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King Arthur’s women: 1 Morgan le Fay
Rich and compelling though the Arthurian legends are, they are also a bit of a nightmare in terms of narrative, as are their paintings. There are so many stories, each of which comes in different...
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King Arthur’s women: 2 Queen Guinevere
If Morgan le Fay is a wicked witch for much of Arthurian legend, and only comes good as Arthur lies dying, Queen Guinevere turns out to be unfaithful, and is almost burned at the stake, a punishment...
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The Divine Comedy: Inferno 14 From treachery to cannibalism
After meeting some political traitors, Dante and Virgil come across Count Ugolino, who is gnawing the back of the head of Archbishop Ruggieri as a dog chews a bone. Their story is one of the most...
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The Divine Comedy: Inferno 15 Lucifer
Dante and Virgil move on towards a great contraption which looks from a distance a bit like a windmill. As they grow closer, they pass by shades of the dead frozen and stacked up. Joseph Anton Koch...
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The Divine Comedy: Inferno 16 An overview of Hell
Before Dante takes us on from Hell to Purgatory, I’d like to take a brief overview of the last fifteen articles in which he has taken us to Hell and back, looking at some of its finest paintings....
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 1 Starting the ascent
Although Heaven and Hell have clear biblical roots, the concept of Purgatory as part of the Christian life after death is more recent. It originated in the early Christian Church, flourished in the...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 2 The murder of Pia de’ Tolomei
Dante is being led by the ghost of Virgil up the steep crags at the foot of the island mountain of Purgatory. After negotiating their way around sheer cliffs, they come across a group of souls huddling...
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Goddesses: 1 Divine Feminine
Many religions have both god(s) and goddess(es), the most prominent exceptions being those which originated in the Middle East: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. In the male-dominated societies in...
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Goddesses: 2 Mary and the Serpent
For around half the Christian population of Europe, the Virgin Mary was more than the Mother of God, Queen of Heaven, Star of the Sea, and so on. She was the focus of their devotion, a role model, the...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 3 The valley of kings
Dante and Virgil are steadily making their way up the island mountain of Purgatory, and have just met Pia de’ Tolomei, who was murdered by her husband, but still has to wait here because of her late...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 4 Pride and Envy
Once Dante and Virgil pass through the entrance to Purgatory, the gatekeeper angel warns them not to look back, or they will be ejected and remain outside its wall. They climb along a trough of moving...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 5 Wrath, Sloth and Avarice
Dante, guided by the spirit of Virgil, is making his way steadily up the island-mountain of Purgatory. The pair are taken up to the third terrace by one of the guardian angels, as Virgil explains to...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 6 Gluttony and Lust
Dante and Virgil are moving steadily up the mountain-island of Purgatory, when the ground shakes underneath them as another soul has been cleansed and moves further up towards its heavenly peak. This...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 7 Dante’s dream of Leah and Rachel
Dante, Virgil and the Latin poet Statius are making their way up the final climb towards the top of the island-mountain of Purgatory. As they reach the steps which lead from the seventh terrace, where...
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Words in Paintings 1: Part of the story
It’s unusual for paintings to contain words beyond the artist’s signature. In terms of popular neuro-psychology, we’d suppose that when reading a painting our brains are in ‘image’ rather than ‘verbal’...
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Words in Paintings 2: References and explanations
In the first article in this series of three, I looked at paintings in which words are an integral part of their story or reading. Today I come on to a selection of those in which included text extends...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 8 Matelda, Beatrice in her chariot
The final cantos of Dante’s ‘Purgatory’, from the meeting with Matelda (also known as Matilda) to the end of this book, have been enormously popular among artists. However, there has been confusion...
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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 9 Final preparations for Paradise
Dante’s beloved Beatrice has stepped out of the chariot in which she has been part of a religious procession. She admonishes Dante for straying from the way, he cries in contrition, then faints away....
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Is there a Willow? Paintings of Ophelia to 1889
The great majority of narrative paintings refer to a well-known story, which the viewer is expected to recognise and recall when they try to read the painting. This is because stories refer to at least...
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Is there a Willow? Paintings of Ophelia from 1890
In the first of this pair of articles looking at paintings of Ophelia from Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, I showed works from Benjamin West’s in the late eighteenth century, through the most famous...
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