Sunday, February 25, 2024

Ovid's Metamorphoses ... third edition, ripped-off from Tonson ... very poorly illustrated and printed in Ireland in 1727 ... here are the frontispiece pages with their pictorial dedications to a series of high-ranking ladies ... of Volume One, Books One to Seven ... and of Volume Two, Books Eight to Fifteen ... it seems only properly respectful to include such portraits of the ladies as will bring them to life ... BUT THEN, LATER ... mercy me ! ... I had failed to realize i was looking at the cheap rip-off pirate edition ... the original publisher was Jacob Tonson in London ... his printers and engravers and artists did much finer work, as you will see ...


 








VOLUME ONE

https://archive.org/details/ovidsmetamorphos01ovid/mode/2up?view=theater


this is the crude rip-off version printed in Dublin ...


































and this is the original ... printed in London ...
















... and here is the painted lady ...

















































in 1727, the duchess of kingston was Isabella Bentinck 

portraits are hard to find but this is a tentative ID ...




























... and this is a more positive ID ...

https://historicalportraits.com/artists/362-charles-dagar/works/1296-charles-d-agar-portrait-of-isabella-bentinck-1690s/

































lady mary ker, duchess of roxburghe





































possibly lady henrietta pelham holles

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harriet_Pelham-Holles,_Duchess_of_Newcastle


































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frances_Seymour,_Duchess_of_Somerset_(born_1699)




































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlotte_Rich,_Countess_of_Warwick




































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anne,_Princess_Royal_and_Princess_of_Orange

































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Cowper















VOLUME TWO

https://archive.org/details/ovidsmetamorphos02ovid_0/mode/2up?view=theater


































Lucy Manners, nee Sherard, Duchess of Rutland

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Manners,_Duchess_of_Rutland




































lucy pelham holles, countess of lincoln




































Frances Digby, Viscountess Scudamore
















































































i am assuming that MRS walpole was really LADY walpole ...

















































margaret pelham



































https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Boyle,_Countess_of_Burlington

























Juliana Boyle, Countess of Ailesbury


































diana de vere, duchess of saint albans



The two rip-off volumes are kept in the Clark Institute Library

https://www.clarkart.edu/library/about-the-library

Ref:  

urn:oclc:record:1050250920
[WorldCat (this item)]


Tonson's 1717 first edition has been scanned in for Google Books so that you can read it all for free


https://www.google.co.uk/books/edition/Ovid_s_Metamorphoses_in_Fifteen_Books/2mlZAAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1






bernard picart designed and engraved this rarther lovely coat of arms at a time when the royal family in the Uk where going through "a difficult patch" ... i suspect princess caroline may have been the only sane adult in the room ... the ribbon with the motto has been drawn in the shape of a heart ... was this a gesture of loyalty in the hope of reconciliation ?


 







https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caroline_of_Ansbach


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_George_William_of_Great_Britain


https://www.rijksmuseum.nl/en/search/objects?q=caroline+ansbach&p=8&ps=12&st=Objects&ii=0#/RP-P-OB-57.045,84


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernard_Picart


Picart was French but was well established in the Amsterdam publishing business by this time.


Why it was designed and engraved overseas is the question i want answered.



Wednesday, February 14, 2024

when good painters of nudes wanted easy money, then i'd guess the ancient myth of Danae was an immediate "go-to" ...











titian













 

orazio gentileschi














artemisia gentileschi
















rubens

















rembrandt














jacques blanchard














Wertmuller
















klimt


... and many others ...


... such as ...














edmund dulac, 1917


... but the witty painter who takes the virtual gold medal was Giovanni Battista Tiepolo ... 













... just see how she looks you in the eye as if to say MIND YOUR OWN BUSINESS


Sunday, February 11, 2024

i woke in the middle of the night and regretted never finishing Gibbon's Decline and Fall ... so i accessed Volume 6 on-line and turned to the last chapter ... there i found his description of the Rome he visited in the late 1700s ...












