Just before the outbreak of the First World War, Lovis Corinth was at the peak of his career, and with his wife Charlotte and their two young children, was enjoying everything that Berlin had to offer. He had also worked hard: by the end of 1911, he had painted more than three hundred substantial works in oils.

Corinth seized the moment during The Model’s Break (1909) to capture a more informal and natural full-length portrait of her. This is not an uncommon ruse, which has resulted in some excellent paintings by other artists, and worked well for him too. This was exhibited in the 1913 exhibition of the Berlin Secession.

He painted the occasional urban landscape of the city too, such as his wintry Ice Rink in the Berlin Tiergarten (1909), where Berliners are skating on one of the zoo’s frozen lakes.

Corinth continued to explore Christ’s Passion in very real terms, in his Christ Carrying the Cross (1909). Although this contains most of the usual elements seen in traditional depictions, his language is contemporary, almost secular. Two men, one of them apparently African, are helping Christ bear his exhausting load, while a couple of soldiers are whipping him on, and threatening him with their spears. A third soldier is controlling the crowd at the upper left, and behind is a mounted soldier and one of the disciples.

Homeric Laughter (1909) is one of Corinth’s most complex, even abstruse, paintings of classical myth. He provides a good clue as to its interpretation in his inscription (originally in German translation):
unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods as they saw the craft of wise Hephaestus
together with the reference to Homer’s Odyssey book 8 line 326.

This refers to a section in which Odysseus is being entertained by King Alcinous, after he met Nausicaä on the island of the Phaeacians. To cheer Odysseus up, the bard Demodocus tells a tale of the illicit love affair between Ares/Mars (god of war) and Aphrodite/Venus (god of love), which has featured extensively in art.

One day Hephaistos/Vulcan catches the couple making love in his marriage bed, and throws a very fine but unbreakable net over them. Hephaistos summons the other gods, who come and roar with laughter at the ensnared couple.

In this first version, Corinth shows Aphrodite recumbent on the bed, shielding her eyes from the crowd around her. Ares struggles with the net which secures the couple, looking frustrated. Hephaistos, clad in black with his tools slung around his waist, is talking to Poseidon (who wears a crown) with Dionysos/Bacchus behind him (clutching a champagne glass). At the right edge is Hermes/Mercury, with his winged helmet. Sundry putti are playing with Ares’ armour, and an arc of putti adorns the sky.

Corinth also painted a second version, which he etched in 1920 for prints.

Morning Sun (1910) is a wonderfully painterly oil sketch of Charlotte in bed, enjoying the sunshine.

Contrasting with that is this more formal Portrait of Charlotte Corinth in a Brown Blouse (1910).

Earlier in his career, Corinth does not appear to have painted many floral or other still lifes, but after 1900 he seems to have been more attracted to them. Roses (1910) strikes a perfect balance between botanical detail and accuracy of the blooms, and looseness in the foliage and background.

Over these years, Corinth and his family travelled, here to a Terrace in Klobenstein, The Tirol (1910). Klobenstein, or Collalbo, is a mountain resort at an altitude of just over 1000 metres in the South Tirol, in Italy. This painting shows the Hamburg businessman and art collector Henry B Simms (1861-1922) on holiday there during the summer.

Simms was a keen collector of Corinth’s work, and later became an early purchaser of Picasso’s works too. The children shown are almost certainly his, and Corinth painted a more formal portrait of him in the same year.

Woman with a Fishtank (1911) shows Corinth’s wife Charlotte in their flat on Klopstockstraße in Berlin. The aquarium, full of goldfish, is surrounded by quite a jungle of indoor plants – Charlotte’s little corner of vegetation within the city flat. According to her later memoirs, Corinth took just four days to complete this painting.

Corinth’s celebration of his fifty-third birthday on 21st July was inevitably more muted than that of his fiftieth, but he seems to have enjoyed painting a Large Still Life with Figure (1911), featuring Charlotte in a surprising outfit. They must have enjoyed quite a banquet afterwards, judging by the dead game on the table.

Carl Hagenbeck in his Zoo (1911) is perhaps his most unusual portrait, painted not of the splendid walrus, but of Carl Hagenbeck (1844-1913), a merchant of wild animals. Hagenbeck was the originator of the modern zoo with its ‘open’ and naturalistic enclosures, and established the most successful private zoo in Germany, at Stellingen, just outside Hamburg. He died just a couple of years following this portrait, after he was bitten by one of his snakes.

Corinth also seems to have done a good trade at this time in more conventional portraits, such as this Portrait of Frau Kaumann (1911) in richly dappled light.

Then in December 1911, Corinth suffered a stroke: his left side – arm and leg – were paralysed. Corinth had painted his entire professional career with his left hand. He was only 53.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

During the late 1880s, Gustave Moreau had largely recovered from the death of his mother. Although he still did not submit his work for major public exhibitions, in 1886 the Goupil Gallery mounted a one-man show of some of his paintings of La Fontaine’s fables, together with six of his other watercolours. This opened in Paris, then moved to London.

Moreau also engaged more with his peers. In 1888 he visited Belgium and the Netherlands to study Old Masters there, and was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts. He shunned teaching commitments at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, though, and the following year showed only two of his older works (The Young Man and Death, and Galatea) at the Exposition Universelle in Paris.

Helen at the Scaean Gate of Troy (c 1885) was a further attempt to paint Helen of Troy, this time by the city’s major gate. This painting is sometimes read as being his move towards abstract painting, which is manifestly not the case.

He continued his series of paintings of beautiful nudes in narrative settings with Cleopatra (1887), another elaborately-decorated watercolor in which the moon is crossed by cloud, giving it the appearance of the planet Saturn.

Evening (1887) is a rather looser watercolour, set at night and under a thin sliver of a moon.

Although its date is not known, his The Deva and the Gryphon was most probably painted during this period too. The Deva (also sometimes known as a ‘fairy’) appears more European in form, and the accompanying gryphon (or griffin) was a mythical beast with the head and wings of an eagle on the body and legs of a lion. This parallels his interest in painting unicorns with their female companions.

The Travelling Poet also seems to date from this period in Moreau’s life. It doesn’t apparently refer to any more specific story, but just shows an androgynous poet with an Indian musical instrument on their back, a winged horse like Pegasus, and a brilliant star in the sky immediately above them.

In 1886, Moreau completed his greatest single work of art, La vie de l’humanité (The Life of Humanity), a large polyptych which he had started more than five years previously.

The uppermost lunette shows the figure of Christ, arms outstretched as if still crucified. The uppermost tier of paintings shows the Golden Age of Adam, symbolising childhood. From the left these show morning prayer in the garden of Eden, ecstasy at midday, and repose and sleep in the evening.

The middle tier, from the left, shows the Silver Age of youth in the form of Orpheus and Hesiod: the morning is spent with Hesiod and the muse of inspiration, Orpheus appears at midday with music, then Hesiod returns for the evening, with tears.

The lowest tier, from the left, shows the Age of Fire, with Cain symbolising maturity. The morning shows work, the midday break, and death in the night.

Moreau wrote that these phases of humanity were also phases of life, passing from the purity and innocence of childhood, through the poetic aspirations and sadnesses of youth, to the pain and suffering of adult life, and death, with the redemption of Christ over all. This idiosyncratic combination of Christian symbols with those of myth (Orpheus) and the classical world (Hesiod) provides an important insight into much of his art.

Moreau’s unfinished oil painting of The Pierides (1886-89) is another puzzle. First, it is unclear which Pierides it depicts: although the name is sometimes applied to the nine Muses, it can equally be used of the nine daughters of King Pieros of Emathia; the latter challenged the Muses at their own arts, lost, and were turned into magpies as punishment.

In any case, there are at least fifteen figures in the painting, although some are in groups of three, and some are winged. It is possible that some of the black-winged figures are intended to be non-Muse Pierides who have been turned into magpies and are now fleeing the scene. If that is the case, this painting could represent the Muses in triumph over the daughters of King Pieros of Emathia.

The Wolf and the Lamb (1889) is, I think, a monochrome image of a painting which was made in full colour, although because this may be set at night, that is not certain by any means. It looks to be a simple allegory of good (the lamb, with references to Christ too) and evil (the wolf).

He also painted another scene including what seems by now to have become his favourite mythical creature, in The Unicorns (c 1885-90). Although the quality of this image is not good, it does show no less than three unicorns being fondled and petted by an incongruously nude woman and several others, who are wearing elborate decorated robes. In the right foreground is a crystal chalice, which may be a reference to one of the complex of grail legends.

The Toilette (c 1885-90) is a watercolour which may have been an experiment in style. Although based on Moreau’s highly-detailed decorative style, for example in the patterned fabrics at the foot of the robes, Moreau has also applied large blots and patches of pure colour. These could indicate its lack of completion, or even damage to the painting (although as they follow forms, that appears unlikely). However, this work has been signed; if that is Moreau’s signature, it surely indicates that he considers it complete and ready to be viewed.

After his polyptych, Moreau’s most finished work of this period is this relatively conventional oil painting of Saint George and the Dragon (1889-90), which is also one of his few narrative paintings to show a traditional climax in the story, and the moment of peripeteia. The king’s daughter, who was to have been fed to the dragon, is seen perched above the gorge, praying, with her father’s castle behind in the distance.

Saint George has just impaled his lance into the dragon as he gets the better of the beast. In the traditional legend, George then calls to the princess to throw him her girdle, which he uses to capture and harness the dragon so he can lead it around.

The Triumph of Alexander the Great (c 1873-90) is a magnificent oil painting showing Alexander, dressed in white, sat high on his throne in the foreground. Around him is an extraordinary imagined landscape with imposing buildings forming a gorge, and a stack of grand buildings, towers, and other monumental structures further back. These are set at the foot of a massive rock pinnacle.

Having conquered the Persian Empire (Achaemenid Empire), in the late spring of 327 BCE, Alexander the Great set his sights on the Indian subcontinent. When he crossed the River Indus and started to campaign in the Punjab, he met determined opposition in the army of King Raja Purushottama, known in the classical literature as King Poros (or Porus).

Alexander fought his last major battle against Poros on the Hydaspes (Jhelum) River, near Bhera, and his own horse Bucephalus was killed during the intense fighting in the summer of 326 BCE. King Poros so impressed Alexander that he made him an ally. Afterwards, Alexander founded Alexandria Nikaia (meaning victory), and his army later revolted near the Ganges River, stopping any further advance into India. Three years later, Alexander the Great died.

Moreau drew on a wide variety of sources for this most elaborate of Indian fantasy cityscapes: miniature paintings of south India, photographs by English travellers, several illustrated books, and Le Magasin Pittoresque, a contemporary illustrated magazine. Geneviève Lacambre (quoted in Cooke) has identified within it a borrowed image of a Jain saint from Karnataka (Mysore), India, for example.

His triumph in completing this painting was limited: for the last few years, Moreau’s partner/mistress/muse Alexandrine Dureux had been in poor health. After his mother’s death, she had been his only real friend, and the only woman in his life. On 18 March 1890, she died, aged 51.

References

Cooke P (2014) Gustave Moreau, History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20433 9.
Mathieu P-L (1998, 2010) Gustave Moreau, the Assembler of Dreams, PocheCouleur. ISBN 978 2 867 70194 8.

Conventional wisdom is that narrative in the traditional visual arts, including painting and sculpture, is limited, perhaps even marginal when compared to that in verbal (spoken or written) arts. I was excited that my recent series on the myths involving Salome, Herodias, Herod, and John the Baptist seems to demonstrate an example where paintings have changed a verbal story.

I now offer an even more remarkable case in which it appears that a sculpture has changed a story. Not only that, but it will show how an American brand of beer came to use a highly inappropriate image in its advertising.

The Story

Long before the great city of Troy was destroyed by war, it was famed for producing people of great beauty. Three young people were of such great beauty that the gods fell for them: Tithonos slept with Eos, the goddess of dawn; Anchises was seduced by Aphrodite the goddess of love, who then bore Aeneas as their son; and Ganymede was abducted by Zeus, who made him his cup-bearer on Mount Olympus.

The story of Ganymede’s abduction appears quite old, and predates Homer’s Iliad, which gives a brief and simple account of the abduction. In time it appears to have become elaborated to this:

Ganymede was one of the early citizens of Troy. One day during his youth, he was tending the family flock of sheep near Mount Ida, well inland from the city of Troy, when Zeus abducted him using an eagle; the bird is variously described as Zeus himself or his agent. Ganymede was taken to Mount Olympus, the home of the gods, where he was given eternal youth and immortality, and served as the cupbearer to the gods. Zeus compensated Ganymede’s father by having Hermes deliver him fine horses.

