Beheaders

Domenico Beccafumi
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
1506-1507
oil on panel
Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena

Sebald Beham
The Story of David
1534
painted wooden tabletop
Musée du Louvre

Hendrick ter Brugghen
David with the Head of Goliath
1623
oil on canvas
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Daniele da Volterra (Daniele Ricciarelli)
David vanquishing Goliath
ca. 1555-56
oil on slate
(collection of Louis XIV)
Musée du Louvre

Tommaso Donini (il Caravaggino)
David with the Head of Goliath
ca. 1620-30
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Fede Galizia
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
1601
oil on canvas
Galleria Borghese, Rome

Orazio Gentileschi
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1620
oil on canvas
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Lucas Kilian
King David kneeling before Bowl of Incense
before 1637
drawing (print study)
British Museum

Giulia Lama
Judith and Holofernes
ca. 1725-30
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Jan Massys
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1540-50
oil on canvas
Palazzo Barberini, Rome

Palma il Vecchio
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1525-28
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence 

Marco Palmezzano
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
1525
oil on panel
Musées d'Art et d'Histoire, Genève

Domenico Piola
David with the Head of Goliath in Pendentive
ca. 1675
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Camillo Procaccini
Triumph of David
ca. 1592-95
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Nicolas Régnier
Judith and Holofernes
ca. 1650-60
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Peter Paul Rubens
Judith with the Head of Holofernes
ca. 1630
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Andrea Schiavone (Andrea Meldolla)
Judith with Sword
ca. 1548-50
drawing
British Museum

Equal with colleagues in a ring

I sit on each calm evening,

        Enchanted as the flowers

The opening light draws out of hiding

From leaves with all its dove-like pleading

        Its logic and its powers.

That later we, though parted then

May still recall these evenings when

        Fear gave his watch no look;

The lion griefs loped from the shade

And on our knees their muzzles laid,

        And Death put down his book.

– W.H. Auden (1933)

Solids

Boston & Sandwich Glass Company
Pomade with Cover
ca. 1850
pressed glass
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Johann Friedrich Ardin
Elector Johann Wilhelm of the Palatinate
ca. 1708
enamel on copper in frame of silver, brass and glass
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Anonymous American Manufacturer
Vase
(issued for the centennial of the American Revolution)
1876
pressed glass
Chrysler Museum of Art, Norfolk, Virginia

Charles Robert Ashbee
Brooch
ca. 1900
silver, enameled copper, amethyst
Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington

Anonymous Chinese Carver
Lidded Vase with Ring Handles
ca. 1900-1950
rock crystal
Asian Art Museum, San Francisco

Giacomo Balla
Futurist Flower
ca. 1918-25
(reconstructed in 1968)
painted wood
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Josef Hoffmann
Fruit Bowl
1917
silver
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

Louise Bourgeois
The Blind leading the Blind
1947-49
painted wood
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Claire Falkenstein
Set Structure with Cylinders
1944
stained and lacquered poplar wood
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Hans Arp (Jean Arp)
Bust of an Elf
1949
bronze
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Barbara Hepworth
Large and Small Forms
1963
slate on painted wood base
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Claes Oldenburg
Soft Bathtub (Model) - Ghost Version
1966
painted canvas, plaster, foam, wood and metal
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

David Nash
Rostrum with Bonks
1971
pine, ash, horse chestnut and birchwood
Tate Modern, London

Bronwyn Oliver
Mantle
1985
painted fiberglass
National Gallery of Australia, Canberra

Carol Cohen
White Fish II
1992
painted glass on wood base
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Hal Metlitzky
Cyclone
2012
exotic woods
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Carole Brendan Hetzel
Basket no. 232
2005
plant fibers, steel, pigment
Minneapolis Institute of Art

What man is he that yearneth

    For length unmeasured of days?

Folly mine eye discerneth

    Encompassing all his ways.

For years over-running the measure

    Shall change thee in evil wise:

Grief draweth nigh thee; and pleasure,

    Behold, it is hid from thine eyes.

