Monday, November 4, 2013

Gathering Violets


Tracy Baldwin designed the dust jacket for The Melancholy Art by Michael Ann Holly, recently published by Princeton University Press.

From the flap copy with picture credit 

"Titian Room, Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston. Installation view with Circle of Giovanni Bellini, Christ Carrying the Cross, ca. 1505-10. Oil on wood, 49.5 x 38.5 cm. [P26n17]. Photo by David Bohl."

"The tear-stained melancholic face of Christ was one of Isabella Stewart Gardner's favorite paintings, finally acquired in 1898 through the agency of Bernard Berenson, in the same month as her husband's death. Until recently, the museum continued her tradition of gathering violets to be placed nearby in a Norwegian cup, perhaps in a gesture of remembrance."