By the time that Lucian of Samosata (c 125-180 CE) came to write about this story, the eagle was firmly ensconced, and was Zeus himself.

The Artworks

With no conventional paintings surviving from classical Greek times, the visual record now lies in painted pottery.

This Attic black-figure amphora from about 510 BCE shows a typical scene from the earliest depictions, showing Ganymede – here conveniently labelled – serving Zeus on Mount Olympus. The cockerel is a well-known symbol for the pederastic relationship between them.

A little later, the painters’ attention turned to the scene of abduction. This Attic red-figure bell-krater from around 500-490 BCE shows a popular version at this time, in which Ganymede is seen playing with a hoop, to indicate his youth.

Some still painted scenes of the couple on Mount Olympus, as on this Attic red figure calyx krater from about 490-480 BCE. Note the large eagle-like bird on Zeus’s staff, which is here an attribute.

This Kylix shows a slightly more elaborate scene involving Zeus, Ganymede and Penthesilea, and dates from about 470 BCE.

My final painted pot is an Attic red-figure pelikem from 445-440 BCE, which shows the complete scene of the abduction of Ganymede, as it was told at this time, again with Ganymede playing with his hoop, and Zeus in hot pursuit.

According to Pliny, writing in his Natural History in 77-79 CE, depictions of the story of Ganymede, and his abduction in particular, changed in about 325 BCE, when Leochares cast a wonderful bronze sculpture showing Ganymede being carried off by an eagle. Sadly the original is long lost, but this marble copy remains in the Vatican today.

This exquisite pair of gold earrings show a very similar composition. Dated to about 330-300 BCE, they may well have been inspired by Leochares’ famous statue.

This much later mosaic from Paphos on Cyprus, about 150 CE, is unambiguous about the story of Zeus abducting Ganymede.

A different artist in mosaic, a different style, and here at about the same time in Tunisia, gives a very similar account.

Skipping through to the Renaissance, well over a millenium later, this copy of a drawing by Michelangelo (1475-1564) sets the precedent for many later paintings: an eagle as large as, or even larger than, Ganymede bears him up to Zeus. Ganymede’s posture is shameless in revealing the purpose of the abduction.

Correggio’s The Abduction of Ganymede (1520-40) introduces two new features: Ganymede’s dog, which is left barking at the departing eagle, and the woodland from which he is abducted. The youth looks rather younger here, and less flagrantly sexualised.

Rembrandt’s Abduction of Ganymede (1635) makes him little older than a large toddler, which no longer fits comfortably with the story about him tending the family flocks. Ganymede’s face, though, is wonderful.

I found Rubens’ The Rape of Ganymede (1636-37) rather a surprise, as I had not thought that he would use the story as a dirty joke, with the placement of both ends of Ganymede’s quiver. Clearly this was not intended for viewing by polite mixed company.

Le Sueur’s The Abduction of Ganymede by Jupiter (1644) is much more respectable, although still not free from pederastic taint.

I fear that Nicolaes Maes (1634-1693), in this Portrait of George Bredehoff de Vicq as Ganymede, must have been extremely naive to have chosen the Ganymede story for the portrait of an infant.

There were further paintings of the abduction of Ganymede, although its popularity as a subject and a story for narrative painting waned.

Then in 1886, Gustave Moreau painted this watercolour which retold the new version, complete with barking dog and the surrounding wood. With his detailed knowledge of classical times, it is hard to believe that Moreau did not fully understand the connotations.

There was a brief resurgence of interest in painting this scene. Frank Kirchbach made a drawing which was turned into an engraving, which was to inspire still more bizarre connections.

In 1904, Kirchbach’s print was borrowed for an advertisement for Budweiser beer. The advertiser’s ‘modern vision of Ganymede’ is taken almost directly from Leochares sculpture of 325 BCE, over two millenia earlier. It’s hard to believe that no one recognised its associations with pederasty, which was then becoming known as paedophilia and recognised for the crime that it is.

References

Wikipedia.

Woodford, Susan (2003) Images of Myths in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 78809 0.

When researching my recent article about tortoises in painting, I came across the work of Osman Hamdi Bey (1842–1910), a polymath who was an administrator, intellectual, archaeologist, museum curator, and accomplished painter, and had significant influence over the formation of modern Turkey. Here are a few of his paintings.

The son of the Ottoman Grand Vizier, the empire’s equivalent of Prime Minister, who was in office in 1877-78, he first studied law in Istanbul, then went to Paris to study in 1860. Although he had intended continuing to study law there, he switched to painting, and was a pupil in the studios of Jean-Léon Gérôme and Gustave Boulanger for the next eight years or so.

He exhibited three paintings at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1867, although these and his other works from his years in Paris mostly appear to have been lost, apart from one painting which is now in the Musée d’Orsay.

Hamdi Bey returned to Istanbul in 1869, where he married his first wife, a French woman, and was sent to Baghdad as part of the administration in what was then a province of the Ottoman Empire.

In 1871, he returned to work in the administration in Istanbul, where he painted several portraits, including this of Kökenoğlu Rıza Efendi (1871).

Most of his earlier works continue the highly-detailed salon style which he learned under Gérôme and Boulanger, as in his superb The Scholar (1878).

His paintings also usually feature finely-worked decor, including carpets, walls, and the sparse furniture of Girl Reciting the Qur’an (1880).

Hamdi Bey seems to have painted many scenes showing women, which would have been quite unusual for that time in the Ottoman Empire. Two Musician Girls (1880) is particularly interesting for showing its figures with two traditional Turkish musical instruments. The large stringed instrument is a tambur, a member of the lute family which was plucked, and the large tambourine is a daf.

In 1881, Hamdi Bey was appointed the director of the Imperial Museum, which kickstarted his career as an archaeologist, and his campaign to preserve the rich antiquities still in the Ottoman Empire. The following year he founded the Academy of Fine Arts, which was the first fine art school within the empire.

The wonderful assortment of characters in his panoramic view of a Persian Carpet Dealer on the Street (1888) reflects the cosmopolitan population of Istanbul, sitting at the gateway between Europe and Asia Minor.

Many of his paintings also feature beautiful Arabic and Persian calligraphic art, as shown in An Arab Reading (c 1906).

His magnificent The Tortoise Trainer (1906) is by far his best-known painting, and set the record for the highest price paid for a Turkish painting when it was sold in 2004 for $3.5 million.

Its ingenious allegory can be read in at least two ways. The artist may have been self-critical of his painstakingly slow work; tortoises are not only inherently slow, but in the early eighteenth century had been used in Istanbul to bear lit candles for evening outings. This painting also had a greater political meaning, as the tortoise trainer wears traditional Ottoman religious costume from before the middle of the nineteenth century, and is training the tortoises with a traditional Turkish ney flute.

In that sense, it is a satire on the slow, faltering, and often ineffective reforms made to the Ottoman Empire during the late nineteenth century, an issue with which Hamdi Bey had much personal experience. This resulted in a time of increasing social and political upheaval, preceding the Young Turk Revolution of 1908 which changed the basis of rule in the empire, followed by the breakup of the empire after the First World War.

As I pointed out earlier, it has been proposed that Hamdi Bey was inspired by this print created by “L. Crépon”, of the Tortoise Charmer of 1869, which he may well have seen when he was still in Paris.

His later paintings tended to use more gestural marks, although they never became particularly painterly. This is shown well in the grasses of his Flowers in a White Vase (1910).

Portrait of Naile Hanım (1910) shows Hamdi Bey’s second wife, Marie, who was also French. He met her when visiting Vienna, and she later took the name Naile Hanım. Here his brushwork is more obviously painterly and gestural, particularly in her clothing, and the background.

Another familiar street scene of the day, Public Scribe (1910) may have been part of a campaign to improve education and literacy, particularly among women.

Reciting the Quran (1910) is another fine example of Hamdi Bey’s calligraphic paintings within a painting, and is noticeably looser than his earlier work.

When he died in 1910, Osman Hamdi Bey left Turkey much better able to foster the talents of young artists, to train them, and to help their careers. He had ensured that the nation’s cultural and artistic heritage was far better protected, and made accessible in major museums. When younger artists, like the Impressionist Nazmi Ziya Güran (1881-1937), returned from Paris, they benefitted from Osman Hamdi Bey’s legacy and foresight.

Reference

Wikipedia.

I am delighted to offer my first proper release version of The Salome Story hypertext, which examines the different narratives involving Herod, Herodias, Salome, and John the Baptist, and looks at how they have been told in paintings, literature, plays, operas, movies, and even in dance.

You can download this release version here: salomestory110

This self-contained document, which needs to be unZipped before use, is designed to be read using Eastgate’s Storyspace or Storyspace Reader (free) apps, available here. If you are already a Tinderbox user, it will open and can be accessed fully using Tinderbox 6 too, although you will there need to use Command-Return to follow its plain links between notes.

As ever, I welcome comments and reports of any issues, either below, or by email.

Enjoy!

Final enhancements – visual impression

One important feature for a more general readership is to make the views that a reader is going to see as visually enticing as possible. My intention is that the reader will see the Map view and contents of the start writing space as their first impression. As things stand, there is little to seize the mind.

My solution is to add three images to draw the eye. The most important transforms the start tile into a miniature cover, with a detail from one of Moreau’s paintings and the title. I created those using GraphicConverter, and dragged and dropped the image into the content of that writing space.

I also want header images for the two main storylines, Biblical and ‘modern’. However, I cannot do the same with those tiles, as the writing space contents are used to identify the two different stories in the composite storyline. If I add an image to those writing spaces, it will appear in every one of the writing spaces making up the composite story.

Instead, I have simply copied and pasted the images as adornments to the Map View. This has the disadvantage that clicking on them does nothing purposeful, and I have to remember to lock them into place using the padlock icon on each, or the reader could end up moving them. But I think the end result is good.

Loose ends

I have also been through each of the writing spaces tweaking their contents, and remembered that there was a loose end: a writing space in the image Gallery which was unlinked. This gives some of the suggested background to why Moreau started work on his Salome paintings.

Rather than trying to link that into the main narratives, I have linked it to one of Moreau’s paintings, using a text link out and another to take the reader back again.

It’s important to check through all the writing spaces in your hypertext to ensure that they are reachable. We tend to check that links work and are correctly placed, but before shipping your document, you need to step through every single writing space. Doing that is also a good test of how well you have structured containers.

Making a shipping version

Authoring hypertext in Storyspace declares that your purpose is to encourage others to read it; it is quite different from creating a Tinderbox file, even though you may share that within your workgroup. The last and most important step in producing a release version in Storyspace is thus to ready it for the reader, something which is still quite fiddly and prone to frustrate.

If you’re making a hypertext which opens in a single window, this is not so bad. But in this case, I want the reader to be presented with two windows: one with the Map View as their main reading window, the other a Timeline view.

Storyspace and Tinderbox are superb in saving each document’s state when that document is closed. When writing, that is perfect behaviour. However, it poses a serious problem for this last step in making readable hypertext: there is no command to close all the windows of an open document simultaneously. So if you have set everything up just as you want the reader to open the document, close one of the windows, then the other, when the reader opens that document they will see just a single window, the last which you closed.

The solution is simple, but requires a little planning and care.

When you have set the windows and document up just as you want them to appear when opened, save the document, and quit Storyspace, which closes all windows simultaneously. You must then avoid opening that master copy of the document, or its window state will be saved again, overwriting those settings.

What I do next is to compress my master document into a Zip archive ready for release. The next time that you open Storyspace, the app will automatically reopen your master document. Close its windows, and quit Storyspace again, so that when you open the app next, it will start with an empty new document again. Then discard the uncompressed copy of the master document, as its settings will have changed again.

Whenever you need to use a copy of the master document, you can generate it by decompressing its Zip archive. My final step now is to check that master with each of the apps a reader is likely to access it with: Tinderbox, Storyspace (full edition), and Storyspace Reader. The Zip archive can now provide me with a fresh copy of that master document for each of those checks.

Unfinished business

I hope that you find this release version worth reading, and that it helps you explore a fascinating story about the Salome stories, and the superb works of art which they have inspired.

