Heroic

Vito Acconci
No One in the Plaza
1994
gelatin silver print
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Gobelins Manufactory
Portière with Jupiter
ca. 1771-73
wool and silk tapestry
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Vanni
Saints interceding to save a Drowning Girl
before 1609
drawing
British Museum

Horace Vernet
Portrait of Madame Philippe Lenoir
née Marie Aspasie Jousseran
1814
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Ansel Adams
Cast-Iron Figure, Old San Francisco Building
1961
Polaroid
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gobelins Manufactory
Counterpane with Floral Design
ca. 1770-90
wool and silk tapestry
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Vanni
Heroic Classical Figure
before 1609
drawing
British Museum

Horace Vernet
Portrait of Philippe Lenoir
(art collector and friend of the artist)
1814
oil on canvas
Musée du Louvre

Diane Arbus
Headless Woman, Palisades Park N.J.
1961
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Gobelins Manufactory
Portière with the Arms of France
ca. 1730-40
wool and silk tapestry
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Vanni
Drapery Study
ca. 1603
drawing (study for painting)
British Museum

Horace Vernet
Race of the Riderless Horses, Rome
ca. 1820
oil on canvas (sketches for painting)
North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh

Linda Connor
Chair in Grass Hut
1975
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Gobelins Manufactory
Portière with the Huntress Diana at rest
ca. 1730
wool and silk tapestry
Musée du Louvre

Francesco Vanni
St Gregory inspired by the Holy Spirit
before 1609
drawing
British Museum

Horace Vernet
Horse and Mounted Soldier Urinating in Unison
ca. 1820
drawing
British Museum

Alexander Zhitomirsky
Du Pont
1974
hand-colored photomontage
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

On a Worthless Politician

Fortune did not mean to give you promotion

Except to prove that her omnipotence

Stretches as low as you.

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Peter Jay

Bilateral

Roman Empire
Basin
1st century AD
giallo antico marble
(collection of Louis XVI)
Musée du Louvre

Mark Rothko
No. 5
1958
oil and acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giovanni Battista della Rovere (il Fiammenghino)
Angels with Instruments of St Sebastian's Martyrdom
1602
drawing
British Museum

Ventura Salimbeni
Self Portrait
ca. 1605
drawing (frame drawn by later hand)
British Museum

Fanny Sanín
Acrylic no. 6
1975
acrylic on canvas
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Katia Santibañez
Untitled
2002
acrylic on paper
Buffalo AKG Art Museum, New York

Andres Serrano
Cactus Blood
1987
C-print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sèvres Manufactory
Cabinet
1848
ebony ornamented with porcelain figures,
enamel plaques and gilt-bronze fittings
Musée du Louvre

Charles Sheeler
Egyptian Sculpture, Metropolitan Museum of Art
ca. 1942-45
gelatin silver print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Frank Stella
Sacramento Mall Proposal #4
1978
acrylic on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Thomas Struth
Milan Cathedral (Façade)
1998
C-print
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

William Henry Fox Talbot
Vase with Medusa Head
1840
salted paper print from paper negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Anonymous French Makers
Throne-Hanging of Charles VII - Angels bearing Crown
ca. 1425
wool and silk tapestry
Musée du Louvre

Antoni Tàpies
White and 10 Holes
1973
oil paint and sand on plywood
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Guillaume Thomas Taraval
Design for Festival Architecture
before 1750
drawing
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Mauro Antonio Tesi
Design for Sepulchral Monument
before 1766
drawing
Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum

John Thomson
Twin Pagodas at Foochow
ca. 1869
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

The man who first built up with good strong words

    the high-browed songs of towering tragedy,

Aeschylus, son of Euphorion, far from Eleusis

    lies here, and glorifies Sicily with his body. 

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Alistair Elliot

Threes

Jean Changenet
Three Prophets
ca. 1485-95
oil on panel (altarpiece fragment)
Musée du Louvre

Bartolomeo Neroni (il Riccio)
Three Visions of St Catherine of Siena
ca. 1567
drawing (fresco studies)
British Museum

Mauro Antonio Tesi after Stefano della Bella
Designs for Vases
ca. 1750
etching
Museum für Angewandte Kunst, Vienna

Anonymous Italian Printmaker
Tomb Painting of Ramesses III adoring Isis and Ptah
ca. 1829-32
hand-colored etching and engraving
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

James Pradier
The Three Graces
1831
marble statue group
Musée du Louvre

Beauvais Manufactory
Folding Screen with Birds
1836
tapestry panels (wool and silk) on wood frame
Musée du Louvre

Julia Margaret Cameron
Daughters of Jerusalem
1865
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Émile Gsell
Femmes du Prince Phra Kéo Pha
1866
albumen silver print from glass negative
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Alfred Stieglitz
Luncheon at Lake George
1920
gelatin silver print
Loeb Art Center, Vassar College, Poughkeepsie, New York

Marie Laurencin
Reading in a Park
ca. 1926
oil on canvas
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Charles Pulsford
Three Angels
1949
oil on panel
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

Alan Davie
Red Dwarf
1962
oil on canvas (triptych)
Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh

William Gedney
Kentucky
ca. 1966
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Graciela Iturbide
Duelo, Chiapas
1974
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Bill Burke
Untitled
1975
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

T.L. Solien
The Three Sailors
1982
lithograph and screenprint
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Mark Greenwold
Why Not Say What Happened?
2003-2004
oil on panel
Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Kansas City, Missouri

Epitaph on a Betrothed Girl

I am Baukis the bride's.

When you pass this bitter pillar

say to death

under the ground,

'You are envious, oh death';

for they who see

this monument

will know

that the father-in-law

burned the girl

on the pyre 

with the unused torches

of the marriage train.

Oh Hymen

    you have changed the singable bride song

to a dirge. 

– from the Greek Anthology, translated by Lenore Mayhew