This is the second in a series of three articles looking at a selection of paintings of fearsome beasts from myth and legend. In the first, I looked at dragons. Today I broaden that to include monsters more generally, and tomorrow consider the horrors of the sea, orcs and sea monsters.

One of the most monstrous of all the classical fiends was the Sphinx which guarded the entrance to the Greek city of Thebes. In asking a riddle to determine whether to let people into the city its behaviour might have seemed fairly innocuous, except that those who got the answer wrong were strangled. One version of this riddle is the question “Which creature has one voice and yet becomes four-footed, two-footed, and three-footed?” Oedipus solved this in his answer of humans, who crawl when a baby, walk on two feet as an adult, then walk with a stick when old. Several fine paintings show Oedipus giving his answer to the Sphinx’s riddle.

Ingres painted this just two years after he had arrived in Rome as the recipient of the Prix de Rome, working in a studio in the grounds of the Villa Medici. When sent back to Paris, it was criticised over its treatment of light, and lack of idealisation in the figures. In 1825, Ingres decided to develop it into a more narrative work, which he completed in 1827. This time it was well received.

His reworking enlarged the canvas, adding human remains at the lower left, and the contrasting background to the right. He skilfully shows the bare minimum of the Sphinx needed to identify the monster.

Ingres’ work was a clear influence over the later painting of the same scene by Gustave Moreau, in his Oedipus and the Sphinx (1864), which appears to be based on a mirror image of the Ingres. However Moreau lost the facial expressions, particularly that of the Sphinx, and this painting was highly successful at the Salon.

The Minotaur, part human and part bull, the product of a bestial relationship with Queen Pasiphae, features in the myth of Theseus, father of Athens. The early city had to keep shipping out its young men and women to satisfy the appetite of the Minotaur, who was confined within a labyrinth designed by the master artificer Daedalus. Theseus joined a group of young Greeks so that he could enter the labyrinth to kill the Minotaur.

George Frederic Watts was apparently driven to paint The Minotaur (1885) as a response to a series of articles in the press revealing the industry of child prostitution in late Victorian Britain; those articles referred to the myth of the Minotaur, so early one morning he painted this image of human bestiality and lust. His Minotaur has crushed a small bird in its left hand, and gazes out to sea, awaiting the next shipment of young men and virgin women from Greece.

Cerberus is the horrifying three-headed canine monster shown in Blake’s late illustrations to Dante’s Divine Comedy, painted between 1824–27. This refers to Dante’s Inferno, canto 6 verses 12-24, where Dante and Virgil enter the Third Circle, in which gluttons are punished. Blake is true to his source, except that he adds a cave to signify the weight of the material world.

Cerberus is a good example of the redeployment of pre-Christian mythology into Christian beliefs: it was originally the guardian of the Underworld, and prevented those within from escaping back to the earthly world. It even features in the twelve labours of Heracles (Hercules), in which he captured Cerberus. Dante – with Virgil’s explicit involvement – incorporates it into his Christian concepts of the afterlife.

Other classical monsters were less well-known. In this painting from 1876, Gustave Moreau refers to one of the twelve labours imposed on Heracles/Hercules, specifically that of hunting the Hydra in the marshes of Lernea, near Argos, and destroying it. The Hydra was a poisonous monster with the body of a dog and multiple serpent heads, whose breath alone was capable of killing.

Although he doesn’t show its dog-like body here, Moreau shows its heads according to the letter of the original story, with the marshes seen behind. Heracles is shown confronting the Hydra, with a charnelhouse of remains of previous victims at its base.

This painting has also engendered long-standing controversy over its possible political connotations. It was suggested at the time that the Hydra represented the forces of anarchy behind the insurgency of the Paris Commune in 1871. Others prefer instead that the Hydra represents Bismarck and the German princes behind the Franco-Prussian War of 1870. There don’t appear to be any good cues to either.

The original Python is another classical monster. Following the flood myth which left only Deucalion and Pyrrha as survivors, Ovid tells us that all non-human 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 his 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.

One 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 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 Christian canon of monsters is also rich and varied, its foundation based largely on the strange genius of Hieronymus Bosch, most of whose paintings include a whole menagerie of invented monsters. Here I show just one fine example, from his Hermit Saints triptych of around 1495-1505.

In the left panel, Saint Anthony leans on a stick, held in his left hand, while pouring water from a jug held low with his right hand; he may be drawing water from a well. The devotional area in front of him has a thin voile curtain hanging from the branch of a dead tree, behind which is a nude woman. A devil is on the branch.

In the foreground, there is a collection of bizarre objects, mainly portmanteau creatures, such as a head on a pair of shoes, with a nesting owl on top of it. There is also a wizened gnome-like man stood reading a book on a stone slab, and a fish with arms which appears to be pouring itself a glass of drink from a jug.

The foreground of that panel features a complete zoo of weird beasts, mainly assembled using a mixture of parts of real creatures. At its centre, for example, is a bird with human legs, a peacock-like posterior, and the bill of a spoonbill. None of these is exactly a fearsome monster, but as chimeras or portmanteaux they are unnatural and internally disturbing.

Very slightly later than Bosch, Matthias Grünewald’s diptych of the Visit of St Anthony to St Paul and Temptation of St Anthony (c 1515) features a right panel which is packed with all manner of extraordinary beasts and monsters.

Among the Renaissance epics, Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso is particularly rich in monsters, of which I show just one example from Gustave Doré’s wonderful illustrations.

In Canto 15, the knight Astolfo finds his path obstructed by a group of monsters, which he has to negotiate.

In the two previous articles in this series, I have shown selections of paintings first of dragons and then of other monsters more generally. While land travel was high risk and adventurous until well into the nineteenth century, taking to the sea in a boat or ship was really putting your life at risk. What if an orc or another sea monster were to see you as a passing canapé or snack? How many mariners and their passengers must have fallen prey and never returned from the sea.

Modern use of the term orc is coloured by its popularisation in the fantasy fiction of JRR Tolkien, and visualisation in semi-human form as a variant of goblin. Even the Wikipedia entry describes orcs as if this has always been the case, despite the term having been used extensively in English from the sixteenth century onwards for a range of sea monsters.

The most famous of these is Cetus, a sea monster created by the classical Greek god Poseidon in sheer spite at the claim that Andromeda, princess of Aethiopia, was more beautiful than any of his Nereids, thus requiring her to be fed to it to satisfy its appetite. As the heart of the myth of Perseus and Andromeda, Cetus appears in a great many paintings from classical times onwards. I show here just a small selection in which the monster is depicted.

Piero di Cosimo shows multiple events in his large Andromeda freed by Perseus (c 1510-15). Centred on the great bulk of Cetus, Perseus stands on its back and is about to hack at its neck with his sword. At the upper right, Perseus is shown a few moments earlier, as he was flying past in his winged sandals. To the left of Cetus, Andromeda is still secured to the rock by a prominent red fabric binding (not chains), and is bare only to her waist.

In the foreground in front of Cetus are Andromeda’s parents, the King and Queen, still stricken in grief. Near them is a group of courtiers with ornate head-dress. But in the right foreground is a celebratory party already in full swing, complete with musicians and dancers, to feast their delivery from the monster’s attack.

Not known for his narrative paintings, Titian combines an unusually-posed nude study of Andromeda, with both Perseus and Cetus, in his Perseus and Andromeda (1553-9). Andromeda is still in her chains, gazing at Perseus as he appears to tumble from the sky, ready to hack at the sea monster. Cetus obligingly opens it vast maw, ready to swallow him whole, although it is in fact much further away.