My work with this has not yet finished, though. I have several ideas for improvement which I will be looking at in the near future, mainly centred on the Timeline View. In its present form, someone with Storyspace or Tinderbox, and who knows what they are doing, can get much more out of the Timeline view than its single static settings allow. I want to provide ordinary readers with tools for changing the period shown in the Timeline View. I’d also like to offer a window in which the reader can work through the contents of the image Gallery in other ways, for example stepping through each of the paintings in time order.

I hope to write these up in future articles here, so that they may inspire you when you are authoring your own hypertext using Storyspace.

In December 1911, when he was 53 and at the peak of his career, Lovis Corinth suffered a major stroke. When he regained consciousness, he did not even recognise his wife Charlotte, and his left arm and leg were paralysed. As he had painted his entire professional career with his left hand, it looked as if that career might have ended.

Thankfully, over the following weeks, he made a rapid recovery. His left arm remained weak for some time, and he needed a stick when walking, but by February 1912 he had completed his first self-portrait since his stroke, and was painting actively once again.

Corinth’s paintings changed visibly after his stroke. There is controversy among commentators as to how much of this change was the result of the effects of his stroke, and how much his launch into Expressionist style was intentional on his part. Another question is whether any residual weakness or impaired hand-eye co-ordination may have brought other changes to his technique. Did he, for example, have to learn to paint using his right hand as compensation?

One useful way to assess change is to look at his self-portraits, which provide a visual record of what was happening in his mind and body over the years prior to the outbreak of the First World War.

Self-portraits 1911-1914

One of his last completed prior to his stroke, Self-portrait as a Flag-Bearer (1911), shows a proud artist, posing in a suit of armour, a standard borne behind him. His pose is reminiscent of Rembrandt’s self-portrait of 1636. It reflects his perception of his role in the Secession, and the importance of the Secession in the history of art.

His brushwork is rough and very painterly throughout, even over his face, and the background is sketched in gesturally.

Self-portrait with a Panama Hat was painted in 1912, during his recovery from the stroke, and differs very little in its facture. His facial expression and bearing have changed totally, though, his eyes staring through the struggle that he has had, in concerned contemplation.

By 1913, in his Self-portrait with Tyrolean Hat, he appears to be on holiday in the South Tyrol, marked by his headgear and the inscription at the right. His face, though, has become more gaunt and worried. Although he appears to be holding his brush in his right hand, it is actually clasping several brushes and his palette, indicating that he was painting with his left hand. If painted from a mirror image, of course, the handedness could be reversed. There does not appear to have been any significant change in his brushwork.

Corinth gets back into his suit of armour for his 1914 Self-portrait in Armour, in which he holds a pole in his left hand (assuming the image is not mirrored). This is an excellent comparator against his 1911 portrait above: there has been little if any change in facture. But his face has changed, and there is worry still in his expression. His chin is no longer raised in pride, but he stares straight ahead with determination.

Painted at the start of the First World War, his armour here is probably a response to that, and to the universal call to arms. Corinth had a great admiration for Otto von Bismarck.

Self-portrait in the Studio (1914) is the last in my series, and shows him painting with the brush held in his left hand, although this would be reversed if the image was mirrored. He appears older, more anxious, perhaps even stressed, as he looks directly at the viewer. Again, there is little obvious change in his brushwork from 1911.

Paintings of 1912

Once Corinth was fit enough after his stroke, he and Charlotte travelled for three months of convalescence on the French Riviera at Bordighera.

Balcony Scene in Bordighera (1912) shows Charlotte with a miniature parasol to shelter her from the dazzling sun, on the balcony of their accommodation there. His rough facture has extended more generally now from his nudes and sketches, marking his move from more Impressionist landscapes to Expressionism.

There are also some interesting traits in his brushwork which (at least partly) reflect his recovering condition. Verticals – indeed the whole painting – tend to lean to the left, in opposition to the diagonal strokes used to form the sky, which are more typical of someone painting with their right hand.

His previously quite rigorous perspective projection has been largely lost, although he maintains an approximate vanishing point at the right of the base of Charlotte’s neck. He has employed aerial perspective, but the painting lacks the effect of depth in his earlier work.

Indoors, he painted an Italian Woman in a Yellow Chair (1912). There has been speculation as to whether this was not a local Italian model at all, but Charlotte. The hat does seem to have been his wife’s, and appears in a sketch of her which he made at about the same time.

Storm off Cape Ampelio (1912) shows rough seas at the cape near to Bordighera. Its brushwork has great vigour, and captures the violent surges which occur when incident and reflected waves meet. Again its verticals are leaning to the left.

His first major painting following his stroke returned to the theme of Samson. This autobiographical portrait of The Blinded Samson (1912) expressed his feelings about his own battle against the sequelae of his stroke.

In the Samson story, it shows the once-mighty man reduced to a feeble prisoner, forced to grope his way around. No doubt Corinth did not intend to refer to the conclusion of Samson’s story: with the aid of God, he pulled down the two central columns of the Philistines’ temple to Dagon, and brought the whole building down on top of its occupants.

Although quite rough in its facture, Corinth has now restored his verticals and clearly got the better of any residual mechanical problems in painting.

This wonderful Portrait of the Sculptor Nikolaus Friedrich (1912) at work was not the first to be painted by Corinth, who had made a previous portrait in 1904, when he was young and muscular. Eight years later he is seen in the midst of a broad and representative range of his work. Friedrich died two years later, when he was only 48.

At the Mirror (1912) is an ingenious painting, which uses the woman’s reflection to make clear the struggle that Corinth – here only seen in the reflection – had gone through to paint his images. Instead of providing the viewer with a faithful and detailed reflection, that image is even more loosely painted, rendering her face, and Corinth’s, barely recognisable.

View of the Jetties in Hamburg (1912) shows the continuing looseness of his facture. Its verticals are far more consistent and vertical than in his paintings in Bordighera, and his brushstrokes are very varied in their orientation.

In the first year since his stroke, Corinth’s painting had come a long way. What he must have feared would turn out be career-ending was not. The event may have accelerated his move to Expressionist style, but it does not seem to have driven or determined it.

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

How many images are there in your photo library? What are your plans to manage that library over the next 20+ years? Do you keep a separate archive of important images, video clips, and other documents for future reference?

I ask these questions because hardly anyone else does. We’ve all got sophisticated still and video cameras built into our phones, maybe something standalone for more serious photo/video work, and plenty of other means of generating tens, even hundreds of gigabytes of data each year. But where are we going to keep it all?

It used to be easy. When you got married, say, you hired a pro or bribed a friend to shoot some still photos, selected the best few dozen, and stuck them in a wedding album. From then on, whenever you wanted to get rid of unwanted guests, you knew that showing them your old wedding photos would do the trick.

Children were not dissimilar: by the time that they left home, they’d have a few albums with photos of their childhood friends, holidays, and birthday occasions.

It is now easy to shoot well over a thousand images a year; if you have children or travel much, that can readily rise to two to five thousand per year. Add a few hundred video clips, a year’s-worth of your more important email messages and other documents, and you are quite probably accumulating many thousands of important files per year. If you’re thirty years old now and expect to keep this up for the next thirty years or more, you’ll end up with well over a hundred thousand documents by the time you’re sixty. And that’s before you start shooting 360˚ VR or whatever the next craze will be.

Recently I have had a series of questions from Mac users with more than ten thousand images in their photo libraries. These are not professional photographers, just regular users who use cameras to record their life, travels, friends, and children. They are currently using consumer apps – iPhoto or Photos – to try to manage those libraries, which are growing inexorably over time.

Not only have they not planned to manage their image archives, but I am unable to point them towards any affordable app which might help them do so.

The rate at which most of us are accumulating still images, video, and other content, we should really be looking at what is currently termed a digital asset management (DAM) system. These are available for organisations like museums and galleries, commercial image libraries, and large corporations. They are neither priced for nor aimed at consumers.

There aren’t even any particularly good storage solutions available. The big players, including Apple, are mad keen on selling us cloud storage, which is fine for sharing our current images and documents, but hardly a good or cost-effective solution for archives. In the absence of any built-in optical drives, you’d need an external Blu-ray burner and archival quality media to do the job properly, and at significant cost.

The biggest problem, though, is that content libraries are not designed to work with libraries that are partially offline. Assuming that you are assiduous in maintaining the metadata of your accumulating images and content, those metadata need to be kept online even when the associated images are archived offline. When Uncle Jim dies, and you’re putting together the programme for his funeral service, you want to know exactly where to look in your archive to find that image of him at your eighteenth birthday party.

Even if you’ve paid lots of money for a DAM system, archival storage, and solved the problem of searching the metadata for offline content, apps like Photos aren’t designed to export an archive library complete with its metadata. In fact, Apple, Adobe, and the other vendors that we look to are as unprepared to help you cope with this relentless onslaught of new images as you are.

I’m rather hoping that a company with better vision for our future needs might come up with a solution. And preferably before I get messages from users struggling with twenty thousand images in their Photos library.

By the beginning of 1913, Lovis Corinth had essentially overcome any consequences of his stroke at the end of 1911. His painting style had moved on – not because of any residual physical limitations – and he and his family were starting to build a new lifestyle which would hopefully preserve his health better. Key to that was getting away from Berlin more.

At some stage, perhaps during the winter of 1912-13, Corinth and his wife stayed in the French resort of Menton (1913), where he painted this excellent and detailed view. Although clearly dated, his verticals are once again leaning towards the left, as they had been soon after his stroke.

His flattening of perspective is well illustrated in Skittle Alley (1913). This shows an outdoor skittle alley, close to a building (not shown, but presumably behind the viewer). In the foreground is a table laid up for a meal, to the left of which is a chair. A man, his back to the viewer, is just about to bowl at the skittles shown at the far end of a level alley, cut through the wood.

With its high vanishing point, the alley seems shallow and much higher at its far end, and could easily be seen as rising at an angle of over 45 degrees. The distant landscape seen through the gap at the end of the alley has no aerial perspective, thus gives no clues as to its distance. Corinth has painted this as if everything from the alley beyond is painted on a flat plane, like a theatrical scenery painting, parallel to the picture plane, and only slightly deeper than the table and chair.

This is believed to have been painted when Corinth had been invited to the property of Carl von Glantz, a friend of one of his students, at Mecklembourg. It is reminiscent of Dutch paintings of the seventeenth century, which showed similar games taking place outdoors.

He continued to paint still lifes, such as this Cat’s Breakfast (1913); some of these became so loose as to show only the most basic forms of the objects being painted.

Contrary to claims that this change in style was driven by the results of his stroke, Corinth still painted more detailed figurative works, such as this Bacchante (1913), rendered in tempera rather than oils. Its brushwork and finish is surprisingly close to his earlier figurative paintings from Berlin, although once again the strokes in the background are slanted as if made using his right hand.

Corinth was also quick to return to major mythical paintings, some of which were undertaken as wall decoration for the Villa Katzenbogen, including his grand Odysseus in the Battle with the Suitors (1913). This shows the conclusion of the Odyssey, in which its hero slaughters all the suitors to his wife Penelope, on his return home to Ithaca.

Ariadne on Naxos is one of Corinth’s most sophisticated mythical paintings, and was inspired by the first version of Richard Strauss’s opera Ariadne auf Naxos (1912). This was first performed in Stuttgart in October 1912, and Corinth probably attended its Munich premiere on 30 January 1913. Wikipedia’s masterly single-sentence summary of the opera reads: “Bringing together slapstick comedy and consummately beautiful music, the opera’s theme is the competition between high and low art for the public’s attention.”

At the left and in the foreground, Ariadne lies in erotic langour on Theseus’ left thigh. He wears an exuberant helmet, and appears to be shouting angrily and anxiously towards the other figures to the right.

The group in the middle and right is centred on Dionysus, who clutches his characteristic staff in his left hand, and with his right hand holds the reins to a leopard and a tiger, which are drawing his chariot. Leading those animals is a small boy, and to the left of the chariot is a young bacchante. Behind them is an older couple of rather worn-out bacchantes. Crossing the sky in an arc are many putti, their hands linked together.

Corinth has combined two separate events in the story into a single image: Ariadne’s eventually broken relationship with Theseus, and her subsequently successful affair with Dionysus. This is multiplex narrative, more typical of narrative paintings of the early Renaissance, and exceptionally rare for the early twentieth century.

