Page 359 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Portraits: literary

79 Cicero
Wood
14.5” x 6”

This head of a man rising from a cubic base has been identified
by Carmel Winkler as illustrating a maxim of Cicero, the great
Roman orator: one should pay attention to what is important,
not to a bee on one’s nose. AR combined profundity with
humor by using the philosopher-advocate’s own likeness as the
model. The distracting insect is squarely on the man’s nose,
and at least some of his attention is being given to it: one eye is
squinting, and his mouth is twisted upward. Like AR’s
Archimedes, a figure of historical importance and intellectual
achievement is here portrayed in an undignified moment (see
the entry for no. 65).

7 Omar Khayyam *
Wood
19.25” x 6.5”

The Persian mathematician, astronomer, and poet (one of AR’s
favorite philosophers, quoted in his narrative) is affectionately
and forcefully portrayed here as the protagonist of his own
verse. Omar, smiling broadly, has a firm grip on the three
objects mentioned in the famous FitzGerald rendering of a
Rubaiyat quatrain:

Here with a Loaf of Bread beneath the Bough,
A Flask of Wine, a Book of Verse—and Thou
Beside me singing in the Wilderness—
And Wilderness is Paradise enow.

The figure’s head is disproportionately large, a distortion
indicating intellectual development in AR’s work. Omar,

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