Showing posts with label scholars. Show all posts
Showing posts with label scholars. Show all posts

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Literati - I

Anonymous French Artist
Molière as César in Corneille's Mort de Pompée
ca. 1658
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Pietro Anichini
Portrait of scholar Cassiano dal Pozzo
1659
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

attributed to Claude Lefebvre
Portrait of correspondent and stylist
Marie de Rabutin-Chantal, marquise de Sévigné
ca. 1665
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Jean-Baptiste Santerre
Portrait of poet Nicolas Boileau
ca. 1690
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Lyon

Catherine Lusurier
Portrait of philosophe Jean d'Alembert
1777
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

John Singleton Copley
Portrait of writer and performer Mary Robinson
in the Character of a Nun

ca. 1780
oil on canvas
Huntington Library and Art Museum
San Marino, California

Jean-Simon Berthélemy
Portrait of philosophe Denis Diderot
1784
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Anonymous French Artist
Portrait of philosophe Nicolas de Caritat,
marquis de Condorcet

ca. 1793
oil on panel
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Louis Landry
Portrait of dramatist Jean-Louis Laya
1795
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Johann Gottfried Schadow
Portrait of writer Friederike Unger
ca. 1807
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Julius Schnorr von Carolsfeld
Portrait of poet Zacharias Werner
ca. 1810-20
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Louis-Pierre Deseine
Posthumous Bust of art historian
Johann Joachim Winckelmann

1818
marble
Musée des Augustins de Toulouse

Johann Heinrich von Dannecker
Portrait of dramatist Friedrich Schiller
1805 (modeled by Dannecker)
1837 (carved by another hand)
marble
Germanisches Nationalmuseum, Nuremberg

Henri Lehmann
Portrait of writer Marie de Flavigny
(publishing under pseudonym, Daniel Stern)

1843
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Gustave Courbet
Portrait of writer Jules Vallès
ca. 1861
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Thomas Couture
Portrait of historian Jules Michelet
ca. 1865
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Et encore, si comme je vous le conseille vous vous écartez du tableau, si vous lui tournez résolument le dos, si vous revenez carrément sur vos pas, si vous sortez de la pièce et faites quelques pas dans la galerie du Bord-de-l'Eau, et de nouveau faites volte-face, de nouveau par artifice pénétrez dans la grande salle où à l'exclusion de tout autre tableau se tient Les Onze; si vous vous arrêtez alors sur le seuil et regardez Les Onze comme si vous les voyiez pour la première fois – alors oui, vous savez presque à quoi cela vous fait penser. Et si par ailleurs il vous arrive quand vous n'êtes pas au Louvre de monter à cheval, de pratiquer pour mémoire cette très ancienne et obsolète occupation des hommes, ou simplement de fréquenter les lieux où se tiennent dans leur repos plein d'effroi les chevaux de monte; et si encore peut-être vous vous souvenez d'un jour où, venant de l'autre bout du pré et approchant à votre  pas de l'angle largement ouvert de l'écurie où font front un à un dans leurs box alignés les chevaux, dont vous ne voyez que les têtes, découpées et bien mises en valeur par la petite porte basse qui dérobe leurs corps, d'où elles apparaissent comme suspendues là-haut par la vertu du Saint-Esprit, spectrales, vivantes, figées dans l'effroi et la lente expectative des bêtes – alors peut-être vous vous dites que Michelet dans son rêve ne s'est pas trompé tout à fait et qu'il y a là au Louvre onze formes semblables à des chevaux, onze créatures d'effroi et d'emportement: comme en ont sculpté les Assyriens de Ninive dans les chasses équestres où le roi tue des lions; comme elles galopent vers les damnés que nous sommes, quatre fois et sous quatre formes de chevaux, dans l'Apocalypse de Jean: comme cabrées sous Niccolò Da Tolentino, le condottiere de la nuit, dans Uccello; comme cabrées de même sous les Philippe de France et les Louis de France, les trente-deux Capets, plus tard sous Bonaparte; telles que les a peintes Géricault dans la sarabande des trains d'artillerie explosant en chaîne, terrifiées par l'odeur de la poudre et celle de la mort, mais comme sans effroi chargeant. 

– Pierre Michon, from Les Onze (Verdier, 2009)

Sunday, August 4, 2024

Readers Reading

Henry Raeburn
Portrait of the artist's nephew Patrick Moir
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
(made in Rome)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Jacob van Loo
Youth Reading
ca. 1650
oil on panel
Leiden Collection, New York

Gabriël Metsu
Woman Reading a Book
ca. 1653-54
oil on canvas
Leiden Collection, New York

Jan Lievens
Old Woman Reading
ca. 1625-26
oil on panel
Museum De Lakenhal, Leiden

Jean-Augustin Franquelin
Reading to the Convalescent
ca. 1827
oil on canvas
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Albert Edelfelt
Annie Edelfelt with Fredrika Snygg
1888
oil on panel
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Magnus Enckell
Reading Room
1899
oil on canvas
Ateneum Art Museum, Helsinki

Sven Henriksen
Social-Demokraten
ca. 1930-34
lithograph (poster)
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Karl Klimsch
Engelhorn's Allgemeine Roman-Bibliothek
ca. 1885-95
lithograph (poster)
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Sebastiano Conca
Sibyl of Lemnos
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Sebastiano Conca
Phrygian Sibyl
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Bartolomeo Passarotti after Michelangelo
Persian Sibyl
(figure from the Sistine Ceiling)
ca. 1550
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Orazio Borgianni
Cardinal pondering the Words of Isaiah
ca. 1605-1608
oil on canvas
Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena

Pietro Faccini
Saint with Book
ca. 1595
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

workshop of Antonio Carneo
St Jerome
ca. 1670
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Franz Sturtzkopf
The Hermit
ca. 1876
oil on canvas
Auckland Art Gallery, New Zealand

The Balloon of the Mind

Hands, do what you're bid:
Bring the balloon of the mind
That bellies and drags in the wind
Into its narrow shed.