On Christmas Eve at the end of 1913, he painted this delightful scene of their two young children enjoying their Christmas Decorations. Charlotte, the artist’s wife, is seen at the left edge, disguised as Father Christmas. Their son Thomas stands with his back to the viewer in front of a nativity scene close to his mother. Daughter Wilhelmine is at the right edge, inspecting one of the presents. Corinth uses the highly chromatic colours traditionally associated with Christmas to enrich the scene.

The following year, Corinth returned to the Mediterranean coast, this time to Liguria in northern Italy, where he painted the Sea at La Spezia (1914). Not as dramatic as his earlier painting at Bordighera, his waves are still rough strokes, and the sea rich in its colours.

Resorts along the French and Italian Rivieras were enjoying a wave of popularity and rapid growth, which he captured in New Buildings in Monte Carlo (1914).

One of his few religious paintings of this time is his second version of Joseph and Potiphar’s Wife, from 1914. Its story is drawn from the book of Genesis, during the period in which Joseph was in Egypt after he had been sold into slavery by his brothers. Rising to become the head of Potiphar’s household, Potiphar’s wife takes a fancy to him, but Joseph resists her attempts at seduction. She then falsely accuses him of attempting to rape her, which results in Joseph being thrown into prison.

Corinth shows the most popular scene depicted in paintings, in which Potiphar’s wife is trying to seduce Joseph.

Did Corinth’s paintings change as a result of his stroke?

It has been suggested that Corinth’s later paintings became very loose and Expressionist because of the physical effects of his stroke at the end of 1911. Some commentaries also claim that Corinth had to learn to paint with his right hand as a result of the effects of the stroke on his left.

The evidence in the paintings shown above, and in my previous article, goes against that. Prior to 1911, some of his paintings had already become rough in facture; after 1911, he still painted some works in a very similar style to that used before. His self-portraits do not reveal any sudden change in facture subsequent to his stroke. However he extended his rough facture from genres such as nude figures to encompass most others, including landscapes.

Changing facture and style were also only a part of the changes in Corinth’s painting after 1900. Equally prominent are the loss of linear perspective projection and aerial perspective, resulting in shallow or flat picture planes. As with facture, these varied from painting to painting, and there is no evidence that he was unable to use linear or aerial perspective after his stroke, but that he chose not to more frequently.

The one perhaps unresolved issue remains which hand he painted with after 1911. I think that the evidence is that he learned to paint with his right hand, and alternated between his left and right hands from 1912 onwards, but that is less certain.

Having survived his stroke and moved his style on, Corinth was now moving into the next phase of his career when, on 28 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia. Germany invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, and the First World War had started.

References

Wikipedia.
The Story in Paintings: Ariadne on Naxos on this blog.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

Samuel Palmer’s paintings during his Shoreham period were views of an enchanted countryside, as visionary in their way as William Blake’s work. When he returned to live and work in London, in 1835, he had to face the reality that visions seldom bring sales. He had already travelled to Devon in the previous summer, to start painting topographical views, and now set himself on a course to develop his art in that direction.

In this, Palmer started at a disadvantage. Leaders in the field, such as JMW Turner, had long abandoned painting familiar and accessible areas such as the south of England, and had been busy producing views of continental Europe and beyond. Palmer would have to find new locations to inspire him to produce landscapes which would appeal to the London clientelle. He chose North Wales, where in the summers of 1835 and 1836 he saw and painted ‘grand novelties & enlarged the materials of imagination’.

Among the locations which he found was Pistil Mawddach, North Wales (1835-36), shown here in his initial watercolor painting. This waterfall, known now as Rhaeadr Mawddach, is on the upper reaches of the River Mawddach near Snowdonia. At the time it was far less known than the nearby vertiginous mountains of the Snowdon range.

Palmer seems to have visited the falls a second time in 1836, and then to have painted a finished version in oils, The Waterfalls, Pistil Mawddach, North Wales (1835–36). Given that this painting may have been based on further sketches and studies, and was probably created the following year, the similarities between these two works gives insight into how faithfully Palmer was painting from nature.

He also painted dramatic scenery of the ‘sublime’, such as views of Snowdon from Moel Siabod, Conwy Castle, and this Rocky Landscape in Wales (1835-36), all in watercolour.

In 1837, Palmer married his mentor John Linnell’s oldest daughter, Anny. A few days later, the newly-weds joined George Richmond and his family, and left London on a paddle steamer bound for Calais and the long overland journey to Italy, on an extended working honeymoon.

After a brief stay in Paris to admire Venetian art in the Louvre there, they crossed the Alps to Milan, Florence, and eventually reached Rome. They met Edward Lear, the writer and watercolourist, and Palmer obtained a commission to paint for the banker John Baring.

Palmer’s paintings during his extended honeymoon vary more in their quality, and seldom show his earlier vision. Rome from the Borghese Gardens (1837) is a pleasant watercolour, but hardly in keeping with his views from North Wales.

Street of the Tombs, Pompeii (1837) shows more eloquently the ruins of Pompeii in the foreground, with the backdrop of the volcano Vesuvius and a sliver of deep blue water cut in.

Other sketches, such as this promising view of The Colosseum and the Arch of Constantine from the Palatine, Rome (1837–39), seem not to have been developed into finished watercolours.

After the Palmers had stayed in Naples for a while, they returned via Tivoli to Rome, where they made small-scale copies of Raphael frescoes for father-in-law John Linnell. They then turned for home, travelling intermittently, and visiting Civitella, Papigno, and Florence, where they copied a Michelangelo in the Uffizi.

Their return to London in late 1839 posed Palmer the problem of how to generate the income which his family needed; its solution lay in sinking into the same ‘pit’ which he had sought to avoid for so long. He still travelled, spending summers in Shoreham, Wales, and the West Country, and in 1843 was made an Associate of the Old Watercolour Society, which afforded him valuable professional recognition at last. He completed a commission of four vignette illustrations for Dickens’ Pictures from Italy, but did not secure any follow-up work as a result.

Paintings such as his Kensington Gardens (c 1848) demonstrate Palmer’s skill in watercolours. He used ‘advanced’ techniques which we now appreciate more in the works of JMW Turner and Winslow Homer, and his more ambitious and inspired paintings competed in their effect with oils.

Christian Descending into the Valley of Humiliation (1848) is a good example. In the late 1840s he consciously sought a new style, in which capturing impressions of transient light and atmospheric effects became more important, and this helped him achieve full membership of the Old Watercolour Society in 1854.

Sir Guyon with the Palmer Attending, Tempted by Phaedria to Land upon the Enchanted Islands (1849) is another highly accomplished watercolor from this period, showing an unusually sophisticated scene.

This refers to a story told in Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene, an epic poem which was first published in 1590. This consists of a series of books, each telling of knightly adventures which centre on a specific virtue. Sir Guyon is the Knight of Temperance and hero of Book 2. In Canto 6 of that book, Phaedria ‘the shining one’ is giggling and singing to herself in a small boat in a river. Having taken another (Cymochles) to an island which entices all the senses, she meets Sir Guyon and the Palmer (an old man holding a palm branch who has been on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land).

In Spenser’s poem, Phaedria gives Sir Guyon a ride in her boat, but refuses to carry the Palmer. She takes Guyon to the same enticing island, rather than just across the river, which upsets him. When delivered to the island, Cymochles and Sir Guyon fight one another, until Guyon shatters Cymochles’ helmet.

Palmer shows Sir Guyon and the Palmer standing in one boat at the left, being rowed by a woman. Phaedria is standing in her own boat in the middle of the water, and the enticing island lies behind, with nymphs dancing in the light of the setting sun.

Although its story was even then fairly obscure, Palmer’s watercolour is a remarkable achievement, rich in details such as the fine rays of the sun over the land and water, and with an extraordinary sky. For Palmer, though, success with his peers and critics still did not bring him the sales that he needed. He continued to rely on teaching, which he had started in 1832, to pay the bills incurred by his family.

In 1849, Palmer took up etching, which became a rare treat. He approached it not as mechanical reproduction, but as another medium in which to express himself, and was admitted to the Etching Club at a time when the revival of etching as art was starting. Although he produced few etchings, and his early small prints were not a success, later and larger prints were exhibited at the Royal Academy.

In the 1850s, he returned more to the rolling downs of the Kent countryside, where he painted this delicate view from Wilmot’s Hill, Kent (c 1851), which makes interesting comparison with his paintings from his time at Shoreham.

He still sought – and sometimes captured – fleeting effects of light and the weather, as seen this powerful watercolour of a Summer Storm near Pulborough, Sussex (c 1851).

But those visionary views from the downs near Shoreham from early in his career were long since replaced with works like The Rustic Dinner (c 1853), from quite a different league.

References

Wikipedia

Vaughan, William (2015) Samuel Palmer, Shadows on the Wall, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20985 3.

By the summer of 1890, both the women in Gustave Moreau’s life – first his mother, then his partner/mistress/muse – had died. But contrary to some claims, he did not become a recluse, nor did he stop painting. In fact, the 1890s saw his greatest involvement in teaching, several new and very ambitious works, and growing activity to transform his house and studio into a museum.

The period also saw another death which hit Moreau hard: that of Élie Delaunay, on 3 September 1891. Delaunay was another eminent history painter of the day, and a friend of Moreau’s.

As might be expected, a dominant theme in many of his works of this period continued to be women, as in The Mystic Flower (c 1890). A saintly queen bearing a prominent crucifix forms the flower, at the base of which are many other saintly figures. Behind is another of Moreau’s rocky Renaissance landscapes.

However, the saintly queen is not the Virgin, as might have been expected: she wears a green robe under a red cloak, not the standard ultramarine blue. In the sky above, a white dove representing the Holy Spirit is descending. Moreau seems to have based this on Carpaccio’s The Glorification of Saint Ursula.

Moreau commemorated Alexandrine Dureux in his dark and funereal Orpheus at the Tomb of Eurydice (c 1891).

Orpheus was the legendary consummate musician and poet, whose wife Eurydice died of a snakebite. Orpheus travelled to the underworld, where the couple were allowed to return to earth. But Orpheus turned to look at her during their journey out of the underworld, and she was taken back. Here, Moreau depicts Orpheus, a ghostly lyre at his left hand, mourning his wife’s death at her tomb – an obvious expression of his own feelings for his late partner.

Moreau also returned to several of his earlier themes, such as this final version of Hesiod and the Muse (1891). One of the earliest of the Greek poets, Hesiod is shown here as a youthful and androgynous figure. He has lost his shepherd’s crook, and carries his emblematic lyre. Behind him is a Muse, her angelic wings levitating her just above the ground, and a lyre slung over her back.

The pair are in a deep ravine, above which a Parthenon stands proud on a rock pinnacle. Above the Muse is a brilliant star. There is a dedicatory inscription at the foot of the painting.

Orestes and the Erinyes (c 1891) is better known as Orestes and the Furies, a fairly popular theme in painting.

It represents the culmination of a series of murders running through the lives of Agamemnon and his son Orestes, told in Aeschylus’s Oresteia trilogy. The first, Agamemnon, tells how Agamemnon, King of Argos, is murdered by his wife, Clytemnestra, and her lover, apparently in revenge for his having sacrificed their daughter Iphigenia prior to the Greek fleet sailing on Troy.

The second, The Libation Bearers, tells how Orestes, son of Agamemnon, returns home to avenge his father’s death. This concludes with Orestes murdering his own mother, following which (in the third play) the Furies (or Erinyes) haunt and torment him, as the anger of the dead.

Moreau’s painting of this last scene compares with his earlier and highly successful paintings of Salome, but has received far less recognition. Orestes is shown, still clutching a bloody sword from the murder of his mother, leaning in the foreground of an ornate temple. Above him are three saintly figures: not the fearsome Furies more usually shown, but the dead themselves, haunting him. There are snakes uncoiling themselves from the feet of the Furies, though.

The decoration shown is drawn from a wide range of cultures, spread across the eastern Mediterranean, and the Middle East, as far as India. I would love to see a detailed iconographic analysis of this work.

Following Delaunay’s death, Moreau was asked to take over his teaching, and in early 1892, his teaching studio became one of the three official studios of the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. The other two were directed by Gérôme and Bonnat. By all accounts he was a popular and respected teacher, almost up to his death. Among his more successful students were Georges Rouault, Albert Marquet, and Henri Matisse.

The Bride of the Night (1892) shows another woman in exotic and decorated dress, this time in a dark and gloomy nocturne. Its brushstrokes are clearly visible, showing well Moreau’s trend away from the Salon ‘finish’. This appears to anticipate the later ‘surrealist’ nocturnes of Paul Delvaux in the mid-twentieth century.