Paolo Veronese’s Perseus Rescuing Andromeda followed soon afterwards, in 1576-78. His composition is similar to Titian’s, and equally faithful to the myth, but his additional attention to the details of Perseus and Cetus bring this to life, making it one of the finest depictions of this scene.

Gustave Moreau’s Perseus and Andromeda (1870) puts the shackled Andromeda, almost naked, in the foreground, with Cetus looking surprised at the imminent arrival from the sky of Perseus. The hero isn’t astride Pegasus, but wears the winged sandals, and flourishes his polished shield still bearing an image of Medusa’s head.

I show two versions of Edward Burne-Jones’s painting in his Perseus Series, of The Doom Fulfilled (1888). The upper full-size watercolour study is now in Southampton, England, and below is his finished oil version in Stuttgart. Unlike most previous depictions, Burne-Jones opts for the almost calligraphic coils of a classical serpentine dragon.

With the possible exception of Delacroix’s Python, Lord Leighton’s vision of Cetus in his Perseus and Andromeda from 1891 is the only fire-breathing monster which fits the modern concept of a ‘dragon’. Its body is carefully arched over Andromeda as if protecting its prey from another predator.

Just over a century ago, Félix Vallotton painted one of the most unconventional images of Perseus Killing the Dragon (1910), which might even be a parody of the story, and of narrative painting as a genre.

Andromeda, long freed from her chains, squats, her back towards the action, at the far left. Her face shows a grimace of slightly anxious disgust towards the monster. Perseus is also completely naked, with no sign of winged sandals, helmet of Hades, or the bag containing Medusa’s head. He is braced in a diagonal, his arms reaching up to exert maximum thrust through the shaft of a spear which impales Cetus through the head. The monster is shown as an alligator, its fangs bared from an open mouth.

The myth of Perseus and Andromeda was used in turn by Ariosto for two subtly different and interlinked threads about sea monsters in his Orlando Furioso, published in 1516-32. English translations of this epic poem from 1591 are among the most obvious users of the word orc prior to the publication of Tolkien’s novel The Hobbit in 1937, a period of over three centuries.

Girolamo da Carpi must have read Ariosto’s description of this scene soon after its publication, and committed to paint in his undated Ruggiero Saving Angelica. The heroic Ruggiero flies in on a hippogriff to rescue the heroine Angelica from this huge black orc.

Arnold Böcklin’s orc, in his Roger freeing Angelica from 1873, is the most endearing of all the monsters I’ve come across, with what is almost a smile on its face. I’m sure that’s not how Ariosto envisaged this thrilling rescue.

When French Impressionists were making their impact on the art world, Paul-Joseph Blanc painted this very detailed Salon-pleaser of Ruggiero Rescuing Angelica (1876). If he had equipped Ruggiero with a kibisis containing the head of Medusa, and the orc had looked a little less feline, it could readily have passed for Perseus and Andromeda.

Gustave Doré’s illustration engraved in about 1878 for his splendid edition of Orlando doesn’t stray from Ariosto’s words, and shows this dramatic climax to the thread very well.

The second attack by an orc involves a different pair, the Orlando of the the epic’s title and Olimpia, one of many damsels in distress. Ariosto here departs more from the classical myth, in an ingenious twist which requires Orlando to wedge the orc’s jaws open with an anchor so that he can inflict soft-tissue injuries to the inside of its mouth, and bring about its death.

This is shown well in Daniel Berger’s etching for a 1772 illustrated edition.

Once again, it is the masterly illustration of Gustave Doré which tells this best, as the hero enters the orc’s mouth armed with the anchor, and the damsel Olimpia is tied naked to a waterside tree to await her death or rescue.

I have one final painting which links these wonderful sea monsters to a more modern era. This was painted by Evelyn De Morgan, who had extensive knowledge of classical myth but here creates an image which spans centuries: S.O.S., from about 1914-16, the first half of the Great War.

A light-robed woman stands, her head thrown back and arms outstretched as if being crucified, on a rock in the sea. Her robes are irridescent, containing faint colours of the rainbow. Around her feet is a pantheon of vicious sea monsters, some winged, others snake-like, most toothed and predatory. Above her is a bright light, with coloured halos, against a sky studded with stars.

The well-known radio call to indicate distress, consisting originally of the Morse code letters S O S, was not introduced until 1908, replacing the earlier Morse letters CQD (which were still used by the Titanic in 1912). The distress here is both personal and global, at the horrors of the Great War. Both Evelyn and her husband William De Morgan were pacifists, and she expressed her views of the war in this and other paintings of this time. The figure doesn’t just represent the force of good, but that of redemption, from among the sea of monstrous war.

Once again, there’s more to the image of a monster than might first appear.

Under her Greek identity, Demeter (Δημήτηρ) is a rare find in paintings, where she is almost universally known as the Roman goddess Ceres, who’s so famous that she has been assimilated into English in the word cereal, which refers to her most universal attribute of grain. The sister of Poseidon, Zeus and Hera, her parents are the primordial deities Kronos and Rhea.

Demeter/Ceres is the goddess of the harvest, and of agriculture and food production more generally, extending to fertility of both plants and animals, including humans. Her attributes are ripe sheaves of wheat and the bread derived from it, and she is sometimes seen with a cornucopia or harvest spread, or feeding an infant at her breast, reflecting her association with fecundity and nutrition. Although most often seen as part of summertime allegories, she can be invoked in the early phase of the growing seasons, the Spring.

This is shown in Antoine-François Callet’s allegory of Spring (c 1781). The central figure of Flora bares her breasts with a rather effeminate Zephyrus under her left arm. At the lower right are the three Graces, dancing with their hands held high, and at the lower left is Ceres, in her chariot drawn by lions. Together with her daughter Persephone (of whom more later), Ceres is often allied with Flora in their common association with plant growth and fertility.

In the mid-1860s, Jean-François Millet developed some seasonal themes to soften the social message in his paintings. Ceres (The Summer) (c 1864-65) is a classical mythological portrait. Ceres stands, her breasts swollen and ready for lactation, her hair adorned with ripe ears of wheat, a sickle in her right hand to cut the harvest, and a traditional winnow (used to separate the grain from chaff) in her left hand. At her feet is a basketful of bread, with ground flour and cut sheaves of wheat behind. The background shows the wheat harvest in full swing, right back to a group of grain- or hay-stacks and an attendant wagon in the distance.

Ceres was a favourite with Peter Paul Rubens, who painted her in small groups and in his crowded Minerva Protects Pax from Mars (Peace and War) from 1629-30.

This painting, now in the National Gallery in London, features more than a dozen figures drawn from classical myths. Its central figures are those of Ceres, here in the role of Pax (the personification of peace), and Minerva, behind her. In attendance are Mars, Hymen, Plutus, and Alecto, with sundry Bacchantes, a Satyr, putti, and the attributes of Bacchus and Mercury. It’s like an away day from Olympus, or part of an index to Ovid.

Rubens shows Ceres expressing milk from her left breast, which arcs into the mouth of her son Plutus, the god of wealth, who is grasping her left arm.

Those figures of Ceres and Plutus are almost identical to those of Venus and Cupid in Rubens’ later Venus, Mars and Cupid (c 1633). Cupid is shown here with wings, and his traditional bow and arrows. In Peace and War, the infant is clearly not Cupid as he has neither wings nor bow and arrows, so must be Plutus.

Ceres stands for values which are strongly associated with the benefits of peace – bread rather than starvation, fertility rather than barrenness and pestilence. Her son Plutus represents the growth of wealth during times of peace.

