Thursday, October 26, 2017

Renaissance Venuses at the British Museum

Anonymous Italian printmaker
Venus and three Cupids
ca. 1450-75
niello print
British Museum

Anonymous Italian printmaker
Venus and Cupid in a forest
ca. 1500-1530
engraving
British Museum

from Flowers and Love, a ballad within the Decameron

Through the green meadows do I go to see the yellow flowers and white and red, the roses on their thorns and the white flowers-de-luce; and I go likening them to the face of him who loving me hath captured me, even as she that doth desire naught else save her delight.

When among these I find a flower that seems like him, I pluck and kiss it and speak to it, and open all my soul to it and what the heart desires, and then I plait it up with other flowers to make a garland for my fine gold hair.

And as by nature every flower doth give delight unto our eyes, so this one gives delight as if indeed I saw him who hath snared me with his gentle love; the greater joy its perfume gives me speech may not express, but these my sighs true witness bear thereof.

 Giovanni Boccaccio (1313-1375), translated by Richard Aldington (1892-1962)

Jacopo de' Barbari
Mars and Venus
ca. 1510
engraving
British Museum

Marco da Ravenna after Raphael
Venus Anadyomene
(Saturn in clouds about to emasculate his father Uranus)

ca. 1515-20
engraving
British Museum

Raphael
Venus
before 1520
drawing
British Museum

Master of the Die after Antonio Salamanca
Venus removing thorn from her foot
1532
engraving
British Museum

Madrigal

While life is running out in me through time
Love still is doing harm,
And will not leave me an hour
As I after so many years had thought.
My soul shakes and screams
Like a man falsely murdered,
Complaining to me of the eternal cheat.
Between fear and deceit
I feel such doubts then over love and death
That I seek in one breath
The better of them, and then take the worse,
Good counsel thus beaten by evil use.

 Michelangelo Buonarroti (1475-1564), translated by Creighton Gilbert (1924-2011)

Giovanni Battista Scultori
Mars and Venus
1539
engraving
British Museum

Giovanni Battista Scultori
Venus embracing Mars
ca. 1540
engraving
British Museum

Domenico del Barbiere
Mars and Venus
ca. 1540-50
engraving
British Museum

Cornelis Bos after Maarten van Heemskerck
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan
1546
engraving
British Museum

Enea Vico after Raphael
Toilet of Venus, with Cupid holding towel
1546
engraving
British Museum

Giorgio Ghisi after Perino del Vaga
Venus at the Forge of Vulcan
ca. 1550-60
engraving
British Museum

Friedrich Sustris after Lambert Sustris
Venus and Cupid
ca. 1560-80
etching, engraving
British Museum

attributed to Francesco Primaticcio
Venus in Chariot - design for spandrel
before 1570
drawing
British Museum