Descenders

Constantin Alajalov
Theater Lobby
ca. 1940
watercolor on paper
(design for magazine cover)
Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts

Bacchiacca (Francesco Ubertini)
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1518
oil on panel
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Federico Barocci
St Dominic de Guzmán receiving the Rosary
ca. 1590
oil on paper (sketch for painting)
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Max Beckmann
Falling Man
1950
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Francesco Clemente
Moon
1980
gouache on paper
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Andrea Commodi
Fall of the Rebel Angels
ca. 1614-17
oil on canvas
Gallerie degli Uffizi, Florence

Lovis Corinth
Höllenfragment
ca. 1901
oil on canvas
(fragment saved from discarded painting)
Scottish National Gallery, Edinburgh

Eikoh Hosoe
Kamaitachi #17
1965
gelatin silver print
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art

Anonymous Italian Painter
Suor Oretta Pugliesi visited by the Virgin and two Dominican Saints
ca. 1500-1510
fresco
Monastero di San Niccolò, Prato

Yves Klein and Harry Shunk
Yves Klein saut dans la vide, Paris
1960
gelatin silver print
Museum of Modern Art, New York

Dorothea Lange
Indonesian Women
1958
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Sebastiano Mazzoni
The Annunciation
ca. 1645-50
oil on canvas (altarpiece)
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Adolph Menzel
Falcon attacking Pigeon
1844
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pietro da Rimini
Descent from the Cross
ca. 1325-50
tempera and gold on panel
Musée du Louvre

Edward Poynter
The Age of Gold
1875
oil on canvas
Art Institute of Chicago

Sebastiano Ricci
Dream of Aesculapius
ca. 1725-30
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Johann Heinrich Roos
The Annunciation to the Shepherds
ca. 1659
drawing
British Museum

The bird goes up and the bat goes down:

The bird will burn and the bat will drown.

– W.H. Auden (1930)

Irony

Juan Rexach
St James the Greater and St Giles
ca. 1450-60
tempera and gold on panel
(altarpiece fragment)
Museo de Bellas Artes de Valencia

Girolamo Romanino
Virgin and Child enthroned
with St James the Greater and St Jerome
ca. 1512
oil on panel
High Museum of Art, Atlanta

Marcantonio Raimondi
The Painter Raphael wrapped in a Cloak
ca. 1520
engraving
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pieter Pourbus
Portrait of a Young Clergyman
ca. 1560
oil on panel
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Giovanni Pietro Possenti
Lot and his Daughters
ca. 1640-50
etching
Hamburger Kunsthalle

Jan Anthonisz van Ravesteyn
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1647
oil on panel
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Mattia Preti (il Cavalier Calabrese)
St Mark
before 1669
drawing
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Andrea Procaccini after Carlo Maratti
Cloelia fleeing across the Tiber
ca. 1710
etching
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Sebastiano Ricci
Diana and Callisto
1712-16
oil on canvas
Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice

Jonathan Richardson, Senior
Portrait Study of boxer James Figg
1714
drawing
Ashmolean Museum, Oxford

Johann Baptist Reiter
Portrait of a Man
1838
oil on panel
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Pierre Puvis de Chavannes
Childhood of St Geneviève
ca. 1877
ink on canvas
Kröller-Müller Museum, Otterlo, Netherlands

Hilla Rebay
Solomon R. Guggenheim
1928
oil on canvas
Guggenheim Museum, New York

Philip Reisman
The Bathroom
ca. 1929
etching
Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth, Texas

Diego Rivera
Woman and Child in Snow (Moscow Scene)
1956
watercolor on paper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

John Raye
Carnival at Stop & Shop Plaza
ca. 1978
gelatin silver print
New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut

David Robbins
Cindy Sherman
1986
gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

from Hero and Leander

With that he stripped him to the ivory skin,

And crying, 'Love, I come', leaped lively in.

Whereat the sapphire-visaged god grew proud,

And made his capering Triton sound aloud,

Imagining that Ganymede, displeased,

Had left the heavens; therefore on him seized.

