Headgear

attributed to Paolo Uccello
Portrait of a Woman
ca. 1460-65
oil on panel
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston

Hans Shüchlin
Portrait of a Married Couple
1479
oil on panel
Bayerisches Nationalmuseum, Munich

Pontormo (Jacopo Carrucci)
Portrait of a Goldsmith
ca. 1517
oil on panel
Musée du Louvre

attributed to Lorenzo Lotto
Portrait of a Young Man
ca. 1525
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen zu Berlin

Hans Maler
Portrait of banker Wolfgang Ronner
1529
oil on panel
Alte Pinakothek, Munich

Giambattista Moroni
Portrait of a Man
ca. 1570
oil on canvas
Memphis Brooks Museum of Art, Tennessee

Zacharias Wehme
Anne of Denmark, consort of Elector Augustus of Saxony
ca. 1585
oil on canvas
Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, Dresden

Christoffel van Sichem after Jacob Matham
Head of Young Man
1613
woodcut
Rhode Island School of Design, Providence

Francisco de Zurbarán
St Lucy
ca. 1625-30
oil on canvas
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Giambattista Tiepolo
Head of Magus
ca. 1740-45
oil on canvas
San Diego Museum of Art

Anna Dorothea Lisiewska-Therbusch
Portrait of court architect Nicolas de Pigage
ca. 1764
oil on canvas
Kurpfälzisches Museum, Heidelberg

Fratelli d'Alessandri (Rome)
Anita Herriman Vedder at age 18
dressed in the style of the 1830s for a Masquerade
ca. 1891-92
platinum print
Archives of American Art, Washington DC

Henry Havelock Pierce
Alice Roosevelt Longworth
1905
platinum print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

George Hurrell
Greta Garbo
1930
gelatin silver print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Raphael Soyer
Portrait of artist's model Marussia Burliuk
1943
oil on canvas
Hirshhorn Museum, Washington DC

Harry Warnecke
Lucille Ball
1944
tricolor carbro print
National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

Gail Skoff
Tinda
1975
hand-colored gelatin silver print
Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington DC

from Divine Epigrams

        The dumbe healed, and the people enjoyned silence.

Christ bids the dumbe tongue speake, it speakes, the sound

Hee charges to be quiet, it runs round,

If in the first he us'd his fingers Touch:

His hands whole strength here, could not be too much. 

– Richard Crashaw, Steps to the Temple (1648)

Seasons and Ages

Gabriel Max
Springtime Reverie
1872
oil on canvas
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Koloman Moser
Spring
ca. 1913
oil on canvas
Leopold Museum, Vienna

Ignaz Stern
Allegory of Spring
ca. 1723
oil on canvas
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Jacob de Wit
Allegory of Spring
1751
oil on canvas (grisaille)
Museumslandschaft Hessen Kassel

Zacharias Blyhooft
Allegory of Summer
1677
drawing
Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen z -Berlin

Francesco Fontebasso
Allegory of Summer
ca. 1740
drawing
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Édouard Manet
Automne (Méry Laurent)
1882
oil on canvas
Musée des Beaux-Arts de Nancy

Jakob Gabriel Mollinarolo
Allegory of Winter
ca. 1755-60
bronze
Belvedere Museum, Vienna

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Four Ages of Man
The Golden Age
1637
fresco
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Four Ages of Man
The Silver Age
1637
fresco
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Four Ages of Man
The Bronze Age
1641
fresco
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Pietro da Cortona (Pietro Berrettini)
Four Ages of Man
The Iron Age
1641
fresco
Palazzo Pitti, Florence

Michel-François Dandré-Bardon
Ages of Man - Infancy
1743
oil on canvas
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Michel-François Dandré-Bardon
Ages of Man - Youth
1744
oil on canvas
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Michel-François Dandré-Bardon
Ages of Man - Old Age
1744
oil on canvas
Musée Granet, Aix-en-Provence

Luc-Olivier Merson
Allegory of Time
1896
oil on canvas
Musée Carnavalet, Paris

Agamemnon is about to descend from his carriage and enter the palace when Clytemnestra appears in the doorway: behind her, two women attendants hold between them a folded textile.  

