Sunday, May 21, 2017

Paintings Made on Copper Surfaces in the 17th century

Rembrandt (Netherlands)
Self-portrait
1630
oil on copper
Nationalmuseum, Stockholm

Cornelis van Poelenburgh (Netherlands / Rome)
The Goddess Calypso rescues Ulysses
ca. 1630
oil on copper
Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm

                                      Farre hence, at sea,
There lies an Ile that beares Ogygia's name,
Where Atlas' daughter, the ingenious Dame,
Faire-haird Calypso lives  a Goddesse grave,
And with whom men nor Gods societie have.
Yet I (past man unhappie) liv'd alone
(By heav'n's wrath forc't) her house companion.
For Jove had with a fervent lightning cleft
My ship in twaine, and farre at black sea left
Me and my souldiers  all whose lives I lost.
I in mine armes the keele tooke and was tost
Nine dayes together up from wave to wave.
The tenth grim Night the angry Dieties drave
Me and my wracke on th'Ile in which doth dwell
Dreadfull Calypso, who exactly well
Receiv'd and nourisht me, and promise made
To make me  deathlesse, nor should Age invade
My powers with his deserts through all my dayes.
All mov'd not me; and therefore on her stayes
Seven yeares she made me lie: and there spent I
The long time steeping in the miserie
Of ceaslesse teares the Garments I did weare
From her fair hand.

 from Book 7 of Homer's Odyssey, translated into English verse by George Chapman, 1614-15, edited by Allardyce Nicoll for Princeton University Press, 1956

Lucio Massari (Bologna)
Miracle of the Probatic Pool
1605-06
oil on copper
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Ludovico Carracci (Bologna)
Allegory of Providence
1604
oil on copper
Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome

Domenichino (Bologna)
The Way to Calvary
1610
oil on copper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Adam Elsheimer (Germany / Rome)
Coronis and Apollo
ca. 1606-08
oil on copper
Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool

Joachim Wtewael (Netherlands)
Mars and Venus surprised by the Gods
ca. 1606-10
oil on copper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ambrosius Bosschaert (Netherlands)
Basket of Flowers
1614
oil on copper
Getty Museum, Los Angeles

Ambrosius Bosschaert (Netherlands)
Bouquet of Flowers in a Pewter Vase
1617
oil on copper
Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm

Carlo Maratti (Rome)
Annunciation
ca. 1650-90
oil on copper
Royal Collection, Great Britain

Jan Baptist Weenix (Netherlands)
Italian Landscape with Horsemen at a Spring
ca. 1657
oil on copper
Centraal Museum, Utrecht

Adriaen van Bloemen (Flanders)
In the Draper's Shop
1670
oil on copper
Hallwyl Museum, Stockholm

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Bologna)
Landscape with Tobias and the Angel
before 1680
oil on copper
Hunterian Art Gallery, University of Glasgow

Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi (Bologna)
Landscape with St Peter Baptising
before 1680
oil on copper
National Trust, Great Britain

Why did I stop? Did some instinct
discern a shape, the artist in me
intervening to stop traffic, as it were?

A shape. Or fate, as the poets say,
intuited in those few long-ago hours 

I must have thought so once.
And yet I dislike the term
which seems to me a crutch, a phase,
the adolescence of the mind, perhaps 

Still, it was a term I used myself,
frequently to explain my failures.
Fate, destiny, whose designs and warnings
now seem to me simply
local symmetries, metonymic
baubles within immense confusion 

 Louise Glück, from the poem Afterword in the volume Faithful and Virtuous Night (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2014)