 – W.B. Yeats (1919)

Saturday, August 3, 2024

Writers Writing

Gerard ter Borch
Woman writing a Letter
ca. 1655
oil on panel
Mauritshuis, The Hague

Guillaume Voiriot
Portrait of Dom Étienne Galland
1751
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Dijon

Angelica Kauffmann
Virgil writing his Epitaph at Brundisi
1785
oil on canvas
Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh

Angelica Kauffmann
Sappho inspired by Love
1775
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Giovanni Francesco Romanelli
Sibyl
ca. 1640-50
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Sebastiano Conca
The Cumaean Sibyl
ca. 1725
oil on canvas
Musée Fesch, Ajaccio, Corsica

Marcantonio Franceschini
Sibyl
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Pordenone (Giovanni Antonio Licinio)
St Matthew
ca. 1535-37
oil on panel
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Nicolas Régnier
St Matthew and the Angel
ca. 1622-25
oil on canvas
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Pieter Lastman
St Matthew
1613
oil on panel
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Lucas van Leyden
St Matthew
1518
engraving
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Lucas van Leyden
St John the Evangelist
1518
engraving
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Carlo Dolci
St John the Evangelist
ca. 1650
oil on copper
John and Mable Ringling Museum of Art, Sarasota

Lorenzo Costa the Elder
Portrait of a Cardinal as St Jerome in his Study
ca. 1519
tempera and oil on panel
Minneapolis Institute of Art

Gerrit Dou
Scholar sharpening his Quill
ca. 1632-35
oil on panel
Leiden Collection, New York

Godfrey Kneller
Scholar in his Study
ca. 1668
oil on canvas
Leiden Collection, New York

The Dawn

I would be ignorant as the dawn
That has looked down
On that old queen measuring a town
With the pin of a brooch,
Or on the withered men that saw
From their pedantic Babylon
The careless planets in their courses,
The stars fade out where the moon comes,
And took their tablets and did sums;
I would be ignorant as the dawn
That merely stood, rocking the glittering coach
Above the cloudy shoulders of the horses;
I would be – for no knowledge is worth a straw –
Ignorant and wanton as the dawn.

– W.B. Yeats (1919)

Saturday, April 20, 2024

Dior - Talbot - Kneller - Holbein

Christian Dior
Dress
1955
embroidered silk organza
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Christian Dior
Evening Gown
1947
silk satin, embroidered and beaded
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Christian Dior
Evening Gown
1949
rayon tulle, embroidered with paillettes and sequins
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Christian Dior
Evening Gown
(back view)
1949
rayon tulle, embroidered with paillettes and sequins
Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

William Henry Fox Talbot
Lace
ca. 1844-45
salted paper print
Art Institute of Chicago

William Henry Fox Talbot
Queen's College, Oxford
1843
salted paper print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

William Henry Fox Talbot
Shadow of a Flower
ca. 1839
salted paper print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

William Henry Fox Talbot
The Chess Players
ca. 1843-47
salted paper print
Art Institute of Chicago

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of a Painter
before 1723
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of a Young Man
1722
oil on canvas
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Godfrey Kneller
Portrait of Sir Charles Barrington, 5th Baronet
ca. 1710
oil on canvas
Princeton University Art Museum

Godfrey Kneller
Scholar in his Study
ca. 1668
oil on canvas
(painted in Leiden while studying with Ferdinand Bol)
Agnes Etherington Art Centre, Kingston, Ontario

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of astronomer Nicholas Kratzer
1528
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Sir Henry Guildford
1527
oil on panel
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Margaret Bacon, Lady Butts
ca. 1541-43
oil on panel
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Hans Holbein the Younger
Portrait of Sir William Butts
ca. 1541-43
oil on panel
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

from The Sea and the Mirror 
         (a commentary on Shakespeare's The Tempest)

                   Preface
(The Stage Manager to the Critics)

The aged catch their breath,
For the nonchalant couple go
Waltzing across the tightrope
As if there were no death
Or hope of falling down;
The wounded cry as the clown
Doubles his meaning, and O
How the dear little children laugh
When the drums roll and the lovely
Lady is sawn in half.

O what authority gives
Existence its surprise?
Science is happy to answer
That the ghosts who haunt our lives
Are handy with mirrors and wire,
That song and sugar and fire,
Courage and come-hither eyes
Have a genius for taking pains. 
But how does one think up a habit?
Our wonder, our terror remains.

Art opens the fishiest eye
To the Flesh and the Devil who heat
The Chamber of Temptation
Where heroes roar and die.
We are wet with sympathy now;
Thanks for the evening; but how
Shall we satisfy when we meet,
Between Shall-I and I-Will,
The lion's mouth whose hunger
No metaphors can fill?

Well, who in his own backyard
Has not opened his heart to the smiling
Secret he cannot quote?
Which goes to show that the Bard
Was sober when he wrote
That this world of fact we love
Is unsubstantial stuff:
All the rest is silence
On the other side of the wall;
And the silence ripeness,
And the ripeness all.

– W.H. Auden (1942-44)