Moreau’s own health started to trouble him in 1892, when he had to have gallstones removed surgically. In the following years he went to the famous spa at Évian for periods of treatment, or ‘cures’.

Moreau’s watercolour Song of Songs (1893) brings together several of his recurrent themes: the partially-nude figure is probably female, but not overtly so. She is decorated richly, with ornate fabrics, jewels and jewellery, and carries a lyre. She holds two bunches of flowers, one red (love) and the other white (purity). Behind her is an ancient building in classical style. A red setting sun is crossed by stripes of reddened cloud.

The painting’s title harks back to a completely different work early in his career. The two paintings might summarise the changes that occurred in his work during that period.

Inspiration (c 1893) shows another variation of similar elements. The poet, complete with their lyre, has a small winged Muse on their shoulder. At their feet is a pair of swans.

Moreau also painted Saint Cecilia (1890–95) in a very similar setting (above), and Poet and Satyrs (c 1890-95) below.

Another of Moreau’s recurrent themes was the suicide of the classical poet Sappho (c 1893), shown here as she steps off the Leucadian cliff, the sun setting behind her.

In late 1894, Giovanni Boldini enlisted Moreau’s support as a patron to the first of what became the Venice Biennale exhibitions, which was held the following year. Moreau did not submit any works to it, though. He was now more concerned about his intended museum, and started to have work done to transform his house and studio into the museum.

In his last few paintings, Moreau used similar compositions and settings to those of Orestes and the Erinyes to refer to quite different narratives. Delilah (c 1896) is a dark and heavily-decorated portrait of the woman who was Samson’s undoing, whose beauty and sensuality led to his betrayal and ultimate destruction. Behind her are two massive pillars which echo those of the temple which he brought down when bringing his final revenge on the Philistines. The distant walls are decorated with ancient Egyptian figures.

His second version of Galatea (1896) is also dark, and she and Polyphemus are hemmed in within a deep canyon. Around her are not flowers, but the seaweeds and corals which are more appropriate to a sea-nymph.

I have held over consideration of what was arguably Moreau’s last great painting, and one of his iconographically most complex, to the next article, where I will consider his Jupiter and Semele.

References

Cooke P (2014) Gustave Moreau, History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20433 9.
Mathieu P-L (1998, 2010) Gustave Moreau, the Assembler of Dreams, PocheCouleur. ISBN 978 2 867 70194 8.

Gustave Moreau started work on his last major painting by 1889, and seems to have concentrated on it most in 1894-95. The story at the heart of it is one of the strangest in classical myth, and has not been a particularly popular narrative for paintings. It is drawn, as so many are, from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 3.

Jupiter was the king of the gods according to classical Roman mythology, and the chief deity of the Roman state in classical times. Notoriously promiscuous according to myth, his wife Juno was forever having to deal with his adulterous wanderings. One day he took a fancy to the human Semele, a priestess of Jupiter, apparently when she was swimming in a river to cleanse herself of sacrificial blood. As a result of this, Semele became pregnant.

When Juno discovered this, she disguised herself as an old crone and befriended Semele to discover the whole truth, and to sow doubt in Semele’s mind. When she next saw her lover, Semele asked him to grant her a wish. He inevitably agreed, and she asked him to reveal himself in his full glory, so as to prove his divinity.

Jupiter realised that this would put Semele at risk, as being the god of the sky and thunderstorms, she would almost certainly be killed by his divine power. But she insisted, so he gathered his weakest thunderbolts and smallest storms, and revealed himself. Unfortunately Semele was then consumed in flames from Jupiter’s lighting, and died. He rescued the unborn baby, and continued the pregnancy by sewing it into his thigh. Months later, the baby was born, and became Bacchus, who rescued Semele from the underworld, and she was installed as a goddess on Mount Olympus.

Moreau seems to have worked first on an oil painting showing just Jupiter and Semele (1889-95). This contains a curious composite of the story, in which Semele has not yet been harmed by thunderbolts, but the foetal Bacchus appears to be resting against her, and Jupiter has assumed his divine form. At the foot of the painting is Jupiter’s attribute of an eagle.

That composition then formed the centre of his large masterpiece, also titled Jupiter and Semele (1895). Jupiter now sits on a massive throne, with Semele draped over his right thigh. All around them is phantasmagoric detail, drawn from many different myths and cultures, which can be seen better in the following views of details.

Jupiter rests his left forearm on Apollo’s lyre. His right hand holds a lotus flower, and his body or clothing is extensively decorated with further floral and botanical images. He looks, eyes wide open, straight ahead. Behind his left shoulder is a woman deity, perhaps his wife Juno.

Semele is statuesque, her arms cast back in shock. Her left side is covered in blood, presumably from where the foetus has been extracted. Her hair flows off in a long, thick tress, decorated like a peacock’s feathers. Below her is a winged Cupid, its face buried in its forearms, in grief at Semele’s imminent doom.

At the lower left of the painting are two prominent figures: a standing winged angel or deity whose identity is obscure, and a seated woman, who is resting her chin in her right hand. She could, by her modest blue robes, be the Virgin Mary, but her left hand holds a very long sword which is covered with blood.

There are many other smaller figures, putti, and other embellishments scattered around.

At the lower right of the painting are three prominent figures: a bearded man who is covered with flowers and fruit and has small horns on his head, a seated woman who appears to have come from mediaeval legend but is wearing a crown of thorns, and another winged angel at the right edge. The male has a goat’s leg to the left, indicating that he is Pan, half human and half goat – according to Moreau’s notes the ‘symbol of the earth’. The black wings behind him belong to a large bird, probably an eagle, Jupiter’s attribute.

The seated woman is harder to interpret. The crown of thorns would suggest that the figure is actually Jesus Christ, but he would have a prominent halo and would not have long, golden tresses of hair. She is also holding a large white lily in her left hand.

Below them is the world of Hecate, ‘the sombre army of the monsters of Erebus’.

Moreau has placed a dazzling array of other images from many different cultures and beliefs at the left side of Jupiter’s throne, some of which can be made out in this detail.

There are even more on the right, with many faces shown in halos, flowers, and more.

In the autumn of 1896, Moreau’s health started to decline markedly. Although he continued to teach for over a year, until early in 1898, his painting slowed, and from 1897 he worked less frequently, and with the aid of his students. He drew up more detailed plans for the museum, for after his death, ensuring that it was left to an appropriate custodian in his will.

Moreau now had advanced cancer of the stomach, and died of that on 18 April 1898, at his home. His museum was officially inaugurated in 1903, and remains open today.

References

Cooke P (2014) Gustave Moreau, History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20433 9.
Mathieu P-L (1998, 2010) Gustave Moreau, the Assembler of Dreams, PocheCouleur. ISBN 978 2 867 70194 8.

Many classical myths must have seemed far-fetched even to the ancient Greeks and Romans. There is none so extraordinary as that told by Ovid in his Metamorphoses of the love affair between Jupiter and Semele. When I recently wrote about it in my series on Gustave Moreau, I wanted to discover who else had painted this story, and how they managed to tell it.

The Story

The best-known, but by no means the only, account is in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Book 3.

Jupiter, the king of the gods according to classical Roman mythology, was notoriously promiscuous, and his wife Juno was forever having to deal with his adulterous wanderings. One day, when he was flying around earth as an eagle, he saw Semele, a priestess of Jupiter, when she was swimming in a river to cleanse herself of sacrificial blood, and fell in love with her. As a result of the affair that developed, Semele became pregnant.

When Juno suspected the affair, she disguised herself as an old crone and befriended Semele to discover the whole truth, and to sow doubt in Semele’s mind about her lover’s true identity. This led Semele to ask Jupiter to grant her a wish. He inevitably agreed, and she asked him to reveal himself in his full glory, so as to prove his divinity.

Jupiter realised that this would put Semele at risk: being the god of the sky and thunderstorms, she would almost certainly be killed by his thunderbolts. But she insisted, so he gathered his weakest thunderbolts and smallest storms, and revealed himself to her. Unfortunately Semele was immediately consumed in flames from Jupiter’s lighting, and died. In Brookes More’s translation at Perseus:
her mortal form could not endure the shock
and she was burned to ashes in his sight.
An unformed babe was rescued from her side,
and, nurtured in the thigh of Jupiter,
completed Nature’s time until his birth.

Thus Jupiter seized the unborn baby from her side, and continued the pregnancy by sewing that foetus into his thigh. Months later, the baby was born, and became Bacchus, who later rescued Semele from the underworld, and had her installed as a goddess on Mount Olympus.

Semele’s extraordinary story has even formed the basis of three operas named after her, the last and most famous composed by Handel.

The Paintings

There are other scenes from the story of Jupiter and Semele which have been the subject of paintings, but they can be hard to identify. For example, several works show an old crone, who could be Juno, talking with a young nude woman, who could be Semele, sometimes with an eagle (Jupiter’s attribute) nearby. But there are other myths which they could be depicting too.

Its most distinctive and climactic scene must be that of the combustion of the pregnant Semele, rescue of the unborn Bacchus, and Jupiter’s surrogate pregnancy.

Dosso Dossi’s Jupiter and Semele, from about 1525, is the earliest painting that I have been able to find. The couple are seen among the clouds, he naked apart from a red cloth covering his left leg, she oddly fully clothed, in a reversal of normal artistic preference. He holds a thunderbolt in his right hand, above Semele’s head, but there are no signs of her bursting into flames, nor of the extraction of Bacchus.

There is also a collection of interesting objects at the lower right, including what appears to be a small tortoise, as a sign of love and fertility, perhaps. There is also a set of keys, and a bag which is tied at its neck.

Giulio Romano and his workshop’s The Birth of Bacchus (c 1535) is a wonderful and quite revealing depiction of contemporary midwifery practice. Jupiter, at the upper right, seems to be fleeing the scene, thunderbolts in his right hand, and Juno, at the upper left, seems puzzled and upset.

Down on earth, Semele has just been delivered of a baby boy, Bacchus, and her four attending midwives are caring for the baby, busy with the traditional towels and water as they do. However, above Semele’s abdomen and right thigh there are flames rising, and smoke. She looks up at Jupiter, in distress if not horror. Jupiter is not stopping to take on any surrogate pregnancy, though, and Bacchus looks fairly full-term too, hardly in need of further gestation.

This painting is believed to have been one of a series of ‘erotic’ works for the Duke of Mantua, which were designed by Giulio Romano and largely painted by the members of his workshop.

Tintoretto’s Jupiter and Semele (1545) shows an earlier moment in the story. Semele, who does at least look pregnant, is reclining naked under a red tent. Jupiter has evidently just revealed himself, and rolls of cloud are rushing out from him. There are flames licking at Semele’s tent, and around the clouds which surround Jupiter, but no sign of them touching Semele yet, nor causing her any distress or concern. The danger may be imminent, but it has not yet struck.

Tintoretto is believed to have painted this to go on the front of a cassone (chest), or on panelling in a room.

Moving forward almost a century, Peter Paul Rubens’ oil sketch of The Death of Semele from about 1620 reveals Semele in obvious distress, and pregnant, on a bed. Jupiter grasps his thunderbolt in his right hand, as a dragon-like eagle swoops in through the window. There is no clear connection between Semele’s alarm and Jupiter’s presence, nor any sign of hazard from the thunderbolt.

Pietro della Vecchia takes a very similar approach in his Jupiter and Semele of about 1640, although Semele’s pregnancy is not revealed, and there is no sign of any eagle.

Luca Ferrari’s Jupiter and Semele from about 1640 restores the eagle, which appears to be carrying Jupiter. Although he opens his composition up, and adds some bedside accessories, the viewer is none the wiser.

Bon Boullogne’s Semele, which was painted between 1688-1704, comes closer to the climax of the story. Semele lies on a bed beside a Roman herm (statue). Her left hand has been struck by a small thunderbolt and has started to burn. Above her, Jupiter is making off with a large infant – not just full-term but far older, it would appear – while Juno, with an accompanying peacock, is in the distance, at the top right of the painting.

The young Bacchus is shown as being more than half the height of Semele, which suggests that he may have intended some sort of multiplex narrative, where the upper scene with the gods takes place considerably later than the lower scene with Semele.

