though like that too, it has little or no influence on practice."

– David Hume (ca. 1740)

Appearances

Anonymous Florentine Sculptor
Idealized portrait of Emperor Galba
ca. 1470-80
relief in pietra serena
Musée du Louvre

Gregorio di Lorenzo (Master of the Marble Madonnas)
Idealized Portrait of Emperor Hadrian
ca. 1472
painted marble relief
Musée du Louvre

Gian Cristoforo Romano
State Medallion of Isabella d'Este
ca. 1505
bronze
Musée du Louvre

Hieronymus Hopfer
Portrait of Wolfgang Jörger
before 1563
etching
British Museum

Alessandro Ardenti
Portrait of Pietro Machiavelli
before 1595
gilt-bronze medallion
Musée du Louvre

Lorenzo Bartolini
Portrait of Napoleon with Laurel Wreath
1805
bronze herm
Musée du Louvre

Thomas Stothard
Portrait Study of William Burns
(son of poet Robert Burns)
1811
drawing
British Museum

John Henning
Portrait of Princess Charlotte Augusta
ca. 1812
plaster silhouette relief
Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh

Carl Rauch after Andréas Léonhard Moeglich
Portrait of painter Angelica Kauffmann
ca. 1820-30
stipple engraving
British Museum

Alfred Edward Chalon
Portrait of opera singer Maria Malibran
1830
watercolor on paper
British Museum

Jules Breton
Portrait of Jeanne Calvet
1865
oil on panel
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Michele Gordigiani
Portrait of Contessa Bastogi
1895
oil on canvas
Museo Civico Giovanni  Fattori, Livorno

Odilon Redon
Profile
ca. 1895
oil on paper, mounted on canvas
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Mark Tobey
Winthrop Pankhurst
1916
drawing
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Baron Adolf De Meyer
Portrait of Daisy Fellowes
ca. 1920
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Richard Diebenkorn
Seated Figure with Hat
1967
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Jock McFadyen
New York Subway
1988
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

from Fragment on Evil

"When I consider the subject with the utmost impartiality and take the most comprehensive view of it, I find myself more inclined to think that evil predominates in the world, and am apt to regard human life as a scene of misery, according to the sentiments of the greatest sages as well as of the generality of mankind from the beginning of the world to this day.  I am sensible, however, that there are many circumstances which are apt to pervert my judgement in this particular and make me entertain melancholy views of things.  What is evil alarms us more and makes more lasting impression than what is agreeable, which we readily receive without inquiry and which we think ourselves in some measure entitled to.  Besides, the greater intenseness of our pains has a much more powerful influence on the imagination that the frequency of our pleasures, and it is almost impossible for us to make a just compensation betwixt them.  Should I enumerate all the evils incident to human life and display them with eloquence in their proper colours, I should certainly gain the cause with most readers, who would be apt to despise as frivolous all the pleasures which could be placed in opposition to them.  Victuals, wine, a fiddle, a warm bed, a coffee-house conversation make a pitiful figure when compared with racks, gravels*, infamy, solitude, and dungeons."

– David Hume (ca. 1740)

*kidney stones