But the clouds of barbarism were gradually dispelled; and the peaceful authority of Martin the Fifth and his successors restored the ornaments of the city as well as the order of the ecclesiastical state. The improvements of Rome, since the fifteenth century, have not been the spontaneous produce of freedom and industry. The first and most natural root of a great city is the labor and populousness of the adjacent country, which supplies the materials of subsistence, of manufactures, and of foreign trade. But the greater part of the Campagna of Rome is reduced to a dreary and desolate wilderness: the overgrown estates of the princes and the clergy are cultivated by the lazy hands of indigent and hopeless vassals; and the scanty harvests are confined or exported for the benefit of a monopoly. A second and more artificial cause of the growth of a metropolis is the residence of a monarch, the expense of a luxurious court, and the tributes of dependent provinces. Those provinces and tributes had been lost in the fall of the empire; and if some streams of the silver of Peru and the gold of Brazil have been attracted by the Vatican, the revenues of the cardinals, the fees of office, the oblations of pilgrims and clients, and the remnant of ecclesiastical taxes, afford a poor and precarious supply, which maintains, however, the idleness of the court and city. The population of Rome, far below the measure of the great capitals of Europe, does not exceed one hundred and seventy thousand inhabitants; 74 and within the spacious enclosure of the walls, the largest portion of the seven hills is overspread with vineyards and ruins. The beauty and splendor of the modern city may be ascribed to the abuses of the government, to the influence of superstition. Each reign (the exceptions are rare) has been marked by the rapid elevation of a new family, enriched by the childish pontiff at the expense of the church and country. The palaces of these fortunate nephews are the most costly monuments of elegance and servitude: the perfect arts of architecture, sculpture, and painting, have been prostituted in their service; and their galleries and gardens are decorated with the most precious works of antiquity, which taste or vanity has prompted them to collect. The ecclesiastical revenues were more decently employed by the popes themselves in the pomp of the Catholic worship; but it is superfluous to enumerate their pious foundations of altars, chapels, and churches, since these lesser stars are eclipsed by the sun of the Vatican, by the dome of St. Peter, the most glorious structure that ever has been applied to the use of religion. The fame of Julius the Second, Leo the Tenth, and Sixtus the Fifth, is accompanied by the superior merit of Bramante and Fontana, of Raphael and Michael Angelo; and the same munificence which had been displayed in palaces and temples was directed with equal zeal to revive and emulate the labors of antiquity. Prostrate obelisks were raised from the ground, and erected in the most conspicuous places; of the eleven aqueducts of the Cæsars and consuls, three were restored; the artificial rivers were conducted over a long series of old, or of new arches, to discharge into marble basins a flood of salubrious and refreshing waters: and the spectator, impatient to ascend the steps of St. Peter's, is detained by a column of Egyptian granite, which rises between two lofty and perpetual fountains, to the height of one hundred and twenty feet. The map, the description, the monuments of ancient Rome, have been elucidated by the diligence of the antiquarian and the student: 75 and the footsteps of heroes, the relics, not of superstition, but of empire, are devoutly visited by a new race of pilgrims from the remote, and once savage countries of the North. 


Of these pilgrims, and of every reader, the attention will be excited by a History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire; the greatest, perhaps, and most awful scene in the history of mankind. The various causes and progressive effects are connected with many of the events most interesting in human annals: the artful policy of the Cæsars, who long maintained the name and image of a free republic; the disorders of military despotism; the rise, establishment, and sects of Christianity; the foundation of Constantinople; the division of the monarchy; the invasion and settlements of the Barbarians of Germany and Scythia; the institutions of the civil law; the character and religion of Mahomet; the temporal sovereignty of the popes; the restoration and decay of the Western empire of Charlemagne; the crusades of the Latins in the East: the conquests of the Saracens and Turks; the ruin of the Greek empire; the state and revolutions of Rome in the middle age. The historian may applaud the importance and variety of his subject; but while he is conscious of his own imperfections, he must often accuse the deficiency of his materials. It was among the ruins of the Capitol that I first conceived the idea of a work which has amused and exercised near twenty years of my life, and which, however inadequate to my own wishes, I finally deliver to the curiosity and candor of the public.

Lausanne, June 27 1787