 |
| François Cuvilliés the Younger Scroll Ornament 1768 drawing, watercolor Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf |
 |
| François Cuvilliés the Younger Inscription Plate withinin Scroll Ornament 1768-69 drawing, watercolor Museum Kunstpalast, Düsseldorf |
 |
| Melchior d'Hondecoeter Pelican and other birds near a pool 1765 oil on canvas Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam |
"Melchior d'Hondecoeter's (1636-1695) specialty of poultry painting was something of a family business. Melchior's father and grandfather had both been interested in animal painting, and an aunt was married to the painter Jan Baptist Weenix, an Italianist. After studying with his father, d'Hondecoeter was apprenticed to his uncle Weenix, and this gave him an opportunity to develop his technique and use of color. Besides strikingly realistic scenes of birds, d'Hondecoeter also painted wall hangings with views of buildings and parks. Here, too, birds were usually involved."
– curator's notes from the Rijksmuseum
 |
| James McNeill Whistler Valparaiso Harbor 1866 oil on canvas Smithsonian American Art Museum |
 |
| James McNeill Whistler Nocturne - Blue and Silver - Chelsea 1871 oil on panel Tate Britain |
 |
| Giacinto Gimignani Studies of four putti before 1681 drawing British Museum |
 |
| Giacinto Gimignani St James and St Eulalia among clouds adoring an effigy of the Virgin and Child with the city of Pistoia below before 1680 wash drawing British Museum |
 |
| Francesco Allegrini Landscape with sheep before 1663 drawing Teylers Museum, Haarlem |
 |
| Domenico Beccafumi Public Virtues of Greek and Roman Heroes - The Sacrifice of King Codrus of Athens 1529-35 fresco Fondazione Musei Senesi |
CODRUS, supposedly king of Athens in the 11th century BC. According to the story current in the 5th century, his father Melanthus, of the Neleid family, came to Attica when expelled from Paylos by the Dorians, and, after killing the Boeotian king Xanthus in single combat during a frontier war, was accepted as king of Athens in place of the reigning Theseid Thymoetes. During the reign of Codrus the Dorians invaded Attica, having heard from Delphi that they would be victorious if Codrus' life was spared; a friendly Delphian informed the Athenians of this oracle. Codrus thereupon went out dressed as a woodcutter, invited death by starting a quarrel with Dorian warriors, and so saved his country. He was succeeded by his son Medon, and the kingship remained in the family until the 8th century.
– Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd edition, 1996, edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth
 |
| Cassiano dal Pozzo Paper Museum Etruscan bronze statuette of a priest ca. 1650 drawing British Museum |
 |
| Cassiano dal Pozzo Paper Museum Etruscan bronze statuette of winged female Lasa ca. 1650 drawing British Museum |
 |
| John Berryman M for Mermaid ca. 1818 wood-engraving British Museum |
 |
| Sebald Beham Fountain of Youth - and Bathhouse 1536 woodcut Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin |
 |
| Émile Bernard Boy sitting on the grass 1886 oil on canvas Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam |
"The prominence to our minds of cast shadow is clearly due to a number of things. It often moves fast on the ground and is noticeable because of that. Because it is simple its constituent three terms – one light source, one object, one silhouette – are often simultaneously present to us in a satisfying way: so it expounds itself, the inviting territory of sciography.* Its third term, the silhouette, has obvious resonances with the edge-seeking thrust of the whole visual system. And the nuisance effect of its intermittent interference with that thrust, our having to distinguish it from an object edge, also makes us aware of it. But perhaps a fifth reason is that its form, linear inference, is so much the form of our own conscious reflection: it flatters ratiocination by being amenable to it. We can easily and pleasurably attend to it, but that does not mean it embodies more useful information than other shadows."
– Michael Baxandall, from Shadows and Enlightenment (Yale University Press, 1995)
*sciography, a sub-branch of linear perspective, is the representation in two dimensions of the calculated forms of projected shadows – a widespread study in 18th-century France"