The most prominent of Ceres’ children is Persephone, the Roman Proserpine, whose father was Zeus. When Hades (Pluto) abducts the yound Persephone as she is playing and picking flowers at an idyllic spot by Lake Pergus, Ceres starts to search for the girl. As it’s getting dark, and the goddess is growing weary and thirsty, Ceres knocks on the door of a humble cottage to slake her thirst.

An old woman, Hecuba, answers the door; while Ceres is drinking, a passing boy laughs at her and calls her greedy, for which Ovid tells us that he was transformed into a spotted newt.

Adam Elsheimer is one of the very few artists who have been diverted by this side-story, in his wonderful nocturne Ceres at Hecuba’s Home from about 1605. The young boy is mocking Ceres quenching her thirst during her search for Persephone, for which he is about to be turned into a newt.

When Ceres is unable to find her daughter she is besides herself with grief, and rends her hair and clothing, destroying the local harvest in Sicily as a result. At last, Arethusa tells Ceres of Hades’ abduction of the girl. Ceres goes straight to Zeus, Persephone’s father, and pleads the case that the girl should be freed from Hades. Zeus agrees on the condition – set by the Fates – that Persephone has not eaten while in the underworld. Sadly, that proves not to be the case, and the girl is allowed to return to her mother for half of the year, during the growing seasons, and has to go back to Hades for the other half, when the earth lies barren through the winter.

Another more obscure myth involving Ceres is that of the attempted murder of Triptolemus, a key figure in the legendary story of the development of agricultural wheat. After Arethusa is transformed into an underground river, Ceres harnesses a pair of dragons to her chariot and travels to visit Triptolemus. She gives him seed, which he is to sow in unproductive land, which has never been cultivated or has long lain fallow. The young Triptolemus flies away in her chariot, and eventually comes to Scythia, where he enters the palace of its king, Lyncus.

Triptolemus provides the king with seed, promising him rich harvests from it. Lyncus is jealous, though, so entertains Triptolemus lavishly; when the young man is sound asleep, the king tries to stab him in the heart. Ceres intervenes, and transforms Lyncus into a lynx. Triptolemus became an important deity, as an assistant to Ceres in bringing productive grain crops to Europe, and for his involvement in the secret rites of the Eleusinian Mysteries.

This tondo of a red-figure Attic cup, now in the Louvre, is typical of many classical depictions of Triptolemus and Ceres, and dates from 470-460 BCE. The young deity is sat in Ceres’ special winged chariot, as she provides him with seed to be distributed to the lands around the world.

Triptolemus also assumes the same role in the left foreground of Jerzy Siemiginowski-Eleuter’s splendid Allegory of Summer (1684—86), made as a ceiling painting for the bedroom of King John III Sobieski of Poland.

The goddess is in the centre foreground, handing an unusual blue floral wreath to Triptolemus. Above him is an allegory of the night, with the figure of Aurora-Astraea, who was modelled by Queen Marysieńka (Marie Casimire Louise de la Grange d’Arquien), wife of King John III Sobieski of Poland (1629-1696).

Low in the sky is the ‘dog star’, which is generally visible across Europe through the summer. Above is the chariot of the sun, which is in the constellation of the lion, Leo. These symbols of summer are coupled with the more obvious signs of harvest, to complete the elaborate seasonal allegory.

Károly Brocky’s Ceres and Triptolemos from about 1853 is a simpler evocation of these gods and their roles in productive agriculture, which uses a quiet form of multiplex narrative. In the foreground, Ceres is bidding the young Triptolemus to sow seed from the bag carried by a young child, who may be Plutus. In the background the harvest is also in full swing, many months after that seed would have been sown.

The Eleusinian Mysteries are inevitably mysterious, and hardly elucidated by paintings. I close with one unusual work which refers to them, and their sacred tree, which transferred into tree lore across northern Europe.

Francisco Pradilla’s Under Ceres’ Sacred Tree (1903) explores some of the mythical associations of Ceres and the Eleusinian Mysteries. This shows a party of ecstatic young women worshippers at a shrine to Ceres on an ancient hawthorn tree – a wonderful flight of fancy perhaps inspired by the artist’s travels in Italy.

Those who followed the Impressionists with newer styles of painting seldom seem to have skied, but several painted some of the most wonderful and radically innovative skies to be seen on canvas. In this article, I show a selection of my favourite and most intriguing skies featured by those artists.

In the last two years of Vincent van Gogh’s life, he painted some truly unique skies, the like of which hadn’t been seen before, or since. His nocturne Starry Night over the Rhône from 1888 is a landmark work in this respect, with its starbursts against heavily-applied deep blues which are reflected back on the broken water.

Some of van Gogh’s less well-known paintings from this period are also dominated by their sky, here Coal Barges (1888) with its halfway horizon and streaks of coloured clouds.

In the summer of 1889, his several variations of Wheat Field with Cypresses feature low horizons below skies of swirling forms which start to integrate with similar brushstrokes in the hills and vegetation. Unlike most of the other Post-Impressionist paintings here, this early sketch is thought to follow the plein air tradition, and may even have been completed in a single sitting in front of the motif.

In his Road with Cypress and Star (1890), van Gogh finally integrates the facture of the sky with that of the rest of the painting, in its swirling brushstrokes.

Edvard Munch’s The Scream, seen here in its first version of 1893, is another famous instance of a Post-Impressionist work with a memorable sky. In this case, its blood-red sunset has evolved over a series of previous paintings developing the theme of emotional anguish. The artist explained the importance of the sky in his notes he made about its origin:
“I was walking along a path with two friends. The sun was setting. I felt a breath of melancholy. Suddenly the sky turned blood-red. I stopped and leant against the railing, deathly tired, looking out across flaming clouds that hung like – blood and a sword over the deep blue fjord and town. My friends walked on – I stood there trembling with anxiety, and I felt a great, infinite scream pass through nature.”

In 1903, Gustav Klimt spent his summer holiday at Attersee with his partner’s family, where he painted this landscape of an Approaching Thunderstorm (1903). Many of his other landscape paintings made during his summers away show no sky at all, but this is an exception.

Like Vincent van Gogh, Paul Cézanne’s late paintings incorporate the sky in the same facture, in his case constructive strokes. His Banks of a River from 1904 builds its sky using these characteristic patches of stroked colours as seen in the rest of the landscape. Overlapping of patches reveals that much of this was painted wet-on-dry, confirming that this was completed over a period of at least a week or two, and not in a single plein air session.

Jakub Schikaneder’s In the evening in Hradčany (1909-13) shows a spectacular winter dusk in this district of the city of Prague. In the distance are the twin spires and tower of St Vitus’ Cathedral, suggesting this view is on the Čechův Bridge over the Vitava River.

Edvard Munch’s The Sun from 1910–11 is very different from his paintings of the 1890s. It shows the sun recently-risen over the sea, viewed from a point high above a Norwegian country valley. Its sparse application of paint and geometric arrangement of rays and arcs is reminiscent of the work of William Blake.

Egon Schiele’s Autumn Tree in Stirred Air (Winter Tree) (1912) is often seen as one of his most abstract paintings, but remains firmly representational. It shows a bent and twisted tree, barren of leaves, against unusual cloud formations known locally as ‘snow lights’ because they indicate imminent snowfall.

The young Canadian painter Tom Thomson was well-known for dashing off lightning oil sketches such as Thunderhead (1912-13), in which he captures a passing thunderstorm en plein air, and in real time.

