At the Hunterian this weekend and this painting was show stopping. Serene, honest, quiet, simplicity, vision. I never quite understood Diderot saying Chardin was the painter of truth before seeing this in person. Apparently Chardin is one of the painters lost most in reproduction
Go there; sit down, and pray to gracious Priapus
That I may lose my love for Daphnis.
Say, should he grant this, at once I'll offer him
A fine young goat.
May Daphnis be possessed by such a yearning as a heifer feels when, worn out by a long search for her mate through copses and tall forest trees, she sinks down on the green sedge by a running water, folorn, forgetting to go home even as the dusk deepens into night.
Is every modern nation like the tower,
Half dead at the top? No matter what I said,
For wisdom is the property of the dead,
A something incompatible with life; and power,
Like everything that has the stain of blood,
A property of the living
“Now welcome, somer, with thy sonne softe,
That hast thise wintres wedres overshake,
And driven away the large nightes blake.
Saint Valentin, that art ful heigh on lofte,
Thus singen smale fowles for thy sake”
“The day gan folwen and the derke night,
That reveth beestes from hir bisinesse
Birafte me my book for lak of light,
And to my bed I gan me for to dresse,
Fulfild of thought and bisy hevinesse
For bothe I hadde thing which that I nolde,
And eek I nadde that thing that I wolde.”