Sebastiano Ricci’s Jupiter and Semele of 1695 returns to an earlier moment, with Semele resting on a couch, her back to the viewer, and facing Jupiter. He has revealed himself in an impressively cloudy and stormy setting, and holds an arrow-like thunderbolt in his right hand. In the foreground is Jupiter’s eagle, and a cowering Cupid who looks very anxious. Although smoke is emerging from a pot, there are no signs of Semele being under threat.

Paolo Pagani’s Jupiter and Semele from about 1700 seems even further removed from any threat to Semele. She lies back displaying her body to the viewer, with no signs of pregnancy, and a strange grimace which is hard to read because of her position. Jupiter has arrived in the midst of thunderclouds, holding a thunderbolt in his right hand, and Semele’s right arm with his left hand. Flames are licking around his left foot, which is perilously close to Semele. Under Jupiter is his large black eagle.

After nearly two centuries of a steady trickle of paintings showing this story, there is a long gap, during which few, if any, significant paintings tackle it. The narrative then re-appears in Gustave Moreau’s last great masterwork.

Moreau worked out the central section of the final painting in Jupiter and Semele, over the period 1889-95. Semele has not yet been harmed by thunderbolts, but the foetal Bacchus appears to be resting against her, and Jupiter has assumed his divine form. At the foot of the painting is Jupiter’s attribute of an eagle.

That composition then formed the centrepiece of his large finished painting, also titled Jupiter and Semele (1895). Jupiter now sits on a massive throne, with Semele draped over his right thigh. Surrounding the couple is one of the most iconographically-rich canvases in the history of art, a dense confluence from many cultures across Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and into India.

At its heart, Jupiter rests his left forearm on Apollo’s lyre. His right hand holds a lotus flower, and he looks straight ahead with his eyes wide open. Behind his left shoulder is the image of a female deity, perhaps his wife Juno.

Semele is statuesque, her arms cast back in shock. Her left side is covered in blood, presumably from where the foetus has been extracted, although in this version no foetus is visible. Her hair flows off in a long, thick tress, decorated like a peacock’s feathers. She shows no signs of catching fire yet. Below her is a winged Cupid, its face buried in its forearms, in grief at Semele’s imminent doom.

Conclusions

The extraordinary climax of the story of Jupiter and Semele, involving her destruction by fire, the removal from her “side” of the foetal Bacchus, and his implantation into Jupiter’s thigh, was told very clearly by Ovid. Despite a succession of attempts to depict it in a painting, no artist seems to have tried to depict that scene in its entirety.

Several of the painted accounts have substituted a quite different story, in which Semele was delivered of a full-term (or even older!) infant Bacchus, who was then removed by Jupiter, leaving Semele to burn alone. Few have given any visual clues to Semele being, or having been, pregnant, although most of the painters would have had first hand experience of the stigmata of pregnancy.

One plausible explanation is that Ovid’s story was simply too unreal to attempt to paint. Even in the early Renaissance, patrons would surely have recognised the physical absurdity of its climax.

Another interesting observation is that, after about 1700, very few paintings were made of this story, even during the revival of interest in related themes in the nineteenth century. This may reflect a decline of interest in such a strange story with the advent of the Englightenment, perhaps.

Reference

Ovid. Metamorphoses. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922. Book 3, ll 251-313. Available online here. I wish to thank Tufts’ superb Perseus resource for the quotation above.

At the end of the First World War, John Singer Sargent (1856–1925) had commitments on both sides of the Atlantic. He had been working on murals in the Boston and Cambridge areas of Massachusetts, but was also expected to deliver his monumental work about the war, Gassed, in Britain. Sargent was now in his sixties, and becoming increasingly concerned about his legacy to the future of art.

In 1921, the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston commissioned Sargent to paint a large work for installation on the ceiling of its Huntington Avenue stairway. It was one of the last paintings that he completed before he died back in England in 1925.

Every painting by Sargent is special, but this is even more interesting, as it shows a quite unusual story in post-classical art, that of Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1922-25). If you appreciate Sargent’s work, this is worth seeking out in Boston, as the museum also has his preparatory drawings.

The Story

Aeschylus’s Oresteia is a trilogy of plays which trace the run of murders and tragedy in the lives of Agamemnon, the King of Argos and commander of the Greek forces which destroyed Troy, and his son, Orestes. These start before the first play, when the ‘fleet of a thousand ships’ is about to set sail for Troy. To ensure fair winds and weather, Agamemnon sacrificed his daughter, Iphigenia.

The first play, Agamemnon, tells of the return of the king to his wife, Clytemnestra, and her long-standing lover Aegisthus. They have been plotting to murder Agamemnon to avenge Iphigenia’s death, and secure the throne for Clytemnestra, which they do, also killing Cassandra his concubine.

Orestes, son of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, returns home in the second play, The Libation Bearers, to avenge his father’s death some years later. Orestes then concludes that play by murdering his own mother and her lover Aegisthus. The third play, The Eumenides (one of the euphemistic names for the Furies), opens with the Furies hunting Orestes down, haunting and tormenting him to drive him mad, because of these murders.

The Paintings

In classical times, Aeschylus’ plays were very popular – they won first prize at the Dionysia festival in 458 BCE – and they and their derivative dramas and texts remain so. Among the more notable derivatives are Eugene O’Neill’s Mourning Becomes Electra, and Sartre’s The Flies. Various scenes from the story were also quite frequently illustrated on pottery of the time.

For example, this depiction of the Meeting of Electra and Orestes at the Tomb of Agamemnon from 340-330 BCE shows Orestes meeting his sister Electra at their father’s tomb, variations of which have been shown in much more recent paintings too.

Some of these also feature the Furies, as here in this drawing of an undated krater in Naples. Orestes has been driven to seek sanctuary at Delphi, and in the top left is a black Fury pointing a snake towards the figures.

This Apulian red-figure bell-krater (380-370 BCE) shows a scene taken directly from Aeschylus: Orestes, in the centre and still clutching a murderous sword, is being purified by Apollo. Clytemnestra is trying to awaken the sleeping Furies, shown at the far left.

The Oresteia were not a popular source of stories during the Renaissance, and the earliest post-classical work of art that I have been able to locate which shows Orestes and the Furies is from the end of the eighteenth century – two millenia after those painted pots.

Louis Lafitte’s beautiful finished drawing of Orestes Pursued by the Furies (1790) was exhibited at the Salon in 1791. Orestes is seen trying to sleep on a couch, when four Furies visit him. Immediately above him is a Fury armed with a dagger, and to the right two other winged daemonic Furies are carrying the spirit of Clytemnestra, whom he murdered. Lafitte has worked fine detail with his chalks to produce a drawing which is evocative of some of the best work of Henry Fuseli, who might so easily have drawn or painted a similar scene.

Philippe-Auguste Hennequin’s The Remorse of Orestes (1800) is very complex, and uses the Furies as a tool for showing multiplex narrative. Orestes is at the left, the centre of attention, and his right arm is holding a woman, who I suspect is his sister Electra. He is under attack by a small army of Furies and spirits, including the murdered body of Clytemnestra, on the floor, and I think Agamemnon too. There is a profusion of arms – reaching out, grasping, tugging.

By the middle of the nineteenth century, this scene from the Oresteia was becoming more popular with painters. Carl Rahl’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies of about 1852 is more faithful to the original play, and the classical pottery, in showing three clearly fearsome if not murderous women attacking Orestes with their burning brands and daggers. The hair of the Furies is seen to contain small snakes, following one of the classical descriptions which makes them visibly similar to Medusa the Gorgon.

The first well-known painting of this scene was William-Adolphe Bouguereau’s Orestes Pursued by the Furies (also known as The Remorse of Orestes) from 1862. Three Gorgonic Furies are wailing and screaming at Orestes, and carry the murdered corpse of Clytemnestra, with Orestes’ dagger still buried deep into its chest.

Gustave Moreau’s Orestes and the Erinyes of about 1891 was painted late in his career, and is reminiscent of his earlier paintings of Salome in about 1876. Orestes is shown, still clutching his bloody sword from the murder of Clytemnestra, leaning in the foreground of an ornate temple. Above him are three saintly figures: not the fearsome Furies more usually shown, but the dead themselves, haunting him. There are still snakes uncoiling themselves from the feet of the Furies, though.

Franz von Stuck, who also painted a version of Salome, re-arranged the figures from Bouguereau’s work, in his Orestes and the Erinyes (1905). The Furies now tumble and spin through space, haunting Orestes as he tries to run away from them.

John Singer Sargent’s large masterpiece Orestes Pursued by the Furies was started in 1922, and completed in 1925, just prior to his death. Over its 100 square feet of canvas, it shows a young and naked Orestes cowering under the attacks of the Furies, as he tries to run from them. The swarm of no less than a dozen fearsome Furies have daemonic mask-like faces, blond hair swept back, and hold out burning brands and fistfuls of small snakes.

Sargent has gilded the flames on the brands, which makes them shine proud, just like fire. The isolated woman who stands in Orestes’ way is no Fury, though: she wears a gilded crown, and with the clean incision of a stab wound above her left breast can only be his mother, Clytemnestra.

As with Hennequin’s earlier painting, Sargent shows a profusion of arms, eight of them clutching snakes and thrust in Orestes’ direction.

I have no idea why so many history painters did not attempt this richly visual story: it has everything that you could possibly want in a myth. Sargent’s inspired choice fired his genius, and he produced one of the greatest narrative paintings of the twentieth century.

In Morshead’s translation of Aeschylus’ The Eumenides:

[Enter the Chorus of Furies, questing like hounds.]
Ho! clear is here the trace of him we seek:
Follow the track of blood, the silent sign!
Like to some hound that hunts a wounded fawn,
We snuff along the scent of dripping gore,
And inwardly we pant, for many a day
Toiling in chase that shall fordo the man;
For o’er and o’er the wide land have I ranged,
And o’er the wide sea, flying without wings,
Swift as a sail I pressed upon his track,
Who now hard by is crouching, well I wot,
For scent of mortal blood allures me here.
Follow, seek him—round and round
Scent and snuff and scan the ground,
Lest unharmed he slip away,
He who did his mother slay!

Reference

Aeshylus, translated by EDA Morshead (1889), The House of Atreus, Wikisource here.

There are two major literary sources which have inspired more European and North American paintings than any others: the Bible, and Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Although most of us are at least fairly familiar with the major Biblical narratives, and they are freely available in many different translations into almost every language, hardly any of us have read more than a few lines of Ovid.

We are also generally familiar with the gist of the major books of the Bible, progressing from the creation, through Adam and Eve, the Fall, on into the early history of the Jewish people, the records of the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, and early church history in the New Testament. I suspect that hardly anyone reading this page has the remotest idea of the overall structure and sequence of the Metamorphoses.

Yet Ovid’s epic work inspired the writings of Dante, Chaucer, Shakespeare, and the paintings of Titian, Rubens, and innumerable artists since. Its fifteen books are generally considered to relate over 250 different myths, some of which still influence our languages, thought, and art.

In this series of articles, I am going to systematically look at each of the myths in Ovid’s Metamorphoses in turn, which contain narrative, a story. I will relate that story, based on Ovid’s account, and then show a few of the best examples of that story in paintings. Articles will generally be briefer than the in-depth examinations of individual myths which I have posted in the series The Story in Paintings, and I will try to show the best paintings rather than a historical series.

I hope that you find the series interesting and useful. I am looking forward to tackling myths which are less well-known, and those which have been popular in the past and may now have become overlooked. Most of all, I am looking forward to discovering plenty of wonderful paintings which tell interesting stories.

References

Wikipedia.
Perseus English translation.
AS Kline’s translations and more.
Downloadable PDFs of Loeb Classical Library – L041 and L042 cover the whole of Metamorphoses, in English and Latin.

Barolsky, Paul (2014) Ovid and the Metamorphoses of Modern Art from Botticelli to Picasso, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 19669 6.
Fantham, Elaine (2004) Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Oxford Approaches to Classical Literature, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 1951 5410 8.
Hardie, Philip (2002) The Cambridge Companion to Ovid, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 77528 1.
Kilinski II, Karl (2013) Greek Myth and Western Art, The Presence of the Past, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 1 1070 1332 2.
Lively, Genevieve (2011) Ovid’s ‘Metamorphoses’, Reader’s Guides, Continuum. ISBN 978 1 4411 0084 9.
Melville, AD (trans) (1986) Ovid, Metamorphoses, Oxford World’s Classics, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 1995 3737 2.
Tarrant, RJ (ed) (2004) P. Ovidi Nasonis, Metamorphoses, Oxford Classical Texts, Oxford UP. (Latin text only.) ISBN 978 0 1981 4666 7.
Woodford, Susan (2003) Images of Myths in Classical Antiquity, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 5217 8809 0.

