Sunday, January 14, 2018

Monochrome and Mostly Victorian Images

August Allebé
Head of Rhinoceros
ca. 1870-84
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

August Allebé
Study of a cast of an antique Dancing Faun
ca. 1855-60
drawing
Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam

Thomas Beech after the painting by Henry Nelson O'Neil
Death of Raffaelle
 attended by Baldassare Peruzzi, Marcantonio Raimondi, Giovanni da Udine,
other artists, two monks, and a cardinal

1866
wood-engraving published in the Illustrated Times, London 
British Museum

"Meanwhile, pursuing his amours in secret, Raffaello continued to divert himself beyond measure with the pleasures of love; when it happened that, having on one occasion indulged in more than his usual excess, he returned to his house in a violent fever.  The physicians, therefore, believing that he had overheated himself, and receiving from him no confession of the excess of which he had been guilty, imprudently bled him, insomuch that he was weakened and felt himself sinking; for he was in need rather of restoratives.  Thereupon he made his will: and first, like a good Christian, he sent his mistress out of the house, leaving her the means to live honourably.  Next, he divided his possessions among his disciples, Giulio Romano, whom he had always loved dearly, and the Florentine Giovanni Francesco, called Il Fattore, with a priest of Urbino, his kinsman, whose name I do not know.  Then he gave orders that some of his wealth should be used for restoring with new masonry one of the ancient tabernacles in S. Maria Rotunda, and for making an altar, with a marble statue of Our Lady, in that church, which he chose as his place of repose and burial after death; and he left all the rest to Giulio and Giovanni Francesco, appointing as executor of his will Messer Baldassarre da Pescia, then Datary to the Pope.  Finally, he confessed and was penitent, and ended the course of his life at the age of thirty-seven, on the same day that he was born, which was Good Friday.  And even as he embellished the world with his talents, so it may be believed, does his soul adorn Heaven by his presence."

– Giorgio Vasari, from Lives of the Painters, Sculptors and Architects (1568), translated by Gaston du C. de Vere (1912)

Edward Burne-Jones
Desiderium from The Faerie Queene
1873
drawing
Tate, London

Edward Burne-Jones
Study for The Liberation of Peter
ca. 1863
drawing
Tate, London

Keep away, son, these lakes are salt. These flowers
Eat insects. Here private lunatics 
Yell and skip in a very dry country.

Or where some haywire monument
Some badfaced daddy of fear 
Commands an unintelligent rite.

– Thomas Merton, from Advice to a Young Prophet (1963)

John Constable
Self-portrait
1806
drawing
Tate, London

Charles Samuel Keene
Two artists working by lamplight in a studio
ca. 1860
drawing
Tate, London

William Mulready
Study of hands
1860
drawing
Tate, London

William Mulready
Study of hands
1859
drawing
Tate, London

William Mulready
Study of hands
1861
drawing
Tate, London

George Richmond
Elijah and the Angel
ca. 1824-25
drawing
Tate, London

Him thought, he by the Brook of Cherith stood
And saw the Ravens with their horny beaks
Food to Elijah bring Even and Morn,
Though ravenous, taught to abstain from what they brought:
He saw the Prophet also how he fled
Into the Desert, and how there he slept
Under a Juniper; then how awakt,
He found his Supper on the coals prepar'd,
And by the Angel was bid rise and eat,
And eat the second time after repose,
The strength whereof suffic'd him forty days;

– John Milton, from Paradise Regain'd (1671)

Frederick Sandys
Study of trees and undergrowth
ca. 1855
drawing
Tate, London

Alfred Stevens
Study of kneeling youth bending a bow for decorative scheme at Dorchester House
ca. 1860
drawing
Tate, London

Aubrey Beardsley
La Dame aux Camélias
1894
drawing
Tate, London