Tuesday, November 8, 2016

European Pictures of Statues and Near-Statues

Jan Collaert
Statue of Mars
ca. 1587
engraving
British Museum
 
Barthel Beham
Daphne pursued by Apollo
ca. 1520-40
engraving
British Museum

'Help me, Father!' she pleaded. 'If rivers have power over nature,
mar the beauty which made me admired too well, by changing
my form!'  She had hardly ended her prayer when a heavy numbness
came over her body; her soft white bosom was ringed in a layer
of bark, her hair was turned into foliage, her arms into branches. 
The feet that had run so nimbly were sunk into sluggish roots;
her head was confined in a treetop; and all that remained was her beauty.

 from Book I of Ovid's Metamorphoses, translated by David Raeburn

Anonymous printmaker
Equestrian statue of King Charles II
ca. 1680-1714
engraving
British Museum

Grinling Gibbons
Studies for a statue of Charles II
ca. 1660-87
drawing
British Museum

Anonymous printmaker
Bust of Anne of Denmark as Minerva
17th century
engraving
British Museum

Anonymous printmaker
Statue of Apollo by Adriaen de Vries
ca. 1598
engraving
British Museum

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Michelangelo's statues of Dawn and Dusk
1761
drawing
British Museum

Jean-Honoré Fragonard
Michelangelo's statues of Day and Night
1761
drawing
British Museum

Cornelis van Dalen
Michelangelo's statue of Moses
1638
engraving
British Museum

Battista Naldini
Head of Michelangelo's statue of Giuliano de' Medici
16th century
drawing
British Museum

Domenico Compagnola
Venus in a landscape
1517
engraving
British Museum

Giulio Compagnola
Venus in a landscape
ca. 1510-15
engraving
British Museum

Nikolaus Wilborn
Architectural ornaments
1533
engraving
British Museum

Thomas Rowlandson
Caricature of the sculptor Joseph Nollekens
ca. 1800
hand-colored etching
British Museum