Contents

1 – Lycaon, cannibalism, and werewolves
2 – Deucalion, the flood, and Python – coming soon
3 – Daphne, and how the laurel became the crown – coming soon

Index

Jupiter, Article 1
Lycaon, Article 1
werewolf, Article 1

The first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses starts, just like the Bible and several other major compilations of ancient writing, with the creation of the world. You may be tempted to view Metamorphoses as the classical Roman version of a pagan Bible, but that would be extremely misleading. All cultures and civilisations have had their own creation myths, and Ovid simply offers his account of a Roman view.

This leads Ovid into a short summary of pre-history through four ages, starting in the Golden Age, and ending in the Iron Age, which is quite a perceptive metaphorical account of human pre-history, perhaps, considering the very limited knowledge of the Romans. Ovid then mentions what is generally known as the Age of the Titans or gigantomachy, which preceded the reign of the classical gods. This leads the text in to the first mythical story involving a metamorphosis: that of Lycaon, narrated by Jupiter himself.

The Story

Jupiter, the god of the sky, atmosphere, and thunder, and the king of the gods, hears of the infamy of the last of the four ages on earth, the Iron Age. Among that infamy, Jupiter picks out that of Lycaon, the King of Arcadia, whose name is derived from the Greek word for wolf, lycos (λύκος). However, Lycaon himself has decided to try Jupiter out too. To do this, the earthly king kills a hostage, cooks his body, and serves it up as a meal for Jupiter, following which Lycaon intends to kill the god.

Jupiter is outraged by this behaviour, and destroys Lycaon’s palace with thunderbolts. As Lycaon flees, so he is transformed into a wolf:
but not content with this he cut the throat
of a Molossian hostage sent to him,
and partly softened his still quivering limbs
in boiling water, partly roasted them
on fires that burned beneath. And when this flesh
was served to me on tables, I destroyed
his dwelling and his worthless Household Gods,
with thunder bolts avenging. Terror struck
he took to flight, and on the silent plains
is howling in his vain attempts to speak;
he raves and rages and his greedy jaws,
desiring their accustomed slaughter, turn
against the sheep—still eager for their blood.
His vesture separates in shaggy hair,
his arms are changed to legs; and as a wolf
he has the same grey locks, the same hard face,
the same bright eyes, the same ferocious look.

Jupiter proposes to a counsel of the gods to destroy humanity because of its behaviour. However, they quickly realise that without mankind, there would be nobody to worship them. Jupiter therefore agrees to transform humans into something better.

The Paintings

Very few painters seem to have been aware of this myth, and few paintings appear to depict it prior to the twentieth century.

Hendrik Goltzius was one of the few visual artists to produce a full set of images, in this case engravings, to Ovid’s text. Lycaon Transformed into a Wolf (1589) is actually the ninth plate of the first book. It shows Jupiter sat at King Lycaon’s table, his eagle at his feet, with the cannibalistic dish in front of him. Amid the burning buildings, Lycaon flees: as he does so, his head is already transforming into that of a wolf.

Jan Cossiers recomposes the same basic elements into his impressive Jupiter and Lycaon (c 1640). Jupiter’s eagle vomits thunderbolts at Lycaon, who sits opposite the god. Lycaon’s head is thoroughly wolf-like already, as he hurriedly gets up from the table. Thunderbolts are seen behind the pillar in the background.

Mediaeval folk mythology also developed stories of humans turning into wolves, although these were temporary transformations associated with cannibalistic episodes. These were progressively refined and popularised into the Gothic ‘horror’ stories of werewolves feeding on human blood, although these did not reach painting until the twentieth century.

Stuart Pearson Wright’s magnificent Woman Surprised by a Werewolf (2008) was inspired by the movie An American Werewolf in London (1981), which was itself a further transformation of the story of werewolves into comedy horror form. The artist intended “to explore that uncharted place where the mystery and sublime of the romantic landscape meets the high camp and melodrama of Hammer horror”, which has come a long way from Ovid’s original story of lycanthropy.

In a strange twist to Ovid’s story, others (Pausanias in particular) claimed that lycanthropic rituals originated in an Arcadian cult at the temple of Zeus – the Roman god Jupiter.

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this. I also wish to thank Stuart Pearson Wright for permitting the use of his image here.

In the last thirteen articles I have tried to give an account of the life and work of Gustave Moreau (1826–1898).

Early in his career, Moreau made a conscious decision to be a history painter, and to change the nature of history painting by making it less theatrical. Although he created many wonderful paintings, I think that it is fair to say that they are richer in symbols than in story. There is also considerable evidence that he influenced painting in the latter half of the nineteenth century, and well into the twentieth, but that was not because he had caused any general change in the painting of narrative.

Looking back now, I think that his paintings prepared the way for two significant events in the history of art: symbolism, as seen in Odilon Redon and others, and the adoption of Salome as a femme fatale rather than a secondary character in the story of Herod, Herodias, and John the Baptist. Although the latter may not seem that significant, it is an almost unique example of visual art changing verbal narrative, and brought about an important cultural phenomenon.

There can be no doubt that Moreau’s paintings were important, as well as many being wonderful works of art in their own right.

Here, then, is an index to the previous articles in this series, together with what I think are his most important and wonderful paintings.

1 Gathering storm covers the start of his career, showing works between 1852-1860.

2 Distant rumbles covers three unfinished paintings – The Suitors, The Daughters of Thespius, and Tyrtaeus Singing during the Combat – which he started in 1852-60, but remain unfinished.

3 The thunderclap shows the paintings which he exhibited in the Salons of 1864-65, including his first great success, Oedipus and the Sphinx.

4 After the storm considers his unsuccessful attempts to build on the Salon of 1866.

5 Before the war looks at his paintings in the period 1867-71, immediately before and during the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune.

6 Back in favour covers the post-war years to 1876, when he had greater success again.

7 Salome’s success looks at two of his most successful paintings, both showing Salome, for the Salon of 1876.

8 Into the sky covers paintings which he made for the Exposition Universelle of 1878 in Paris.

9 The final Salon shows the works that he intended for the last Salon in which he exhibited, in 1880.

10 Grief and recovery looks at his work in the period 1884-86, following the death of his mother.

11 Mythical animals and cities covers the period 1887-90, when he was becoming more engaged with the world again.

12 For the museum looks at the works of his final years from 1890 to 1896, when he was teaching actively and preparing his work for his museum.

13 Jupiter and Semele considers what was probably his last great painting from 1895.

References

Cooke P (2014) Gustave Moreau, History Painting, Spirituality and Symbolism, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20433 9.
Mathieu P-L (1998, 2010) Gustave Moreau, the Assembler of Dreams, PocheCouleur. ISBN 978 2 867 70194 8.

By the early 1850s, just after the death of JMW Turner, Samuel Palmer’s paintings had lost his earlier vision, and he was accomplishing more in his etchings than in paint.

In his The Sleeping Shepherd; Early Morning (1857), Palmer has followed Blake’s practice of making a print, then painting it by hand, using watercolour, opaque white gouache and gold for the highlights. Its simple motif, of a shepherd asleep with his flock, and a distant team ploughing in silhouette, holds some of the magic of his Shoreham years.

Rustic Contentment (date not known) is a more typical watercolor of this time, though: pleasant, well-painted, but sadly rather hackneyed.

Also undated is his watercolour of a Timber Wagon crossing a Stream, in a similar vein.

Then in 1861, Palmer’s world was turned upside down when his older son, Thomas More Palmer, died. The family moved from Kensington, eventually settling in a villa not far from John Linnell, his father-in-law, at Redhill, Surrey. Palmer lived and worked in seclusion at one end, his family at the other. His father-in-law had to step in and buy the Palmers’ house in the end, something that was only made possible by Linnell’s unexpected commercial success.

Palmer, like Linnell, then resorted to painting watercolour sunsets and nocturnes, and some of his Shoreham vision returned at last.

Palmer’s Sunset (1861) is among the best of these, capturing the warm sunlight of the late summer, just before the grain harvest, with an overshot watermill and a small crag behind.

Tintern Abbey at Sunset (1861) rearranges the same rustic elements beside the ruins of Tintern Abbey, which had for more than a century attracted the best topographic artists.

Palmer also became concerned at what he considered to be the “degraded materialism which is destroying art”. He started to collect a display of art which he felt would express his protest against that. Inspired again by Blake, he embarked on a long project to illustrate Milton in etchings, which he completed shortly before his death, and started work on Virgil’s pastoral poem, the Eclogues. He first translated it from Latin, then etched illustrations, a project which he never completed.

A Dream in the Apennine (1864) must have been painted from sketches which he had made during his extended honeymoon in Italy. When he exhibited it in the same year, its note read: Suddenly, at a turn in the mountain road, we looked for the first time on that Plain; the dispenser of law, the refuge of philosophy, the cradle of faith. Ground which Virgil trod and Claude invested with supernatural beauty was sketched – but with a trembling pencil.

It shows Rome in the distance, viewed from the south east.

A recurring theme which appears in many of his later paintings and etchings is that of an isolated tower, as shown in this watercolour of The Lonely Tower from 1868. A decade later he made one of his finest etchings, The Lonely Tower (1879), of a similar motif, and at the time of his death, he was reportedly working on watercolour versions of that and of another of his best etchings, The Bellman (1879).

Another of his late and more visionary paintings is the panoramic dusk view of Old England’s Sunday Evening (1874). Unusually, this takes us to coastal grain fields by a lonely church, as the local women and children are arriving for what must be a late service on a Sunday evening. Judging by its rocky and quite rugged coastline, this landscape cannot be in the south east of England, but looks to have been based on much earlier sketches made on the coast of Devon or Cornwall.

Palmer’s sun continued to set in the watercolours of his last couple of years, as shown in The Winding Stream (c 1879), painted as Impressionism was reaching its height in France.

Palmer died on 24 May 1881; the following January his father-in-law John Linnell died. They and their works were quickly forgotten, and were not rediscovered until the 1950s.

References

Wikipedia

Vaughan, William (2015) Samuel Palmer, Shadows on the Wall, Yale UP. ISBN 978 0 300 20985 3.

On 28 July 1914, the Austro-Hungarian Empire declared war on Serbia. Germany then invaded Belgium and Luxembourg, and the First World War had started. Lovis Corinth and his family had only just come to terms with his stroke, when they found themselves living in the midst of war. He and most of the other painters and artists in Berlin shared an enthusiastic patriotism which initially gave them buoyant and optimistic spirits.

This patriotism was expressed quite openly in paintings like Im Schutze der Waffen (In Defence of Weapons) from 1915. The same suit of armour in which he had posed proudly for his self-portrait prior to his stroke now saw service in the cause of his country.

But both Corinth and his wife were growing older, and more tired. Portrait of Charlotte Berend-Corinth (1915) shows a very different woman from that of just a few years earlier. Her brow is now knitted, and her joyous smile gone.

The answer, for Corinth and his family, was to get out of Berlin and enjoy the countryside. In the summer they travelled to Lake Müritz (1915) in Mecklenburg, and Corinth started to paint more landscapes again.

He also continued to paint still lifes, such as this wonderful Still Life with Pagoda (1916), with its curious combination of Asian and crustacean objects.

Each year from 1916 to 1918, Corinth returned to his home village Tapiau, and the nearby city of Königsberg where he had started his professional career, to see the terrible effects of the war on the people. In 1917, he was honoured by them in recognition of his artistic achievements. A substantial one-man exhibition of his paintings was held in Mannheim and Hanover that year too.

Cain (1917) is probably Corinth’s most significant work from the war years, and continued his series based on stories from the Old Testament. He shows Cain finishing off his brother Abel, burying his dying body. Cain looks up to the heavens as he places another large rock on his brother, and threatening black birds fly around.

This stark and powerful painting probably also reflects Corinth’s own feelings of his battle following his stroke, and those invoked when the US first entered the war that year, as its remorseless slaughter continued.

Götz von Berlichingen (1917) shows the historical character of Gottfried ‘Götz’ von Berlichingen (1480-1562), who had been a colourful Imperial Knight and mercenary. After he lost his right arm in 1504, he had metal prosthetic hands made for him, which were capable of holding objects as fine as a quill. His swashbuckling autobiography was turned into a play by Goethe in 1773, and a notorious quotation from that led to his name becoming a euphemism for the phrase ‘he can lick my arse/ass’.