The Belgian Neo-Impressionist Théo van Rysselberghe had abandoned ‘Pointillism’ in 1910, and the following year retired to paint in the South of France. His colours became intense, as shown in his Large Tree near the Sea from 1919, in which his marks have become less regular, and his horizon relatively low, ensuring a generous sky.

My final two examples are drawn from even later in the twentieth century, and are both based on experiences during the Second World War of the British Surrealist Paul Nash.

The startling distant view in Nash’s Battle of Britain (1941) incorporates many elements of air warfare, including vapour trails (contrails), smoke marking the spin and crash of a downed aircraft, formation flight, and defensive airships. Below this action are the low hills, estuary, and a winding river typical of much of the English south coast.

In Flight of the Magnolia (1944), a magnolia flower unfurls into the sky high above a low coastal landscape. Those vast, soft petals are set against a background of equally huge leaves, and beyond them a field of cumulus clouds so typical of an English summer. Those below the flower have heaped up to generate a shower in the far distance.

In an essay the following year, Nash explained that the Second World War had changed his perception of the sky:
When the war came, suddenly the sky was upon us all like a huge hawk, hovering, threatening. Everyone was searching the sky, expecting the terror to fall: I among them scanned the low clouds … hunting the sky for what I most dreaded in my imagining. It was a white flower. Ever since the Spanish Civil War the idea of the Rose of Death, the name the Spaniards gave to the parachute, had haunted my mind, so that when the war overtook us I strained my eyes always to see that dreadful miracle of the sky blossoming with these floating flowers.

In the second episode, the Saracen knight Sansloy abandoned the sorceror Archimago unconscious after their duel, and abducted Una after killing her guardian lion. The Redcrosse Knight has been led astray by Duessa, and taken to the House of Pride. When he turns away from there, he meets Sansjoy, Sansloy’s brother, who recognises his other brother Sansfoy’s shield on the knight’s horse, so challenges the Redcrosse Knight to a duel.

Lucifera, Queen of the House of Pride, insists that is postponed to the next day. After feasting and revelry that night, when everyone else has gone to bed, Duessa goes to Sansjoy and promises that she’ll use her witchcraft to help him to victory over the Redcrosse Knight, provided that he becomes her protector.

Canto 5

The faithfull knight in equall field
subdues his faithlesse foe;
Whom false Duessa saves, and for
his cure to hell does goe.

For the duel between the Redcrosse Knight and Sansjoy, Queen Lucifera sits under a stately canopy, and her court gathers to watch, leaving Duessa sitting alone. The two knights arrive to the sound of a fanfare, and join in battle. Although the Saracen fights strongly, Redcrosse returns every blow, with neither gaining any advantage.

Inflamed by the sight of his brother’s shield hanging on a nearby tree, Sansjoy lands a mighty blow on the knight’s helmet leaving him staggering. Duessa promises the Saracen the shield and herself, which the Redcrosse Knight misunderstands as being directed at him. He then strikes Sansjoy fiercely, causing him to fall heavily. As Redcrosse prepares to deliver the final blow, Duessa brings down a dense fog around Sansjoy’s body, then runs up to congratulate the Redcrosse Knight on his victory, winning the fight, the shield and Duessa herself.

Later that night, while Redcrosse’s wounds are being tended, Duessa flies to Night to seek her aid in healing the near-dead Saracen. Night takes Duessa back to Sansjoy’s body, from where they take it in her iron chariot to Pluto’s realm of Avernus. After pacifying its guardian the three-headed dog Cerberus, and passing the tormented souls of Ixion, Sisyphus and Tantalus, they reach Aesculapius, whom Night persuades to heal the Saracen.

Night then returns Duessa to the House of Pride. There, Redcrosse Knight’s dwarf had discovered horrors in the house’s dungeons, including imprisoned rulers such as Nimrod and great Romans from Romulus to Julius Caesar, who are kept captive there. Those had forced the two to flee hurriedly through an unguarded door, which leads them past piles of corpses.

Canto 6

From lawlesse lust by wondrous grace
Fair Una is releast:
Whom salvage nation does adore
And learns her wise beheast.

Meanwhile, Sansloy takes Una to a dense wood where he first tries to seduce her, and meeting strong resistance tries to take her by force. She cries so loudly that a troop of satyrs and fauns in a nearby glade hurry over to investigate.

Sansloy rides off in haste as the rabble of woodland folk pay their respects to Una, and reassure her that she is safe again. They lead her to the god of the forest, Sylvanus.

As the satyrs start to worship Una, a noble knight named Satyrane, kin to the satyrs, enters the wood. His father was a satyr who had ravished a fair lady, then brought their son up in woodland ways, before he became a knight. Satyrane is moved by the sight of Una teaching his kin the sacred truth. He vows to help her find the Redcrosse Knight; knowing how hard it would be for them to leave the satyrs, some days later he and Una steal away in secret and head for the plain.

They meet a simple pilgrim there, and ask him whether he has seen the Redcrosse Knight. He tells them that he had witnessed a duel between Redcrosse and a Saracen earlier that day, which had ended with the death of Redcrosse. The pilgrim tells them that the Saracen is still nearby, bathing his wounds in a stream.

Satyrane hurries away with Una following more slowly on her palfrey. They soon come across Sansloy, who had earlier abducted Una, and Satyrane accuses him of killing the Redcrosse Knight, which he denies. The two proceed to combat; Una flees from Sansloy in terror, but looking on in secret is the sorceror Archimago, who had disguised himself as the pilgrim. He now turns to pursue Una.

Canto 7

The Redcrosse knight is captive made
By Gyaunt [giant] proud opprest:
Prince Arthure meets with Una great-
ly with those news distrest.

Duessa has left the House of Pride in pursuit of the Redcrosse Knight, and soon finds him divested of his armour and drinking from a stream. She turns on her charm, but that stream had been cursed by Diana to weaken all those who drink from it. When they hear the hideous bellowing of a monster, Redcrosse jumps up to arm himself, but can’t because he becomes feeble and faint.

The monster, Orgoglio, soon appears, three times the height of a man and armed with an oak tree as his club. As he crashes towards the knight, the latter can’t even raise his sword in defence. When the monster brings the oaktree crashing down at the knight, who scarcely manages to dodge it, Duessa asks Orgoglio to take him alive, and promises herself to him. The giant picks them both up and carries them back to his castle, where he throws the knight into his dungeon and dresses Duessa in fine clothes and jewels. He also presents her with a mount with seven heads and a tail reaching to the sky, with which to bring terror to others.

The knight’s attendant dwarf had meanwhile gathered up his master’s armour and weapons, and bumped into Una, who was still fleeing from Sansloy. She is devastated by the sight of the burden being carried by the dwarf, and swoons away in grief three times. The dwarf explains what he had seen, encouraging Una to set out to discover the fate of her beloved knight.

As Una traces the path shown by the dwarf, she meets a young knight wearing dazzling armour decorated with gold and jewels, the largest of which is shaped like the head of a lady. Strangely, his shield is covered; it had been made for him by the wizard Merlin as an invincible weapom whose light can dim the sun, and turn men to stone. This knight is Prince Arthur, who is riding on a private mission.

Arthur asks Una what troubles her, and on hearing the story of the Redcrosse Knight and his capture by a monster, the prince promises to free her knight. The dwarf leads them off towards Orgoglio’s castle.

Principal Characters

Archimago, an evil sorceror who tries to stop all knights in the service of the Faerie Queen.

Prince Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, bearer of a magic shield which blinds his enemies and turns them to stone, and future king.

Duessa, Una’s opposite, personifying falsehood, and the symbol of the Roman Catholic Church.

