Miners

Hans Maler
Portrait of banker Anton Fugger
ca. 1525
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Bordeaux

Nosadella (Giovanni Francesco Bezzi)
Three Figures
ca. 1540
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Johann Ulrich Mayr
Portrait of the Mother of the Artist
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Deutsche Barockgalerie, Augsburg

attributed to Carlo Francesco Nuvolone
Portrait of Giovanni Battista Silva
ca. 1660
oil on canvas
Museum of Art and Archaeology,
University of Missouri, Columbia

Giovanni Battista Pittoni the Younger
The Finding of Moses
ca. 1730-40
oil on canvas
Portland Art Museum, Oregon

Franz Xavier Karl Palko
Birth of Athena
ca. 1755
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Michel-Nicolas Perseval
Portrait of medical scientist Pierre Robin
ca. 1775
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Reims

Pietro Antonio Novelli
The Annunciation
ca. 1780-90
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Johann Friedrich Overbeck
Virgin and Child with St Elizabeth
and young St John the Baptist
1825
oil on canvas
Neue Pinakothek, Munich

Charles Christian Nahl
Sunday Morning in the Mines
1872
oil on canvas
Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, California

Hans Namuth
Julia Child
1977
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Mary Peck
Temple of Poseidon, Sounion
1979
gelatin silver print
Art Institute of Chicago

Bill Owens
Los Angeles Documentary Project: Artist
1980
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Bill Owens
Los Angeles Documentary Project: Cocaine
1980
C-print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

Anne Noble
Statue of Saint Michael Archangel,
Tyburn Convent, London
ca. 1988-90
gelatin silver print
Queensland Art Gallery, Brisbane

Shirin Neshat
Amir (Villains)
2012
gelatin silver print with acrylic paint
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Gregory Olympio
Winter
2022
synthetic polymer paint on canvas
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne

Bethsabe's Song

Hot sun, cool fire, tempered with sweet air,

Black shade, fair nurse, shadow my white hair:

Shine, sun; burn, fire; breathe, air and ease me;

Black shade, fair nurse, shroud me and please me:

Shadow, my sweet nurse, keep me from burning,

Make not my glad cause cause of mourning.

            Let not my beauty's fire

            Inflame unstaid desire,

            Nor pierce any bright eye

            That wandereth lightly.

– George Peele (1599)

Temple Scenes and Scenery

Edward Agricola
Temple of Neptune, Paestum
1834
oil on canvas
Pushkin Museum, Moscow

Willem von Bemmel
Ruin of Classical Temple
ca. 1660
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Johann Franciscus Ermels
Temple Ruins in Rome
ca. 1680
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Ancient Greek Culture
Nereid on Seahorse, emerging from the Ocean
380 BC
marble pediment figure from the Temple of Asklepios, Epidaurus
National Archaeological Museum, Athens

Francesco Fontanesi
Temple of Apollo
1792
drawing
(stage design for opera at La Fenice, Venice)
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Valerio Belli
Christ expelling the Money-changers from the Temple
ca. 1535
bronze plaquette
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Jean de Troy
St Peter and St John healing the Paralytic
before the Temple of Jerusalem
ca. 1687
oil on canvas
(modello for altarpiece)
Musée Fabre, Montpellier

James Holland
Temple of Mars Ultor, Rome
ca. 1840-45
watercolor
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Conrad Martin Metz
Scene in the Temple of Apollo
1819
drawing
Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Hubert Robert
The Old Temple
ca. 1787-88
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Hubert Robert
Interior of a Funerary Temple
1776
drawing
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa

Raphael
Presentation in the Temple
ca. 1502-1504
tempera on panel, transferred to canvas
(element from altarpiece predella)
Pinacoteca Vaticana, Rome

Carlo Maratti
Augustus closing the Doors of the Temple of Janus,
marking the establishment of Peace
ca. 1655-57
oil on canvas
Palais des Beaux-Arts de Lille

Jean-Jacques Lagrenée
Cleobis and Biton
pulling their Mother's Chariot to the Temple of Juno
1764
drawing
(study for painting)
Morgan Library, New York

Luigi Vacca
Family Group gathered outside a Temple
ca. 1820
drawing
Museo Poldi Pezzoli, Milan

Jean-François Thomas de Thomon
Ruin of the Temple of the Vestals
1790
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

from The Island of Statues

A wriggling thing on the white lake moved,

     As the canker-worm on a milk-white rose;
And down I came as a falcon swoops

     When his sinewy wings together close.
I 'lit by the thing, 'twas a shepherd-boy,
     Who, swimming, sought the island lone;
Within his clenchèd teeth a sword.
     I heard the dreadful monotone
The water-serpent sings his heart
Before a death. O'er wave and bank

     I cried the words you bid me cry,
The shepherd raised his arms and sank,
     His rueful spirit fluttered by.

– W.B. Yeats (1885)

Pictures of the Built World

Richard Phené Spiers
The Propylaea, Athens
ca. 1880
watercolor on paper
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Jean-Pierre Hoüel
Ruins of the Temple of Concord at Agrigento
ca. 1776
gouache on paper
Musée du Louvre

Anonymous Photographer
Catherine Gide with her father André Gide at Paestum
1950
photograph
Fondation Catherine Gide, Olten, Switzerland

John Aldridge
Palazzo San Boldo, Venice
1963-64
oil on canvas
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Michele Marieschi
Capriccio with Obelisk and Gothic Edifice
ca. 1740-45
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

James Holland
Venice - Narrow Canal
ca. 1840-50
oil on panel
The Potteries Museum and Art Gallery,
Stoke-on-Trent

Wilfrid De Glehn
Venetian Doorway
1913
oil on canvas
private collection

Jean-Baptiste Lallemand
Arch of Constantine and the Colosseum, Rome
ca. 1750
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Canaletto
Arch of Septimius Severus, Rome
ca. 1743
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Charles Michel-Ange Challe
Architectural Capriccio with the Roman Pantheon
ca. 1742-49
drawing
Musée du Louvre

Ferdinando Partini
View of the Pantheon, Rome
1794
oil on canvas
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Hubert Robert
Bathers
ca. 1785
oil on canvas
Cincinnati Art Museum, Ohio

Jenaro Pérez-Villaamil
Seville Cathedral
1835
oil on canvas
Fundación Banco Santander, Madrid

Joseph Mallord William Turner
Durham Cathedral
1798-99
watercolor
Royal Academy of Arts, London

William Strudwick
Water Gate of York House, London
before 1882
carbon print
Royal Academy of Arts, London

Charles Maresco Pearce
Le pavillon bleu
1926
oil on canvas
Ferens Art Gallery, Kingston upon Hull

Estrangement in Athens

Mount Olympus held nothing for them.
No occasion of theirs could provoke

Magniloquent debate. Nor act require

That attic of gods to come swooping

Onto the field, swaying the battle.

Only the great booming of the ferry

As it shouldered alongside the pier;

Only the waitress counting their

Saucers: it was this April morning

That swung them by their heels.

What was missing was the impersonal,

The fated, a visionary marble address,

The goddess skimming over blue water

To whisper good news, or some stud,

Swan, or bull brimming with light.

Not a wingèd foot. Only Love,

Recently decamped, hovered above

The table, ready to be splendid.

But their ten years' war had ended.

– Brian Culhane (2008)