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Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’– its illustrators
Edmund Spenser’s first published poem, The Shepheardes Calender (1579), was printed with a full set of integrated woodcut illustrations. Given their beneficial effect on book sales, it’s surprising...
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Goddess of the Week: Hera (Juno)
Like her brother and spouse Zeus/Jupiter, Hera (Greek Ἥρᾱ, Latin Juno) is a child of the Titans Kronos and Rhea. Acting as a matronly Queen of the deities of Olympus, she is normally associated with...
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The Faerie Queene 1: The Redcrosse Knight and Una
Spenser’s Faerie Queene opens with a four-verse proem which invokes the Muse, in imitation of the opening of the English translation of Virgil’s Aeneid, and refers the epic to the Queen of England,...
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God of the Week: Poseidon (Neptune)
Poseidon (Greek Ποσειδῶν), who becomes the Roman Neptune, was the son of the primordial deities Kronos and Rhea, making him a brother of Zeus and Hera, and one of the senior deities of Olympus. The god...
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The Faerie Queene 2: The lion and seven deadly sins
In the first episode, the Redcrosse Knight set out on a mission to kill a dragon for his Queen. Accompanying him is the fair lady Una with her white lamb. After killing the monster Errour, they both...
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Here be Dragons in paintings
Pull up an illuminated mediaeval map, and where its author runs out of knowledge you’ll see drawings of fearsome beasts bearing the legend hic sunt dracones – here be dragons. This long weekend I look...
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Here be Monsters in paintings
This is the second in a series of three articles looking at a selection of paintings of fearsome beasts from myth and legend. In the first, I looked at dragons. Today I broaden that to include monsters...
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Here be Orcs and Sea Monsters in paintings
In the two previous articles in this series, I have shown selections of paintings first of dragons and then of other monsters more generally. While land travel was high risk and adventurous until well...
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Goddess of the Week: Demeter (Ceres)
Under her Greek identity, Demeter (Δημήτηρ) is a rare find in paintings, where she is almost universally known as the Roman goddess Ceres, who’s so famous that she has been assimilated into English in...
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The Faerie Queene 3: Duels and capture by a giant
In the second episode, the Saracen knight Sansloy abandoned the sorceror Archimago unconscious after their duel, and abducted Una after killing her guardian lion. The Redcrosse Knight has been led...
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God of the Week: Hades (Pluto)
Hades (Greek ᾍδης) is a name more strongly associated with the place, the Underworld for classical Greeks, than the god who ruled it, who was also known as Plouton. The Romans transferred him as the...
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The Faerie Queene 4: Release and the Cave of Despair
In the third episode, at Duessa’s suggestion, the monster Orgoglio took the Redcrosse Knight alive and threw him into the dungeon of his castle. The knight’s attendant dwarf told Una of this, so they...
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A History of Rome in Paintings: 5 The last king’s downfall
The city of Rome has a turbulent history, which was perhaps bloodiest during the reigns of its seven kings, before it became a republic. Its seventh and last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was self-made,...
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Hot off the press: reportage in painting 1
One of the great strengths of even early photography is its immediacy and visual reportage. Take a traditional film camera shot of any newsworthy story, and within a couple of hours you can have prints...
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Hot off the press: reportage in painting 2
In the first of these two articles looking at paintings which were made in sufficient time of a major newsworthy event to count as reportage, I looked mainly at paintings of large fires from the Dutch...
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Gods of the Week: Atlas, Prometheus and Epimetheus
There are many other primordial deities, Titans and their children who have rarely been featured in visual art. In this article, I feature three who have had their moments of fame, and are children of...
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A History of Rome in Paintings: 6 War with the Tuscans, and defending the...
The seventh and final king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, had sent envoys to announce his abdication from the throne and make unacceptable demands on the city. From this arose the Tarquinian Conspiracy,...
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The Faerie Queene 5: The Dragon
In the fourth episode, the Redcrosse Knight, still weak from his incarceration by Orgoglio, went to the Cave of Despair, where he almost ended up taking his own life, had Una not struck the knife from...
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Goddess of the Week: Hestia (Vesta) and her virgins
The last and least-known of the children of the primordial deities Kronos and Rhea is Hestia (Greek Ἑστία), known to the Romans as Vesta, who was sister to Poseidon, Zeus, Hera, Ceres and Hades. In...
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A History of Rome in Paintings: 7 Rome saved by a mother
With the threat of the deposed king Tarquinius Superbus receding and the new Roman Republic formed, the city might have hoped for a period of peace. Although its consul Publicola managed to avoid...
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