Lucifera, the usurper queen of the House of Pride.

Orgoglio, a giant about twenty feet (over six metres) tall, the son of Mother Earth.

Redcrosse Knight, hero of Book 1, “Holiness”, a knight on his first adventure, Saint George.

Sansfoy, a Saracen knight, the older brother of Sansloy and Sansjoy.

Sansjoy, a Saracen knight, the younger brother of Sansfoy and Sansloy.

Sansloy, a Saracen knight, younger brother of Sansloy, and brother to Sansjoy.

Satyrane, son of a satyr and a fair lady, who left the woods and became a noble knight, retaining his woodland skills.

Sylvanus, a sylvan god, the son of Pan and father of satyrs.

Una, accompanies the Redcrosse Knight, and the symbol of the ‘true’ (Protestant) Church.

References

Wikipedia on The Faerie Queene, with a partial summary
Wikipedia on Edmund Spenser

Richard Danson Brown (2019) The Art of the Faerie Queene, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 8732 5. (Note: this isn’t about visual art, but literary art and poetics.)
AC Hamilton (ed) (2007) Spenser, the Faerie Queene, 2nd edn, Routledge. ISBN 978 1 4058 3281 6. (Critical edition.)
Elizabeth Heale (1999) The Faerie Queene, A Reader’s Guide, 2nd edn, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 65468 5.
Douglas Hill (1980) Edmund Spenser, The Illustrated Faerie Queene, Newsweek Books. No ISBN.
Richard A McCabe (ed) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 1987 0967 1.

After the apotheosis of Romulus or whatever else accounted for his sudden disappearance, there was a brief interregnum during which Rome’s senators took it in turns to rule – for periods of just six hours at a time! Getting both the Roman and Sabine factions to agree on the successor to Romulus wasn’t easy, and the final agreement was for a Sabine king, Numa Pompilius.

At first, Numa declined the invitation to become King of Rome, but the people voted unanimously in his favour. Once in power, he set about changing the harsh and warlike nature of the city and its citizens by means of religious rites, forbidding the worship of graven images and banning animal sacrifice. Legend has it that Numa’s greatest achievement, though, was in handing down the city’s first set of codified laws, which are supposed to have been dictated to him by a nymph, Egeria, with whom the king fell in love – just the sort of story which makes for a good painting.

Nicolas Poussin’s Numa Pompilius and the Nymph Egeria from 1631-33 shows the meeting of King Numa, at the right, with Egeria, at the left, as she was being entertained by a young man with a lute, who may signify the Muses who apparently inspired Egeria to provide the laws of Rome. However, Numa hasn’t come equipped with any means of recording them, suggesting that this wasn’t the occasion on which Egeria dictated those laws.

Felice Giani’s much later painting of Numa Pompilius Receiving from the Nymph Egeria the Laws of Rome (1806) shows that process of dictation in full swing, with Numa working through scrolls, which are then transcribed onto the tablets of stone seen at the left. The nymph is the one sat on a throne, and is clearly in command, wagging her index finger at the King of Rome.

Numa established the order of high priests known as the Pontifices, and their chief, the Pontifex Maximus, terms which influenced the titles of the much later Christian church. Although Plutarch referred to the Vestal Virgins in his biography of Romulus, Numa is attributed the institution of the temple of Vesta, the duties of its priestesses, and the penalties for any breach.

His solution to the division of Rome into Sabine and Roman factions was to divide it further according to trades and arts, which he actively promoted. He also changed the calendar to keep it in better synchrony with the solar year, and re-ordered the months within it.

According to legendary dates, Romulus vanished in 716 BCE, and Numa ruled until his death in 673. He was succeeded by Tullus Hostilius, who fought a long war with Alba Longa, eventually resulting in the latter’s destruction. Within that legendary war is another legend which has been extensively painted: the battle of the Horatii.

Rather than set their armies against one another and lose many valuable citizens, Tullus and the king of Alba Longa made a gentlemen’s agreement to fight by proxy: each side would put up a set of triplets, who would then fight one another to the death. Whoever survived would secure victory for their side.

The Albans fielded their renowned warrior triplets from the Curiatius family, the Curiatii; the Romans their Horatii, ancestors of the famous Horatius Cocles who much later defended the bridge single-handed.

The two sides then massed on a battlefield about five miles out from Rome on the Appian Way, and the six men fought in front of them. Given the high stakes, their fighting was fierce, and the Curiatii were seriously wounded at the cost of the lives of two of the Horatii. The remaining Roman, Publius Horatius, realised that he was badly outnumbered, and sought to separate the three Curiatii to increase his chances: he ran across the battlefield until the Curiatii were well split up.

He turned and tackled the least wounded of the Curiatii, killing him. He was then able to turn to the second, and killed him too. This left only the most badly-wounded of the Curiatii, who was easily finished off. Publius Horatius was the victor, as was Rome, forcing Alba Longa to submit to the rule of Rome.

Fulchran-Jean Harriet’s Combat of the Horatii and the Curiatii was the winner of the prestigious Prix de Rome in 1798. It shows a late stage in the battle, as Publius Horatius is killing the Curiatii one by one, starting with the least-wounded of the three. One of his brothers doesn’t appear to be quite dead yet, either.

Giuseppe Cesari’s huge fresco Combat of the Horatii and the Curiatii (1612-13) shows the last Curiatius and Horatius (to the right) in the final phases of combat, as the Roman is about to deliver the coup de grace. Publius Horatius’ sister is shown at the left, by the bodies of the two dead Curiatii.

As was traditional, Publius Horatius then stripped the three corpses, and returned to Rome. He was greeted there by his sister Camilla, who had been engaged to one of the Curiatii, and immediately broke down and wept for the fate of her fiancé. Her surviving brother, declaring that no one should mourn the fallen enemies of Rome, killed her on the spot.

Louis-Jean-François Lagrenée’s Horatius Slays his Sister (1750-54) makes the brother appear thoroughly accusative, even though his sister is already dead. To the right of Horatius, the three bundles of clothes removed from the dead Curiatii are being paraded in public.

Francesco de Mura’s Horatius Slaying His Sister after the Defeat of the Curiatii (c 1760) shows the shock and fear generated by this murder, but omits the clothing which was said to have been the trigger for Camilla’s grief.

Victor Maximilien Potain’s Horatius Killing his Sister was the winner of the Prix de Rome in 1785. Publius Horatius is vociferously condemning his dead sister’s actions, and at the left is a display of the clothes he removed from the Curiatii, as victor.

Camilla’s murder was of course a crime, even in times of war, and Publius Horatius was condemned to die as a consequence. However, he appealed to a people’s assembly, which commuted his sentence. The family was required to atone for the crime by making sacrifice to the gods, which became a tradition.

By far the most famous, and most important, painting of the Horatii is bloodless, and shows a scene which doesn’t appear in verbal accounts: it is, of course, Jacques-Louis David’s The Oath of the Horatii.

David made his original and large painting, which is now in the Louvre, in 1784-85. Above is a superior image of the smaller copy made by the artist in 1786, now in Toledo, OH.

David chooses to show the three Horatii saluting their father, and taking their swords immediately before combat. Behind the father are three women, of whom the young woman at the far right is Camilla, sister to the Horatii and betrothed to one of the Curiatii, who thus knows that she will lose someone dear to her no matter what the outcome.

David chose a decisive and dramatic instant, which was enhanced and empowered by his brilliant composition and use of body language. This was commissioned for King Louis XVI, as an allegory about loyalty to the state and the monarch, which David interpreted as a message about the nobility of patriotic sacrifice. He cunningly left the viewer to decide where that loyal patriotism should be directed. Within five years, the French Revolution was at its height.

