Aquis Submersus
Aquis Submersus (1919) is a painting by the German dadaist/surrealist Max Ernst.
Et in Arcadia ego
Et in Arcadia ego (also known as The Arcadian Shepherds) is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Giovanni Francesco Barbieri (Guercino), +/- 1620.
Et in Arcadia ego (“I am in Arcadia too”) appears onto the cippus. It’s a moral reference to death. Remark also the iconography of the memento mori theme, a genre of artistic creations that vary widely from one another, but which all share the same purpose, which is to remind people of their own mortality.
Bulls of Bordeaux
Dibersion de España (Spanish diversion), from Los toros de Burdeos (Bulls of Bordeaux). Francisco Goya. Lithograph, 1825.
Michaël Borremans
The Preservation, Michaël Borremans, 2001, 70,0 x 60,0 cm, oil on canvas.
(yesterday I watched a documentary on Borremans; if you missed it, Canvas is broadcasting it again on 22 and 23 May – for Belgian viewers)
The War of the Worlds
The War of the Worlds was an early science fiction novel by H. G. Wells, describing an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines, equipped with advanced weaponry. It is one of the most famous scifi novels.
Illustration of tripods by Warwick Goble for The War of the Worlds as published in Pearson’s Magazine, 1897)
Free text of The War of the Worlds at Project Gutenberg
Digesting Duck
The Canard Digérateur, or Digesting Duck, was an automaton in the form of a duck, created by Jacques de Vaucanson in 1739. The mechanical duck appeared to have the ability to eat kernels of grain, and to metabolize and defecate them. While the duck did not actually have the ability to do this – the food was collected in one inner container, and the feces being ‘produced’ from a second, so that no actual digestion took place – Vaucanson hoped that a truly digesting automaton could one day be designed.
Cosette
Illustration of Cosette from Les Misérables by Victor Hugo. Cosette is the nickname of Euphrasie Tholomyès, a character in the novel. The portrait is by Émile-Antoine Bayard (1837-1891).This image which appeared in the original edition of the novel in 1862, was also used on posters promoting the musical version of Les Misérables.
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne – 111 illustrations by Riou (24, the first eleven chapters) and Alphonse de Neuville (86), engraving by Hildibrand (1871). This is the title page illustration by Edouard Riou, a pupil of Charles-François Daubigny and Gustave Doré.
See Zvi Har’El’s Jules Verne Collection for (I think) a complete overview of all illustrations.
Satire on False Perspective
Satire on False Perspective is the title of an engraving produced by William Hogarth in 1754.
The intent of the work is clearly given by the subtitle:
Whoever makes a DESIGN without the Knowledge of PERSPECTIVE will be liable to such Absurdities as are shewn in this Frontispiece
Three Worlds
Three Worlds, lithograph print by the Dutch artist M. C. Escher which was first printed in December, 1955. Escher remains one of my favourite artists, together with Gustave Doré and Giovanni Battista Piranesi.
Three Worlds depicts a large pool or lake during the autumn or winter months. The title refers to the three visible perspectives in this image: the surface of the water on which leaves float, the world above the surface, observable by the water’s reflection of a forest, and the world below the surface, observable in the large fish swimming just below the water’s surface.
Love Song
The Song of Love (also known as Le chant d’amour or Love Song; 1914) is a painting by the Italian metaphysical painter Giorgio de Chirico. It is one of the most famous works by de Chirico and an early example of the surrealist style, though it was painted ten years before the movement was “founded” by André Breton in 1924.
Helen Levitt
Helen Levitt (August 31, 1913 – March 29, 2009) was an American photographer. She was particularly noted for “street photography” around New York City.
Interesting link: Dikant, Thomas (2003). “Helen Levitt: 10 Photographs“. Philologie in Netz 25: 1–30. Critical study of ten of Levitt’s photographs.
Melencolia I
Melencolia I is an engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer.
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion
Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, Francis Bacon, 1944, Oil and pastel on Sundeala board, 94 × 74 cm, 37 × 29 in, Tate Britain, London
Clyfford Still
Clyfford Still, 1957-D No. 1, 1957, oil on canvas, 113 x 159 in, Albright-Knox Art Gallery, Buffalo, New York:
Clyfford Still (November 30, 1904 – June 23, 1980) was an American painter, and one of the leading figures of Abstract Expressionism.
Odalisque
An odalisque (Turkish: Odalık) was a virgin female slave in an Ottoman seraglio. She was an assistant or apprentice to the concubines and wives, and she might rise in status to become one of them. Most odalisques were part of the harem, that is, the household, of the sultan.
During the 19th century, odalisques became common fantasy figures in the artistic movement known as Orientalism, being featured in many erotic paintings from that era.
Example – La Grande Odalisque by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, painted 1814:
Still-Life with Partridge and Iron Gloves
Still-Life with Partridge and Iron Gloves, Jacopo de’Barbari (born ca. 1445, Venezia, died 1516, Brussels), 1504, oil on wood, 52 x 42,5 cm.
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, by Albrecht Dürer, 1497-98, woodcut, 39 x 28 cm.
The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse is a term used to describe four horsemen that appear in the Christian Bible in chapter six of the Book of Revelation. The four horsemen are traditionally named after what the verses describe them bringing: Pestilence, War, Famine and Death; only Death, however, is directly named in the Bible.
The complete Dürer woodcut series: The Revelation of St John (Apocalypse) (1497-98).
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