Saturday, May 6, 2017

Northern European Paintings on Copper Surfaces III

David Teniers and Jan van Kessel
Presentation of the Captain-General's Baton to Antonio de Moncada in 1410
oil on copper
1664
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

David Teniers and Jan van Kessel
Submission of the Sicilian rebels to Antonio de Moncada in 1411
oil on copper
1663
Museo Thyssen-Bronemisza, Madrid

David Teniers
Guardroom with deliverance of St Peter from prison
ca. 1645-47
oil on copper
Metropolitan Museum of Art

"So Austrian, but at the same time so permeated by the whole world, and by the world surrounding this world,"  as remarks one of Thomas Bernhard's characters about the following poem by Ingeborg Bachmann 

Bohemia, a Country by the Sea

If houses here are green, I'll step inside a house.
If bridges here are sound, I'll walk on solid ground.
If love's labor's lost in every age, I'd gladly lose it here.

If it's not me, it's one who is as good as me.

If a word here borders on me, I'll let it border.
If Bohemia still lies by the sea, I'll believe in the sea again.
And believing in the sea, thus I can hope for land.

If it's me, then it's anyone, for he's as worthy as me.
I want nothing more for myself. I want to go under.

Under  that means the sea, there I'll find Bohemia again.
From my grave, I wake in peace.
From deep down I know now, and I'm not lost.

Come here, all you Bohemians, seafarers, dock whores, and ships
unanchored. Don't you want to be Bohemians, all you Illyrians,
Veronese and Venetians. Play the comedies that make us laugh

until we cry. And err a hundred times,
as I erred and never withstood the trials,
though I did withstand them time after time.

As Bohemia withstood them and one fine day
was released to the sea and now lies by water.

I still border on a word and on another land,
I border, like little else, on everything more and more,

a Bohemian, a wandering minstrel, who has nothing, who
is held by nothing, gifted only at seeing, by a doubtful sea,
     the land of my choice.

 by Ingeborg Bachmann (1926-1973), translated by Peter Filkins and published in Darkness Spoken : the Collected Poems of Ingeborg Bachmann (Zephyr Press, 2006)

David Teniers
Peasants playing cards
before 1649
oil on copper
private collection

David Teniers
Temptation of St Anthony
ca. 1645
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg 

Cornelis van Poelenburgh
Annunciation
1635
oil on copper
Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna

Willem Cornelisz Duyster
Portrait of a man
1627
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans Pourbus the Younger
Portrait of Infanta Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria
ca. 1600
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Frans Francken the Younger
Visit to the art dealer
before 1642
oil on copper
Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm

Joachim Wtewael
Lot and his Daughters
ca. 1603-1608
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg

Joachim Wtewael
Holy Family with Saints and Angels
ca. 1606-10
oil on copper
Museo Thyssen-Bornemisza, Madrid

Johann Rottenhammer
Suffer the little children to come unto me
1607
oil on copper
Los Angeles County Museum of Art

Pieter Isaacsz
Women of Rome storming the Capitol
ca. 1600-1602
oil on copper
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Gustave Doré
Landscape with gorge
1878
oil on copper
Hermitage, Saint Petersburg