Leander strived; the waves about him wound,

And pulled him to the bottom, where the ground

Was strewed with pearl, and in low coral groves

Sweet singing mermaids sported with their loves

On heaps of heavy gold, and took great pleasure

To spurn in careless sort the shipwreck treasure:

For here the stately azure palace stood,

Where kingly Neptune and his train abode. 

– Christopher Marlowe (1598)

Carrying

Philipp Otto Runge
Portrait of Pauline Runge with her Son
1807
oil on canvas
Alte Nationalgalerie, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Pieter van Lint
St Christopher
ca. 1675
oil on canvas
Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp

Parmigianino
Woman carrying a Child
ca. 1524-27
drawing
Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest

Jean-Baptiste Peytavin
Metabus fleeing with his daughter Camilla
(scene from the Aeneid)
1808
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Chambéry

Sebastiano Ricci
Centaur Nessus abducting Dejanira, with Hercules in distance
ca. 1700
oil on canvas
Kunsthaus Zürich

Francisco Toledo
Deer (Venados)
ca. 1975-85
color etching and aquatint
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Eugène Vail
Study for Pêcheurs de la Mer du Nord
ca. 1893
drawing
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Franz Théobald Horny
Study of an Italian Woman
before 1824
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett,
Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Albrecht Altdorfer
Centaur carrying Spear and Cauldron of Fire
ca. 1515-25
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Lucas van Leyden
Children bearing Helmet and Standard
1527
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Francesco Giolfino
Head of John the Baptist supported by Cherubs
ca. 1500
lindenwood relief
Bode Museum, Berlin

Anthony van Dyck
Abraham leading Isaac to Sacrifice
before 1620
oil on canvas
Národní Galerie, Prague

Heinrich Aldegrever
Hercules carrying Pillars of Gaza
1550
engraving
Graphische Sammlung, ETH Zürich

Jost Amman
Titan carrying Boulder
ca. 1565
drawing
Graphische Sammlung, Zentralbibliothek Zürich

Franz Henseler
Weinstub Bozener Batzenhäusl
1910
lithograph (poster)
Graphische Sammlung Albertina, Vienna

Max Slevogt
Parrot Seller
1901
oil on canvas
Landesmuseum, Hannover

Hades, inexorable and unbending, why hast thou robbed baby Callaeschron of life? In the house of Persephone the boy shall be her plaything, but at home he leaves bitter suffering.

Five daughters and five sons did Bio bear to Didymon, but she got no joy from one of either. Bio, herself so excellent and a mother of such fine babes, was not buried by her children, but by strange hands.  

Often on this her daughter's tomb did Cleina call on her dear short-lived child in wailing tones, summoning back the soul of Philaenis, who ere her wedding passed across the pale stream of Acheron.

Alas! Aristocrateia, thou art gone to deep Acheron, gone to rest before thy prime, before thy marriage; and naught but tears is left for thy mother, who reclining on thy tomb often bewails thee.

This is the dust of Timas, whom, dead before her marriage, the dark chamber of Persephone received. When she died, all her girl companions with newly sharpened steel shore their lovely locks. 

In the sea, Nereus, died Sodamus the Cretan who loved thy nets and was at home on these thy waters. He excelled all men in his skill as a fisher, but the sea in a storm makes no distinction between fishermen and others. 

Arcturus' rising is an ill season for sailors to sail at, and I, Aspasius, whose tomb thou passest, traveller, met my bitter fate by the blast of Boreas. My body, washed by the waters of the Aegean main, is lost at sea. Lamentable ever is the death of young men, but most mournful of all is the fate of travellers who perish in the sea. 

Thymodes too, on a time, weeping for his unexpected sorrow built this empty tomb for his son Lycus; for not even does he lie under foreign earth, but some Bithynian strand, some island of the Black Sea holds him. There he lies, without funeral, showing his bare bones on the inhospitable shore. 

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