Tullus Hostilius was succeeded by Ancus Marcius in 642 BCE, and he by Tarquinius Priscus in 616, bringing the city under the monarchy of Servius Tullius in 578, the King of Rome thought to have been an Etruscan.

You may recall The Liberation of Caelius Vibenna, a wall painting in the François Tomb at Vulci from about 340 BCE, with its series of gruesome killings.

Reading from left to right are the figures of:

• Macstrna, Romanised as Mastarna, who later may have become Servius Tullius, sixth king of Rome. Here he is heroically liberating Caile Vipinas (Caelius Vibenna), a local Etruscan hero;
• the Etruscan hero Larth Ulthes (Lars Voltius) killing Laris Papathnas Velznach (Lars Papatius or Fabatius, a Volsinian);
• the Etruscan hero Rasce (Rascius) killing Pesna Arcmasnas Sveamach, who is Sovanese;
• the Etruscan hero Aule Vipinas (Aulus Vibenna, brother of Caile or Caelius) killing someone whose name is lost, but was an ally of Rome.

During the troubled years prior to Macstrna/Mastarna becoming King of Rome, some Etruscans allied themselves with Rome. The killings shown here were part of a surprise attack by loyal Etruscan warriors on those allies of Rome, which the heroes inevitably won. Servius’ time as King of Rome was far from peaceful, and ended in 535 BCE with his assassination.

The seventh and last King of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, assumed the throne in 534 BCE, and my next article will tell the stories surrounding the end of this period in the history of Rome, in 510 BCE.

Ever on the hunt for more Symbolist artists, I found a trail which led me to the magnificent paintings of the Italian artist Gaetano Previati (1852–1920), the subject of this all too short article.

My trail started by chance with Federico Faruffini (1831-1869), a brilliant painter of histories until his suicide at the age of only 38. Too few of his paintings survive as usable images to write much more about him, except that his realist style became influenced by a group known as the Scapigliatura painters.

They were part of a wider artistic movement which developed in Milan, Italy, in the mid-nineteenth century; their name scapigliatura means bohemian or unkempt. As with so many of these movements, it was dominated by writers, but drew a few visual artists, among whom was the wonderfully-named Vittore Grubicy de Dragon (1851-1920), whose portrait was painted by the Divisionist and Symbolist artist Giovanni Segantini, who I have already featured.

Grubicy was a painter who had been influenced by Anton Mauve (1838-1888), whose cousin-in-law was Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890). Again, few of Grubicy’s paintings survive as usable images, but he was most significantly an art critic and gallery owner. In addition to exhibiting Segantini’s landscape paintings, in 1891 he organised a large show of Divisionist paintings, of which the most successful was Gaetano Previati’s Maternity, one of the first Italian paintings formally recognised as being Symbolist. And who was Previati’s most influential teacher? None other than Federico Faruffini, according to Wikipedia.

There’s one slight problem with this alluring linkage of artists: Faruffini died in 1869, seven years before Previati enrolled at the Brera Academy of Fine Arts. Then I looked at Previati’s paintings…

Even though Gaetano Previati may never have been taught by Faruffini, he was an exceptional artist, and I’m delighted to say that there are sufficient of his works available as usable images for us to enjoy today. He moved to Milan to study in 1876, where he won the Canonica Prize in 1879. During the 1880s he was successful with mainly figurative paintings, including several histories. He also adopted the Italian variety of Divisionist style during this period.

Among his early paintings using literary sources is Paolo and Francesca from about 1887, which refers to the adulterous lovers made famous in Dante’s Inferno, and painted repeatedly during the nineteenth century in particular. Unlike most other artists, Previati doesn’t show the couple being buffeted by the wind in Hell, but their deathly embrace impaled by a sword.

This undated and more sketchy painting of Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple appears to predate his Divisionism. It shows the Cleansing of the Temple, in which Jesus expelled merchants and money-changers from the Temple of Jerusalem, as described in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter 21, verses 12-17.

In about 1890, Previati painted this meticulously detailed account of The Kiss between Shakespeare’s tragic lovers Romeo and Juliet. His brushstrokes in the couple’s clothes are starting to organise more visibly, as he becomes Divisionist in style, thanks to Grubicy’s influence.

Previati’s Maternity from 1890-91 appears to have established his reputation, and is also one of his first full-bore Divisionist works. His fine brushstrokes cover almost the whole image, forming the upright stalks of flowers and blades of grass, and swirling through every garment. Behind the mother feeding her baby is a bright but suffuse light which lends a heavenly appearance to this tender celebration of motherhood.

His Divisionist style progressed to the dense patterns of fine brushstrokes of this Madonna of the Lilies from 1893-94. The infant Jesus is hard to discern, though, as a result of his restricted palette.

From 1895 onwards, Previati took part in the Venice Biennale, which held solo exhibitions of his work in 1901 and 1912.

My personal favourite among the few of Previati’s paintings I have been able to find is this Dance of the Hours from 1899. It’s a marvellous and innovative approach to a long-popular theme, developed for instance in Poussin’s Dance to the Music of Time (c 1634-36). Previati shows the Horae, the hours, dancing in the air around a golden ring, with the orbs of the moon in the foreground and the sun far beyond. Every fine brushstroke is rich in meaning: in the Horae they give the sensation of movement (detail below). Elsewhere they form the third dimension, or give texture to the ether. This painting also uses a restricted palette.

Previati’s Divisionist rendering of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary from about 1901-03 uses similar techniques very successfully, as a group of winged angels raises her body to Heaven.

Day awakens Night from about 1905 is another time-related theme which had become particularly popular during the late nineteenth century.

Previati captured a profound calm in his Nocturne (Silence) which he painted in 1908.

The following year, he revisited Dante’s story of Paolo and Francesca (1909), this time showing their souls being swept up in the stormy wind of Hell. He has also started to open up his palette.

The last dated painting I have by Previati is another religious work, taken from Christ’s Passion, of The Way to Calvary (1912). Its sombre clouds are dense almost to the point of appearing solid.

In 1911, Previati’s patron, friend and dealer Vittore Grubicy de Dragon formed a society to collect and appreciate Previati’s paintings, which brought them together in three solo exhibitions. Gaetano Previati died in 1920, and Grubicy followed him two months later.

Outside of the winter, there are few times of the year when there aren’t crops for harvest. But in much of Europe and North America it’s this time, the end of the summer, that some of the most important staple crops are brought in, particularly wheat and other cereals for breadmaking. It’s this which is usually seen as the main harvest, the time when farmers and country people know whether the coming winter will be comfortable or frugal.

This weekend I’m celebrating the main cereal harvest in two groups of paintings: today’s show the harvest in general, and tomorrow’s looks at the poorest who have to glean for their grain, to avoid starvation.

One of the earliest visual encyclopaedias on the grain harvest is Pieter Bruegel the Elder’s Harvesters from 1565. The detailed activities of the harvesters in the foreground are quite plain, whether they’re cutting the corn (on the left) or enjoying a meal under the pear tree (centre and right), and the detail and narrative extends far beyond into transportation and storage.

James Ward’s paintings are now little-known, but he anticipated some of the advances made later by John Constable. Ward’s The Reapers (1800) shows the squire and his wife, who have ridden out to inspect progress with the harvest. Behind them, his landscape is far more than a mere backdrop to the figures and animals, with careful play of the light from his subtle sky, on the fields, hills, and distant village. In the foreground, note the mother handling cut sheaves as she looks at the young infant asleep opposite.

