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| Guido Reni Christ appearing to the Virgin ca. 1608 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Guido Reni Ecce Homo ca. 1639 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
Archibald Higbie
I loathed you, Spoon River. I tried to rise above you,
I was ashamed of you. I despised you
As the place of my nativity.
And there in Rome, among the artists,
Speaking Italian, speaking French,
I seemed to myself at times to be free
Of every trace of my origin.
I seemed to be reading the heights of art
And to breathe the air that the masters breathed,
And to see the world with their eyes.
But still they'd pass my work and say:
"What are you driving at, my friend?
Sometimes the face looks like Apollo's,
At others it has a trace of Lincoln's."
There was no culture, you know, in Spoon River,
And I burned with shame and held my peace.
And what could I do, all covered over
And weighted down with western soil,
Except aspire, and pray for another
Birth in the world, with all of Spoon River
Rooted out of my soul?
– Edgar Lee Masters (1915)
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| Guido Reni Infant Moses with Pharoah's crown ca. 1640 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Pier Francesco Mazzucchelli Marriage of the Virgin ca. 1600-1625 oil on canvas (grisaille) National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Sinibaldo Scorza Landscape with Latona and the peasants ca. 1620 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Sinibaldo Scorza Landscape with Philemon and Baucis ca. 1620 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Pietro da Cortona The Calling of St Peter and St Andrew ca. 1626-30 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Guercino Virgin and Child with the infant St John the Baptist ca. 1615 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Guercino St Peter Penitent 1639 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| attributed to Guercino Holy Family on the Flight into Egypt meeting the infant St John the Baptist before 1666 tempera on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
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| Francesco Furini Poetry 1633 oil on paper, mounted on panel National Galleries of Scotland |
Italian
What is Italian? It is the language spoken
By a man from Italy.
Not all in words, in part in phrases,
Of brow, wrist, lightening
Of glance, glancing of touch,
More than the language can take in chance,
More than the man can take in language.
Breathing and sighing, some glides over him,
Sleek, sentential, Italian: that portion
He apprehends.
– Josephine Miles (1958)
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| after Pietro Testa The Triumph of Painting ca. 1650-1700 oil on canvas (grisaille) National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Salvator Rosa Landscape with St Anthony Abbot and St Paul ca. 1660-65 oil on canvas National Galleries of Scotland |
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| Sassoferrato The Holy Family before 1685 oil on canvas Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge |
– poems from the archives of Poetry (Chicago)