    This to their wage have they

    Which outlive their day.

And He that looseth from labour

    Doth one with other befriend,

    Whom bride nor bridesmen attend,

Song, nor sound of the tabor,

    Death, that maketh an end.

Thy portion esteem I highest,

    Who wast not ever begot;

Thine next, being born who diest

    And straightway again art not.

With follies light as the feather

    Doth Youth to man befall;

Then evils gather together,

    There wants not one of them all –

    Wrath, envy, discord, strife,

    The sword that seeketh life. 

And sealing the sum of trouble

    Doth tottering Age draw nigh,

    Whom friends and kinsfolk fly,

Age, upon whom redouble

    All sorrows under the sky. 

This man, as me, even so,

Have the evil days overtaken;

And like as a cape sea-shaken

With tempest at earth's last verges

And shock of all winds that blow,

His head the seas of woe,

The thunders of awful surges

Ruining overflow;

Blown from the fall of even,

    Blown from the dayspring forth,

Blown from the noon in heaven,

    Blown from night and the North.

– Sophocles, from Oedipus Coloneus, translated by A.E. Housman (before 1936)

Anonymous Italian Art in Germany

Anonymous Italian Artist
Susanna and the Elders
ca. 1600
oil on slate
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

Anonymous Italian Artist after Caravaggio
Doubting Thomas
ca. 1620-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Italian Artist
The athlete Tydeus purifying himself 
(based on antique cameo)
1767
etching
(illustration to edition of Winckelmann)
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Hercules with slain Hydra
17th century
terracotta statue (half life-size)
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Portrait of a Man
16th century
terracotta relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Florentine Artist
Virgin and Child
ca. 1440-60
marble relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anonymous Italian Artist
Hercules Resting, Minerva Trumpeting
17th century
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Roman Artist
Abduction of the Sabine Women
16th century
drawing
(after exterior fresco by Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Roman Artist
Alexander the Great dedicating Altars to Olympian Gods
16th century
drawing
(after interior fresco by Perino del Vaga)
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Roman Artist
Lars Porsena and his Court
16th century
drawing
(after exterior fresco by Polidoro da Caravaggio)
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Italian Artist
Neptune driving Sea-Chariot
ca. 1500-1530
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Kunstsammlungen, Dresden

Anonymous Italian Artist
Prometheus animating the First Man
ca. 1450-1500
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Venetian Artist
Sleeping Reader
16th century
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Italian Artist
Virgin and Child
16th century
drawing
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Anonymous Italian Artist
Half-Length Study of a Youth
(garzone or studio apprentice)
17th century
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Anonymous Italian Artist
Sheet of Studies
16th century
drawing
Städel Museum, Frankfurt

Here on a time the earth opened to receive Laodice,* not duly laid to rest, but flying from the violence of the enemy. Unreckonable Time having effaced the monument, Maximus the Proconsul of Asia brought it again to light, and having noticed the girl's bronze tablet lying elsewhere unhonoured, he set it up on this circular barrow. 

The painter limned Theodote just as she was. Would his art had failed him and he had given forgetfulness to us who mourn her. 

Earth and Ilithyia, one of you brought me to birth, the other covers me. Farewell! I have run the race of each. I depart, not knowing whither I go, for neither do I know who I was or whose or from whence when I came to you. 

Our princes, owing to his virtues, promoted Dulcitius to great wealth and proconsular rank; and now that Nature has released him from earth, the immortal gods possess himself, but this enclosure his body. 

May he who buried me at the crossroads come to an ill end and get no burial at all; since all the travellers tread on Timon and in death, the portion of all, I alone have no portion of repose.

In this tomb rests strong Panopeus the lion-hunter, the piercer of shaggy-breasted panthers; for a terrible scorpion issuing from a hole in the earth smote his heel as he walked on the hills and slew him. On the ground, alas, lie his poor javelin and spear, to be the playthings of impudent deer.

– from Book VI (Sepulchral Epigrams) of the Greek Anthology, translated and edited by W.R. Paton (1917)

*one of the fifty daughters of King Priam