Though his early finished paintings may have lacked originality, Ward also produced some superb oil sketches, which bear comparison with those of Constable. A Harvest Scene with Workers Loading Hay on to a Farm Wagon (c 1800) was painted on a small panel, using high chroma colours, particularly in the foreground.

Samuel Palmer’s eery nocturnes include The Harvest Moon (c 1833), showing many workers in a corn field under the light of a full moon, which is seen low in the sky and to the left of centre. The workers, many or all of them women, are seen cutting the corn into stooks, some of which are piled high on a cart drawn by oxen towards buildings tucked away in a bank of trees. That bank, behind the field, opens out on the right to show a winding river. The constellation Ursa Major (the Plough) is shown low in the sky above the river on the right, its stars burning brightly.

The pre-Impressionist Charles-François Daubigny’s first real success in the Salon came in 1852, with The Harvest (1851), now in the Musée d’Orsay. His use of colour anticipated the changes to come in Impressionism, although the fine detail is more akin to Naturalism.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, with the cities growing fast and stripping the country of its younger and more productive people, rural poverty became a popular theme among painters, and social realism reached the Salon.

Jules Breton didn’t show The Burning Haystack (1856) at the Salon, but in London, after it had already been sold. It shows the frenetic but co-ordinated efforts being made by the people of the country village of Courrières to extinguish a fire which has broken out in one of the grainstacks. Each of its multitude of figures is playing their role as part of the whole, working from an unseen script.

In England, John Linnell painted The Harvest Cradle in 1859. It’s an ingenious rustic scene, in which the children of those cutting wheat are tucked up in freshly-cut stooks, just like the infant in Ward’s painting nearly sixty years earlier.

Linnell painted Wheat in about 1860 for the dealer Thomas Agnew. It was shown at the Royal Academy shortly after completion, then at the Universal Exhibition in Paris in 1867.

Léon Lhermitte’s best-known painting, The Harvesters’ Pay from 1882, is an unusual take on the harvest. Although there are a couple of cut sheaves of wheat at the lower right, it concentrates on its economic and social aspects. Four of the harvesters, bearing their heavy-duty scythes, await payment by the farmer’s factor, who holds a bag of coins for the purpose.

In the centre of the painting, one of the workers is counting out his pay in front of his wife, who is feeding a young infant at her breast. To their left, another worker just sits and stares blankly into the distance, dead-beat tired and wondering whether his pittance was worth all that effort. Life was hard.

In the summer of 1885, the Danish artist LA Ring got his brother to model for his “monument to the Danish peasant”, Harvest, which he later copied in a smaller pastel. Ole Peter Andersen is seen working on his farm near Fakse, on Sjælland (Zealand), amid seemingly endless wheatfields. He swings his scythe with arms which billow beyond normal length, his right shoulder dropped away almost to nothing.

Anna Ancher, the wife of Danish painter Michael Ancher, caught this procession of Harvesters on their way to their work in 1905, near her home in Skagen on the north tip of Jylland (Jutland).

Adrian Stokes had further to travel for this golden view of Harvest Time in Transylvania (c 1909), one of many paintings which he and his wife made of their protracted visits to Eastern Europe.

Félix Vallotton’s The Sheaves from 1915 is one of his moving and symbolic images of the Great War. It’s late summer, harvest time, and the ripe corn is being cut and stacked in sheaves. But where are those farmworkers, whose rakes rest against the sheaves, and whose lunch-basket sits on the ground ready to be eaten? Where is the wagon collecting the harvest, and why is the white gate in the distance closed?

My final painting of this small selection is perhaps its most curious. It’s one of the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup’s views of life in the remote countryside.

By local tradition, cut corn was not left to dry in low stooks, as in most of Europe and America, but built onto poles. In a series of paintings and prints, Astrup developed these Corn Stooks (1920) into ghostly armies standing on parade in the fields, the rugged hills behind only enhancing the feeling of strangeness.

In yesterday’s article, I showed a small selection of paintings of the main cereal harvest, several of which broached the subject of rural poverty. Whereas many paintings of the countryside give the impression that life there was idyllic, the reality was (and remains, in many cases) very different. This is even recorded in Old Testament times, in the story of Ruth and Boaz.

According to various sources in the Bible, Boaz was a wealthy landowner in Bethlehem. He noticed Ruth, a widow, who was in such difficult financial circumstances that she came to glean grain from his fields. Boaz invited her to eat with him and his workers, and started to deliberately leave grain for her to glean. Because they were distantly related, Ruth then asked Boaz to exercise right of kinship and marry her. They had children, and David was their great-grandson.

Gleaning is an act of sheer desperation, following the cutting and gathering of the harvest, by the painstaking task of collecting the small amounts of grain which were left by the harvesters. Its modern urban equivalent is dumpster diving (totting or skipping), only that is easier and far more productive. For the gleaner, though, it could make the difference between surviving the coming winter and dying of starvation.

For Summer, one his late masterpieces showing the four seasons, Nicolas Poussin chose the scene of Boaz discovering Ruth gleaning after the wheat had been cut in his fields. The pair are talking in the foreground, while behind them Boaz’s farmworkers are proceeding with the harvest.

The depiction of gleaning became widespread during the nineteenth century as rural deprivation worsened, and artists found a social role for their work.

In Samuel Palmer’s The Gleaning Field (c 1833), the local poor have moved in to gather any remains that they can salvage after the harvest.

Ruth and Boaz (c 1835–7) is one of George Frederic Watts’ earliest surviving paintings, which he started as he entered his training at the Royal Academy.

In 1854, Jules Breton returned to live in the village of Courrières, where he had been born, and started painting agricultural workers in the local landscape. His style changed dramatically, and the following year he enjoyed success with his first masterpiece, The Gleaners (1854), which won him a third-class medal at the 1855 Paris Salon. It shows the poor women and children out scrounging what they could from the fields after the harvest had been cut.

Overseeing this gleaning is the garde champêtre (village policeman), an older man distinguished by his official hat and armband, who was probably an army veteran. In the background, behind the grainstacks which were later to be such popular motifs for the Impressionists, is the village church tower, surrounded by its houses.

Breton had started to plan this painting soon after his return. He made a series of studies, several of which survive, for its figures, but the view appears to be faithful to reality. The figure of the young woman walking across the view from the right (in front of the garde champêtre) seems to have been modelled by the daughter of Breton’s first art teacher, whom he married in 1858. He sold this painting for the astonishing price of two thousand francs, which must have been strong endorsement of his change of genre and style.

Jean-François Millet’s hope for the Salon two years later was his substantial painting of The Gleaners (1857), which is completely different in concept. The distant wagon, grainstacks, and village may appear common elements, as are the three women bent over to glean in the foreground, but that is as far as the similarities go.

Millet’s composition is sparse, concentrating on those three figures. There are no distractions, such as the garde champêtre to add colour or humour: it’s all about poverty, and the sector of the population who just managed to survive each winter. It smacked of socialism, and unlike Breton’s painting it got the thumbs-down from both the rich and the middle classes who frequented the Salon.

Breton’s Calling in the Gleaners (also known as The Recall of the Gleaners, Artois) (1859) is one of the treasures of the Musée d’Orsay, and on its own almost justifies a visit to Paris. With the light now fading, and the first thin crescent of the waxing moon in the sky, the loose flock of weary women and children make their way back home with their hard-won wheat. At the far left, the garde champêtre calls the last in, so that he can go home for the night.