Corinth celebrated his sixtieth birthday in 1918, and was made a professor in the Academy of Arts of Berlin. However, with the end of the war and its unprecedented carnage, disaster for Germany, and the revolution, Corinth slid into depression.

Armour Parts in the Studio (1918) is his best summary of the situation. The suit of armour is now empty, broken apart, and cast on the floor of his studio.

He still managed some paintings of flesh, such as this Girl in Front of a Mirror (1918).

His self-portraits show clearly the effects of the war, and his age. In Self-Portrait in a White Coat (1918) he is becoming more gaunt. He is shown painting with his left hand, and has used the open sleeve to stow some brushes for ready use.

Just a year later, his Self-Portrait at the Easel (1919) reveals a still older man, looking directly at the viewer, grappling with the times.

Magdalen with Pearls in her Hair (1919), one of Corinth’s few works in the UK (in the Tate Gallery), is one of several paintings that he made of Mary Magdalen, a very popular subject for religious paintings. This follows the established tradition of showing Mary as something of a composite, based mainly on Mary of Magdala who was cleansed by Christ, witnessed the Crucifixion, and was the first to see him resurrected. Apocryphal traditions held that she was a reformed prostitute, and most depictions of Mary tread a fine line between the fleshly and the spiritual.

This is Corinth’s most intense and dramatic depiction of Mary, her age getting the better of her body, and her eyes puffy from weeping. She is shown with a skull to symbolise mortality, and with pearls in her hair to suggest the contradiction of her infamous past and as a halo for her later devotion to Christ.

Corinth also kept up his floral paintings, here with Roses (1919).

In the summer of 1918, Corinth and his family had first visited Urfeld, on the shore of Walchensee (Lake Walchen), to the south of Munich. They fell in love with the countryside there, and the following year bought some land on which Charlotte arranged for a simple chalet to be built. In the coming years, the Walchensee was to prove Corinth’s salvation, and the motif for at least sixty superb landscape paintings.

In September of 1919, their new chalet was ready, and the Corinths moved in to watch the onset of autumn. Walchensee, Blue Landscape (1919) was probably painted quite early, before the first substantial fall of snow.

October Snow at Walchensee (1919) shows an initial gentle touch of snow as autumn becomes properly established.

Later in the season, when the ground was well-covered with snow, Corinth painted it in Walchensee, Snowscape (1919).

References

Wikipedia.

Lemoine S et al. (2008) Lovis Corinth, Musée d’Orsay & RMN. ISBN 978 2 711 85400 4. (In French.)
Czymmek G et al. (2010) German Impressionist Landscape Painting, Liebermann-Corinth-Slevogt, Arnoldsche. ISBN 978 3 89790 321 0.

In Ovid’s account of the creation, Jupiter, the king of the gods, wants to destroy mankind because of its unacceptable behaviour, and to create a new, better type of human. At first he intends doing this by fire, but decides that a flood is the preferred solution.

The Story

Following a vivid description of the production and catastrophic effects of Jupiter’s flood, Ovid reveals its two survivors: a man named Deucalion and his wife (and cousin) Pyrrha. Their small and fragile boat is washed up on the summit of Mount Parnassus, whose twin peaks are the only remaining land. Deucalion is a son of Prometheus, the Titan who stole fire from Mount Olympus to give to mankind, and was punished by Jupiter as a result.

The couple worship the gods there, demonstrating their piety and simple virtue. Jupiter responds by reversing the flood, so that the waters recede, and land reappears covered with mud and ooze. Deucalion realises that they are the only living beings alive, and the couple weep. They then go to the temple of Themis, a Titan and ancient goddess concerned with fairness and justice, and ask her to help re-establish mankind on earth.

(It may seem puzzling that, with a male and female surviving, there is no mention of the idea that Deucalion and his wife might themselves procreate. Ovid does not even consider that possibility, neither does he reveal why it might not be feasible, for example due to their advanced age.)

Themis then instructs them:
Depart from me and veil your brows; ungird
your robes, and cast behind you as you go,
the bones of your great mother.

At first Pyrrha objects to the suggestion that she should violate her mother’s remains, but eventually Deucalion realises that the goddess has told them to throw the stones from the earth (their ‘mother’) behind them. As they do this, the stones transform into humans, who then repopulate the world:
It is much beyond belief,
were not receding ages witness, hard
and rigid stones assumed a softer form,
enlarging as their brittle nature changed
to milder substance, — till the shape of man
appeared, imperfect, faintly outlined first,
as marble statue chiseled in the rough.
The soft moist parts were changed to softer flesh,
the hard and brittle substance into bones,
the veins retained their ancient name. And now
the Gods supreme ordained that every stone
Deucalion threw should take the form of man,
and those by Pyrrha cast should woman’s form
assume: so are we hardy to endure
and prove by toil and deeds from what we sprung.

This is the second myth of metamorphosis to be related by Ovid.

The Paintings

There are many paintings showing the Biblical flood from Genesis, but few of the classical myth above.

Paul Merwart’s marvellous The Flood is conveniently sub-titled Deucalion holding aloft his wife to make it clear that this depicts the classical myth, although the couple’s boat is nowhere to be seen, and there seems no obvious reason for them being unable to procreate themselves in order to produce the next generation of humans.

Leonaert Bramer’s watercolour miniature of Scene from the Metamorphoses (c 1665) appears to show an elderly Deucalion assisting Pyrrha from the waters. Presumably the other bodies shown in the floodwaters are already dead or dying.

Slightly more popular with artists is the scene of transformation, in which the couple throw stones over their shoulder, and the rocks then change into humans. Several of these are confused, but my favourites are by Bottalla and a very late oil sketch by Rubens.

Giovanni Maria Bottalla’s Deucalion and Pyrrha (c 1635) is a well-composed narrative painting which clearly details Ovid’s version of the myth. Pyrrha and Deucalion, who has overdone Themis’ injunction to ungird his robes, stride forward, dropping hefty rocks over their shoulder. At the left, humans are seen to be emerging from those rocks by a process of metamorphosis, much as a sculptor might form their figures from marble blocks.

Peter Paul Rubens’ Deucalion and Pyrrha (1636) shows an aged Deucalion and Pyrrha, clearly beyond any hope of parenthood, which at least explains why this metamorphosis was needed. As their more reasonably-sized rocks transform, they follow an ontogenetic process, instead of behaving like sculpted blocks.

Rubens also treats us to some interesting details: the couple’s boat is shown at the top right, and a newly-transformed couple appear already to be engaged in the initial stages of making the next generation without the aid of metamorphoses.

Apollo and Python

The actions of Deucalion and Pyrrha provided the human population, but Ovid tells us that all other life was restored by spontaneous production from the fermenting mud left by the flood, under the rays of the sun, providing the combination of the ancient elements of heat and moisture in combination.

One of the creatures so created was the huge and monstrous serpent Python, which brought fear to mankind. As a conclusion to the story of the flood, Ovid writes that the god Apollo “destroyed the monster with a myriad darts” from his bow. To celebrate the death of Python, Apollo instituted the Pythian games, but because the laurel had not yet been created, its victors were awarded crowns of oak leaves, not laurels.

On of the most spectacular paintings of any Ovidian story is Eugène Delacroix’s huge mural of Apollo Vanquishing the Python (1850-51) in the Louvre. Apollo is seen in the centre, in his sun chariot, with another arrow poised in his bow and ready to strike Python, at the bottom of the image.

No doubt influenced by that, Gustave Moreau’s Apollo Vanquishing the Serpent Python (1885) is more modest in scale and ambition. Curiously, Apollo is shown holding his bow in his right hand so that it barely looks like a bow at all, but Moreau seems to have used a visual pun and also made it bear a flag, reminiscent of the figure of Marianne in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People (1830).

The English translation of Ovid above is taken from Ovid. Metamorphoses. Tr. Brookes More. Boston. Cornhill Publishing Co. 1922, at Perseus. I am very grateful to Perseus at Tufts for this.

Few of us get to write our own obituary, or to determine how we might be remembered in paintings. If you’re a major statesman and general, who commands many thousands of words on Wikipedia, you might hope for paintings showing you leading in battle, or in political debate. But for Alcibiades, that is not the case.

Alcibiades (c 450-404 BCE) was born in Athens, and served as an influential statesman, military advisor, and general in Athens, Sparta, and Persia. He had a particularly close relationship with his teacher Socrates, who has an even greater reputation as a philosopher. He enjoyed spectacular military successes in the Battles of Abydos and Cyzicus, but following defeat at Notium, he went into exile in Phrygia, where he died.

For reasons that are not clear to me, Alcibiades became a popular figure in history paintings during the period 1750-1900, across much of Europe.

The Wounded Alcibiades, painted between 1743-1800 either by Jean-Charles Nicaise Perrin or one of Joseph-Marie Vien’s school, seems to be the kindest visual epitaph. A military surgeon is operating on a wound on Alcibiades’ abdomen, sustained in the course of battle. At the far right, the much older figure of Socrates stands and watches his friend and pupil undergo this procedure without anaesthetic of any kind.

This surgery takes place in Alcibiades’ tent, with his helmet, shield, and weapons visible in the upper centre. A small group of his commanders watch from the left, and two women gaze on from the foot of the general’s bed.

Less flattering, perhaps, is this marble relief kept in the Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli, most probably showing Alcibiades and the Courtesans, although it had earlier been thought to be of Apollo and three nymphs. Why, I wondered, was this great general being remembered by an incident from the more personal side of his personal life?

It gets worse.

Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s beautiful painting of Phidias Showing the Frieze of the Parthenon to his Friends (1868) includes a portrait of Alcibiades: he is the decidedly effeminate young man at the far left, gazing intently at Socrates, who has his back to the viewer.

The father of Danish painting, Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg, is even more explicit in his portrayal of their relationship in his Socrates and Alcibiades. But this still doesn’t provide any explanation for the marble relief.

That comes in a succession of paintings, starting with Jean-Baptiste Regnault’s Socrates Tears Alcibiades from the Embrace of Sensual Pleasure in 1791. It then becomes clear that Alcibiades had a colourful life not just in politics and the battlefield, but in the beds of many women too. The story is that the young Alcibiades was wayward, and started to consort with courtesans. Discovering this, his teacher (and, apparently, lover) Socrates tracked him down one day in a brothel, and dragged him away from the clutches of its women – seemingly to their great disappointment.

Anton Petter’s Socrates reproaching Alcibiades tells the same sorry story.

So does Germán Hernández Amores’ Socrates Chiding Alcibiades in the Home of a Courtesan from 1857.

Jean-Léon Gérôme even identifies whose house he was dragged from, in his Socrates seeking Alcibiades in the house of Aspasia (1861).

That’s not all. If Plutarch is to be believed, Alcibiades’ wife, Hipparete, was sufficiently troubled by his repeated visits to courtesans as to start divorce proceedings against him. But her husband turned up at the court and dragged her away, ending the case.

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée’s Alcibiades on his Knees Before his Mistress (c 1781) shows him with two women, neither of whom appears to be impressed by his behaviour.

What goes around, comes around, whether on the battlefield or in the bedroom. When he had made sufficient enemies as to make life in Greece untenable, and fled to exile in Phrygia – today’s western Turkey – he settled down to life with another mistress, Timandra. Opinions are divided as to whether his death was the result of a Spartan mission, sent to settle old scores, or Timandra’s relatives.

Either way, a hostile group surrounded his villa and set alight to it when he was inside. Alcibiades was forced to escape, and once his enemies got him in their sights, they loosed their arrows and killed him.

Jacques Réattu’s The Death of Alcibiades is sadly unfinished, but I think gives a clear idea of his composition and intent. Alcibiades is slumped behind a low wall, his attackers massed on the other side. Timandra is remonstrating with the group, which suggests that Réattu thought that they were her relatives, not a Spartan hit-squad.

Michele De Napoli’s The Death of Alcibiades (1839) shows his mistress trying to fend off a close assault, but it is already too late, as an arrow has run deep into his upper abdomen, and his legs are giving way. Smoke shrouds the other attackers in the room behind.

I didn’t know who Alcibiades was, and now I can see two quite different people: the statesman and general detailed on Wikipedia, and a very different figure in these works of art. Either way, they confirm that those who live by the sword, die by the sword, but are best-remembered in the bedroom.

Reference

Wikipedia.