| — | Evagrios the Solitary |
Mummy Case, Egypt, Roman Period, Early 2nd century
“Mummy of a Greek youth, aged 19-21, named Artemidorus in a cartonnage body-case with mythological decoration in gold leaf and an encaustic on limewood portrait-panel covering the face and inscription on the chest. There is an inscription in Greek on the mummy-case.”
The British Museum
Fra Filippo Lippi, Saint Lawrence Enthroned with Saints and Donors, c. 1440s
From the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
This picture is part of an altarpiece described by the sixteenth-century writer Vasari when it was still in the Alessandri villa at Vincigliata, near Fiesole. The patron, Alessandro Alessandri (1391–1460)—who also commissioned Benozzo Gozzoli’s four predella panels in this gallery— is shown kneeling at the right, and his sons Jacopo (1422–1494) and Antonio (1423–after 1480) kneel at the left. When Alessandri commissioned the altarpiece, probably in the late 1440s, he was at the height of his political career. He served as captain of Livorno in 1442, of Pistoia in 1445, and of Pisa in 1447. He was part of the Florentine delegation for the accession of Nicholas V as Pope in 1447.
The picture is badly damaged and has, additionally, been cut down and regilt. It was cleaned in 1982–83. The portrait heads are fairly well preserved; the position of Jacopo Alessandri’s feet were changed by Lippi in the course of executing the painting.
To Christ Our Lord
I caught this morning morning’s minion, king-
dom of daylight’s dauphin, dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon, in his riding
Of the rolling level underneath him steady air, and striding
High there, how he rung upon the rein of a wimpling wing
In his ecstasy! then off, off forth on swing,
As a skate’s heel sweeps smooth on a bow-bend: the hurl and gliding
Rebuffed the big wind. My heart in hiding
Stirred for a bird, – the achieve of, the mastery of the thing.
Brute beauty and valour and act, oh, air, pride, plume, here
Buckle! AND the fire that breaks from thee then, a billion
Times told lovelier, more dangerous, O my chevalier!
No wonder of it: shéer plód makes plough down sillion
Shine, and blue-bleak embers, ah my dear,
Fall, gall themselves, and gash gold-vermilion.
| — | The Windhover, by Gerard Manley Hopkins |
