(A 1969 painting bears the German words for "Higher powers command: Paint the upper right corner black"; the upper right corner is painted black).
That command, painted in black letters, looms above the heads of drivers venturing onto America's longest covered bridge, which spans the Connecticut River between this town and Windsor, Vt., on the opposite shore.
But current acting FBI Director Andrew McCabe, who was Comey's second-in-command, painted a very different picture while testifying Thursday in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee.
Although Napoleon commanded him to paint vast battle scenes, such as Marengo (1804), his real talent was for intimate genre and for drawing rather than for painting.
Her larger works now sell for $30,000, and one painting commanded $44,000 — sums unimaginable when she was, say, in her 80s.
At the opening night of the Archibald prize in July, one painting commanded more double takes than the rest: Nick Stathopoulos' portrait of Sudanese refugee and lawyer, Deng Adut – so real to life it could have been a photo.
Le Corbusier remarked that "the airplane takes possession of the sky," but three decades later Calder's painted aircraft commanded attention in the sales office.
Wanda employs black maids to tie Severin to a bedpost, and tortures a tragically voyeuristic German artist by commanding him to paint her portrait.
Patrons of the 21st century are far less politically motivated than the Medici family and their ilk, and they generally don't house artists in their lavish estates or command them to paint frescoes.
An untitled 1963 painting by Mark Rothko commanded the top price of $7.1 million.
