View allAll Photos Tagged URL
The presentation scene on this seal depicts a seated, bearded deity in horned headdress and flounced robe. An interceding goddess leads a worshipper, bald in a long robe, by the hand. She is posed with one arm raised, and she also wears a flounced robe and horned headdress. An inverted crescent is suspended in the field between them. Finally, a cuneiform inscription in three registers is incorporated into the scene.
Cylinder seals are cylindrical objects carved in reverse (intaglio) in order to leave raised impressions when rolled into clay. Seals were generally used to mark ownership, and they could act as official identifiers, like a signature, for individuals and institutions. A seal’s owner rolled impressions in wet clay to secure property such as baskets, letters, jars, and even rooms and buildings. This clay sealing prevented tampering because it had to be broken in order to access a safeguarded item. Cylinder seals were often made of durable material, usually stone, and most were drilled lengthwise so they could be strung and worn. A seal’s material and the images inscribed on the seal itself could be protective. The artistry and design might be appreciated and considered decorative as well. Cylinder seals were produced in the Near East beginning in the fourth millennium BCE and date to every period through the end of the first millennium BCE.
Neo-Sumerian
Diam: 1/2 in. (1.3 cm)
medium: hematite
culture: Neo-Sumerian
Walters Art Museum, 1941, by purchase.
This circular element called a roundel that originally decorated a curtain displays a perfectly interlaced knot, a design believed to provide protection from harm. Curtains were often used as modular walls in houses, theaters, and Christian churches during the late Roman and early Christian periods.
Egypt, Byzantine period
plain weave ground with tapestry weave and supplementary weft wrapping; undyed linen and dyed wool
Overall: 45.2 x 47.7 cm (17 13/16 x 18 3/4 in.); Mounted: 64.1 x 64.1 x 2.5 cm (25 1/4 x 25 1/4 x 1 in.)
Did you know...
The purple color was achieved with kermes, a dye derived from the dried bodies of insects of the same name.
Gift of Henry Hunt Clark
Egypt, Byzantine period
tabby weave with inwoven tapestry ornament, linen and wool
Overall: 64.1 x 38.7 cm (25 1/4 x 15 1/4 in.); Mounted: 71.1 x 45.7 cm (28 x 18 in.)
Gift of Henry Hunt Clark
This drawing of a young soldier setting fire to a cart of war trophies may represent a rarely depicted legend about the Macedonian king Alexander the Great (356–323 BC), who built one of the largest empires of the ancient world by the time he was 30 years old. Because the heavy spoils of war were slowing down his troops, Alexander set fire to his own cart of goods to encourage his soldiers to do the same. Renaissance princes revered him as a brilliant military strategist. Emperor Maximilian I (reigned 1486–1519), pictured in the equestrian portrait and in the great triumphal car nearby, considered Alexander a distant ancestor.
Italy, 16th century
pen and brown ink and brush and brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white
Sheet: 35.7 x 27.1 cm (14 1/16 x 10 11/16 in.); Secondary Support: 35.7 x 27.4 cm (14 1/16 x 10 13/16 in.); Tertiary Support: 35.8 x 27.4 cm (14 1/8 x 10 13/16 in.)
Dudley P. Allen Fund
Japan
lacquer, nacre and metal
Overall: 15.9 x 20.3 cm (6 1/4 x 8 in.); Outer diameter: 9.3 cm (3 11/16 in.)
Gift of Stouffer Restaurant-Inn Corp.
Extracts from Alfred Jacob Miller’s original text, which accompanied his images of Native Americans, are included below for reference. These words, which shaped how Miller’s contemporaries viewed the watercolors, reveal the racism and sexism embedded in 19th-century exploration and colonization of the western part of what is today the United States.
"The woman in front has her papoose. It is hung to the saddle bow by a strip of buckskin. The child is attached to the board and secured by buckskin highly ornamented and laced in front. If any one thing gives an Indian woman pleasure, above another, it must be the elaboration of this affair. Porcupine quills stained with all manner of colours, quite indelible, and of beautiful patterns, are carried down and across the front; now if she can procure some small bells to fasten on the guard piece of the head, the arrangement is almost complete." A.J. Miller, extracted from "The West of Alfred Jacob Miller" (1837).
In July 1858 William T. Walters commissioned 200 watercolors at twelve dollars apiece from Baltimore born artist Alfred Jacob Miller. These paintings were each accompanied by a descriptive text, and were delivered in installments over the next twenty-one months and ultimately were bound in three albums. Transcriptions of field-sketches drawn during the 1837 expedition that Miller had undertaken to the annual fur-trader's rendezvous in the Green River Valley (in what is now western Wyoming), these watercolors are a unique record of the closing years of the western fur trade.
H: 9 3/16 x W: 8 3/8 in. (23.3 x 21.3 cm)
medium: watercolor heightened with white on paper
Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.
James G. Harwood was regarded as a promising young Baltimore artist when he died mysteriously of gun-shot wounds at the age of 28. Little is known of his career other than that he had studied for a year in New York with William Merritt Chase (1849-1916) and had also enrolled for two years at the Académie Julian in Paris, a popular destination for Americans training in Paris.
In this scene, Harwood has portrayed the Maryland Fifth Regiment marching up Charles Street in Baltimore on a rainy day. Two dates have been suggested for this work, the Defenders' Day celebration in September 1889 or the celebration of the ending of the Spanish-American War on September 7, 1898. On both occasions, it rained.
Approx. H: 41 x W: 26 1/2 in. (104.14 x 67.31 cm)
medium: oil on canvas
Walters Art Museum, 1977, by gift.
Winslow Homer
American, Boston, Massachusetts 1836–1910 Prouts Neck, Maine
14 7/16 x 21 in. (36.7 x 53.3 cm)
medium: Watercolor and graphite on white wove paper
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 10.228.12 1910
Amelia B. Lazarus Fund, 1910
Charles Willson Peale
American, Chester, Maryland 1741–1827 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
1 7/8 x 1 1/4 in. (4.6 x 3.1 cm)
medium: Watercolor on ivory
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 38.165.32 1938
Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 1938
Cortez Explains Why He Had To Bodybag Uno Lavoz At URL’s “Perfect Day” battledomination.com/cortez-explains-why-he-had-to-bodyba...
Robert Besnard and His Donkey (Robert Besnard et son âne), 1888. Albert Besnard (French, 1849–1934). Etching and aquatint; platemark: 23.6 x 18.1 cm (9 5/16 x 7 1/8 in.); sheet: 28.8 x 21.7 cm (11 5/16 x 8 9/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Bequest of Elizabeth Carroll Shearer 2016.106
More at clevelandart.org/art/2016.106
This unidentified sculpture represents a mature male figure with a long beard. His robes, crown-like head ornament, and hair arranged into a topknot resemble the attire and styling of members of the heavenly realm—<em>tenbu</em> in Japanese—of the Buddhist cosmos. The comparatively simple design, along with carving marks purposely left by the sculptor throughout the surface tend to be associated with sculptures of <em>kami</em>, deities venerated at shrines, or<em> jinja</em>.
Japan, Heian period (794–1185)
Magnolia wood with traces of color
Overall: 100 cm (39 3/8 in.)
John L. Severance Fund