From that wonderful book of Lawrence Weschler’s, “Everything That Rises: A Book Of Convergences,” comes the following two of images.

This first image is a painting by Man Ray, “A l’Heure de l’Observatoire: les Amoureux,” 1933.

This second image is a painting by Diego Velazquez, “Venus and Cupid,” 1650.

These two paintings, drawn nearly three hundred years apart, feel as though they are fully aligned. Some thoughts from Weschler:

“The lips sprawl across the sky, lounging across the bed of the horizon line – like Velazquez’s Venus – and indeed, for the months Man Ray was working on it and for several years thereafter, he hung the wide canvas over his own bed.”

“But look again at the Velazquez: for isn’t it rather that the goddess herself extends like an upper lip over the lower lip of the black satin sash spread just beneath her – the two joined, as it were, in an enigmatic if barely subliminal smile. A smile that in turn levitates over the white of the bed itself, below which lies another dark expanse, just as in the Man Ray composition.”

Superb!
Lawrence Weschler runs an ongoing “contest” at McSweeney’s for discovering convergences (parallels) in art, iconography, popular culture, history, photography, etc. To find out more, you can click here for the link at McSweeney’s.
You can learn more about Man Ray and his art by clicking this link to get to the Man Ray Trust website.
This is a link to a web museum page for the Spanish painter Diego Velazquez.

(image sources: poster.net (Man Ray), artofeurope.com (Velazquez))