Clytemnestra:  Men of the city, you assembled Argive elders, I will not be ashamed to speak to you of my feelings of love for my husband: with the passing of time, fear dies away in the human mind.  What I will say is not second-hand knowledge, but my own wretched life through all the time that this man was away at Ilium.  In the first place, it is a terrible trial for a wife to be sitting alone at home without her man, hearing many dire reports, with first one man coming and then another after him capping his bad news with an even worse disaster to proclaim to the house.  And if this man met with as many wounds as was said in the reports that were channelled into our house, he's got more holes in him to count than a net has; while if he'd been killed as often as the stories claimed, he'd have had to have three bodies – a second Geryon – and could boast that he had donned a threefold cloak of earth, having died once in each of his persons.  Because of dire reports like these, many a noose hung from above was untied from my neck by others after I had been seized and held by force.  That, you will understand, is why our son is not standing here by my side, the holder of our mutual pledges, as he ought to be – Orestes.  Don't be surprised by this.  He is being brought up by a friend bound to us by hospitality and alliance, Strophius the Phocian, who plainly pointed out to me two potential disasters – the danger you were in at Troy, and the possibility that the clamorous populace, in the absence of a ruler, might hatch a wicked plot – and said it was part of human nature to kick a man a bit more when he was down.  In an explanation such as this there can be no deception.  Well, in my eyes the gushing fountains of tears have dried up, and there is not a drop left; and I have damaged those eyes by lying late awake, weeping for the beacon-sites set up to signal your return which always remained idle. 

– Aeschylus, from Agamemnon (458 BC), translated by Alan H. Sommerstein (2008)

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)

Narratives in Relief - 1600-1650

attributed to Alexander Colin
Landscape with Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria
ca. 1600
marble
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous European Artist
The Nymph Callisto asleep in the Forest
ca. 1600
alabaster
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Anonymous Italian Artist
Angels supporting the Dead Christ
ca. 1600-1620
gilt bronze
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Alessandro Masnago
Neptune pursuing Amphitrite
ca. 1600-1620
agate cameo
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Zacharias Lencker
Adoration of the Christ Child
1609
silver
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Anonymous German Artist
The Wedding of Jupiter and Juno
early 17th century
ivory
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

from Gilgamesh

We met at the gay community center, called Compass,
in Lake Worth, where they sponsored "The Coming Out Group,"
with Forest, our skilled leader. Transsexuals met before.
You were fifty, I thirty-nine –
somewhat late to begin a life together for the first time;
we had begun to see announcements in the New York Times,
so we knew it was possible to print:
"Paul O'Shaughnessy and Spencer Reece were joined on a celery green love-seat . . ."
Five years we had, not forever, but something still.

                             *                     *                  *

You were distracted, distracted
until one day you said, "I do not desire you."
You had always been honest.
You wanted a younger man, between twenty and twenty-five.
The day blued around us –
our book of changes came to a close.
Your Christ-kiss issued no more.
You were what you had always been only more so –
Irish and unavailable, darling.

– Spencer Reece (2010)

Leonhard Kern
The Lamentation
ca. 1614-20
ivory
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Leonhard Kern
Scene in a Women's Bath House
ca. 1650
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Niccolò Roccatagliata
The Annunciation
before 1636
bronze
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

Jean Warin
Hercules relieving Atlas of the Globe
1629
bronze
National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Adam Lenckhardt
The Lamentation
ca. 1630
ivory
Victoria & Albert Museum, London

Gérard van Opstal
Marine Scene 
(Fishermen and Putti hauling in a Net of Fish)
ca. 1640
alabaster
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Georg Schweigger
Susanna and the Elders
1641
limestone
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Michel Anguier
The Flood
1648-49
terracotta
(damaged modello for a marble relief)
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York