Charles de la Fosse, Drawings

Sacrifice of Iphigenia

Charles de la Fosse (1636-1716) was a French artist born in Paris. After studying in Italy he did a lot work at Versailles. His paintings never grabbed be but these drawings are wonderful.

Saint John the Evangelist

Design for a celing

Apollo and Python

Mausoleum of Constantina

The Mausoleum of Constantina was built in the 4th century AD for Constantina, the daughter of the emperor Constantine I. It later became a church known as Santa Costanza. It is one of the best preserved buildings from Late Antiquity left in Rome. Not much on the outside, as you can see.

Although it looks somewhat better in this view.

Interior

The glory of the place is the wonderful mosaics, especially those in the ceiling of the ambulatory.

Lovely.

More in the niches.

This disputed object, now in the Vatican Museum, is thought to be the sarcophagus of Constantina. Many stories are told of it. According to official Italian tourism promoters,

During the 17th century, the Mausoleo is the meeting place of a bizarre association of Dutch and Flemish artists called Bent-vogels (birds of the band). Every time the group was enriched by a new member, a baptism party was celebrated with abundant libations, in a tavern on the Via Nomentana. After a night of debauchery the Bent-vogels made a last solemn toast in the temple of Bacchus in front of the porphyry sarcophagus, considered the sepulchre of the god. The feast could last up to three days and three nights. In 1720, Pope Clemente XI forbade this custom because it profaned the ancient Mausoleo. The names of some of these Bent-vogels, engraved in the niches of the ambulatory, are still visible today.

Cool.

Harry Clarke

Harry Clarke (1889-1931) was in Irish illustrator who is best known these days for his black and white illustrations to Edgar Allen Poe. I have some in this post and more here.

Here are some from Goethe's Faust, 1925

More Poe. Astounding.

But he also did color work, like these illustrations to Hans Christian Andersen.

And below, one in black and white, The Little Mermaid and the Sea Witch

John Singer Sargent in Venice

Returning to a favorite artistic topic after 14 years. As you can see from all these dates, he went to Italy quite a few times. Above, a canal in Venice, 1904

A street in Venice, 1881

Venice, Scuola di San Rocco, 1903

Venice: I Gesuati, 1911

Venice: facade of La Salute, 1903

Head of an Italian woman, 1878

Etruscan Art in the MFA Boston

Cinerary Urn of Fastia Velsi, wife of Larza Velu, one of five ash urns found in a tomb of the Velsi family of ancient Chiusi. Third century BC

Fascimile done in the 1890s of a wall painting in the Tomba di Triclinio, c. 490 BC, and detail.

Painted Plaque from another tomb, c. 470 BC.

Mirror case showing Dionysis, Eros, and Pan, third century BC. That assemblage of gods conveys a certain notion of why people looked into mirrors.

His and hers sarcophagus lid, c. 330 BC. Etruscan tombs convey the impression that they were really into marriage.

Portrait in the form of a ceramic serving vessel

Statuette of a stooping athlete, c. 520 BC

Figurine of a man and woman in an ox car, c. 600 BC

Bronze sword, c. 850 BC

The Visconti-Sforza Tarot

The Sun, from the "Visconti-Sforza Tarot",

attributed to Franco dei Russi (1453-1482)

A surviving account book tells us that around 1442, the Duke of Milan gave his daughter a deluxe set of handcrafted playing cards in the pattern we call Tarot. This meticulously painted deck was valued at 1,500 ducats, 10 times the annual salary of a palace servant.

The Pierpont Morgan Library in New York has a bunch of Renaissance Italian tarot cards, some of which are probably associated with the Dukes of Milan. There are no complete sets, just various cards from several different sets executed by different artists. They describe these cards as the "Visconti-Sforza Tarot." The Viscontis and the Sforzas were two families that both held the rank of dukes of Milan, the Sforzas taking over (violently) from the Visconti in 1447. 

No expert myself, I find this designation misleading in the extreme, but anyway these are 15th-century tarot cards from northern Italy, and they are quite amazing.

Death and Judgment, attributed to 

Bonifacio Bembo (1420-1480)

Temperence, attributed to Franco dei Russi

The Three of Cups, attributed to Bonifacio Bembo. More at the NY Times

There is also a related set of cards known as the Cary Yale Playing Cards, now kept in the Beineke Library at Yale. These also date to the mid 1400s and are also from northern Italy, but the rest of what I read about them strikes me as speculation.

Quite delightful that so many of these little wonders survive in North American and European Collections.