The contrast between the rich glow of the setting sun at the right and the figures is unfortunately too great for this image to capture. You really do have to see the original.

Walter Crane’s painting of Ruth and Boaz from 1863 shows them at the end of lunch, during her gleaning. Their dress is an odd composite of the Biblical and Arthurian. She’s looking down at her hands, as if contemplating grain held in her left palm. He has turned and looks towards her. In the background Boaz’s workers continue the harvest, and saddled horses are idle, a castellated house set in the crag behind them.

Although this has the look of an illustration painted in watercolour, perhaps destined for a children’s Bible, Crane apparently painted this in oils. His style lends it an air of unreality, a marked contrast to other paintings of gleaners at that time.

As with Breton and Millet before him, Lhermitte’s most enduring expression of rural poverty was in showing those too poor to afford their own grain purchases, and forced to salvage remains left in the fields after the harvest: the Gleaners, here his version of 1887.

Cowed (1887) might have been painted by Jules Breton or Jules Bastien-Lepage, perhaps, although it lacks the latter’s sense of extreme breadth of view. Superficially, it shows gleaners at work in a field after the harvest, but there’s much more to Hans Andersen Brendekilde’s story than that.

Being gleaners, the figures seen are among the poorest of the poor. The owner of the large farm in the left distance has gathered in their grain, and their harvesters have been paid off for their effort. Then out come the losers, to scavenge what they can from the barren fields.

The family group in front of us consists of three generations: mother is still bent over, hard at work gleaning her handful of corn. Her husband is taking a short break, sitting on the sack in his large blue wooden clogs. Stood looking at him is their daughter, engaged in a serious conversation with her father, as her young child plays on the ground.

The daughter is finely-dressed under her coarse gleaning apron, and wears a hat more appropriate to someone ‘in service’ as a maid, or similar, in a rich household in the nearby town. She looks anxious and flushed. She is almost certainly an unmarried mother, abandoned by her young child’s father, and it is surely she who is oppressed or ‘cowed’. Their difficult family discussion is being watched by another young woman at the far left, who might be a younger sister, perhaps.

The Impressionists seldom seem to have painted controversial social issues. One of the few exceptions to this proved a lesson for Camille Pissarro in the practicality of Divisionism. He started work on his intensely sensory and idyllic painting The Gleaners in early 1888, using a squared-up study in gouache to finalise his composition. He found the painting hard, and wrote that he needed models so that he could complete its detail.

It was finished a year later in 1889, when he set his price at a mere 800 Francs. Although it achieved that, by the time that framing and commission charges had been deducted, Pissarro received just 620 Francs from Théo van Gogh’s firm, although even he wasn’t reduced to gleaning to feed his family.

Emphasis on light and optical effects in Émile Claus’s Gleaners from about 1890 similarly played down any social message. This may have been in part a reaction against earlier Naturalism.

As Europe moved into the twentieth century, the plight of the rural poor was forgotten, and gleaning became increasingly unreal and romantic.

Shockingly, gleaners were still commonplace in the Essex grain fields at harvest time, trying to scrape enough waste grain from the ground to feed their families. In Sir George Clausen’s Gleaners Coming Home (1904), swirling brushstrokes make the gleaners’ improbably smart clothes appear to move as they walk home in the evening sunlight.

Clausen’s The Gleaners Returning (1908) is a marvellous contre-jour (into the light) view, again with swirling brushstrokes imparting movement in the women’s clothes, and no mention of their poverty.

Among the few who kept reminding the bright new century of its social woes was the ageing Naturalist painter Léon Lhermitte, whose Harvesters’ Pay (1882) had already brought insight into the condition of harvest workers.

Lhermitte’s Gleaners Near Haystacks (1912) shows a group of women gleaning, two of them almost bent double.

Even when he was well into his seventies, Lhermitte seemed able to find time and energy for just another painting of gleaners, in his Gleaning Women of 1920.

With the increasing depopulation of Europe’s rural areas, the introduction of mechanical methods of harvesting, and improving state welfare support, gleaning seems to have stopped by the middle of the twentieth century. The rural poor haven’t gone away, though, they’ve just become less visible.

Hades (Greek ᾍδης) is a name more strongly associated with the place, the Underworld for classical Greeks, than the god who ruled it, who was also known as Plouton. The Romans transferred him as the god Pluto, whose name wasn’t associated with their Underworld, which retained the name of Hades among many others such as Dis, from Dis Pater, an older god of the Underworld.

Unfortunately, the name Pluto has in more recent times been transferred to quite unrelated objects, including the fuel pipeline used by Allied forces to support their D-Day landings (‘PipeLine Under The Ocean’), a favourite Walt Disney character, and of course the planet. Clearly post-classical culture has lost the stigma of the past.

Although Hades was the oldest son of the primordial deities Kronos and Rhea, and brother to Poseidon, Zeus, Hera and Ceres, he wasn’t considered to be one of the twelve major Olympian deities. He was one of the new generation of gods who played a leading role in the defeat of the Titanomachy, leading to its replacement by Olympian deities led by his brother Zeus. For that, he was rewarded with the Underworld.

Hades or Pluto hasn’t been popular in European painting, and isn’t strongly associated with his major attribute of the three-headed guard dog of the Underworld, Cerberus.

Agostino Carracci’s portrait of Pluto from 1592 shows Cerberus alongside his master, and the god holding the key to his kingdom.

Caravaggio’s slightly later group portrait of Jupiter, Neptune and Pluto (Zeus, Poseidon, Hades) (1597-1600) is also helpful in showing their major attributes: Zeus at the top with his eagle, Poseidon lower right with a two-tined trident (a bident, perhaps?), and Hades with the black-and-white Cerberus.

The major myth in which Hades is central is his abduction of the young daughter of Demeter, Persephone or Proserpine, one of the most brutal of the many abductions and rapes catalogued by Ovid in his Metamorphoses.

Hades/Pluto is living in fear of the eruptions of Mount Etna, the active volcano on the island of Sicily. One day, Hades rides out in his chariot to check that all remains well, when Aphrodite sees him and uses her son Eros to make Hades fall in love with Persephone. Hades finds the young girl playing and picking flowers by Lake Pergus, an idyllic spot, whence he abducts her in his chariot. As they pass a pool where the nymph Cyane lives, she tries to stop them, but Hades opens up a cleft in the ground, and drives quickly through it down to his kingdom. Cyane is heartbroken, and melts away in her tears of grief.

Demeter notices that her daughter has gone missing, and starts searching the world for her. She reaches Cyane’s pool, but after her transformation that nymph is unable to tell her what happened. Guessing that her girl had been abducted, Demeter tears her hair and clothing, and harvests are destroyed as a result. The daughters of Achelous, water-nymphs who were playing with Persephone when she was abducted by Hades, are tranformed into the Sirens, half-woman and half-bird, for their inattention to her care.

At last, Arethusa tells Demeter of Hades’ abduction of her daughter. Demeter goes straight to Zeus, Persephone’s father, and pleads the case that the girl should be freed from Hades. Zeus agrees on the condition – which is set by the Fates – that Persephone has not eaten while in the Underworld. Sadly, that proves not to be the case, as she nibbled at a pomegranate.

The outcome is that Persephone must spend part of the year in the Underworld with Hades as her husband, during which time the land above undergoes barren winter. Then she returns to spend the fertile months with her mother Demeter.

This story has been popular among artists since classical times. In a small royal tomb found at Vergina in Macedonia, there is a superb wall-painting of Hades Abducting Persephone which dates from 340 BCE. The view above shows the whole of Hades’ chariot, with its horses, while the detail below shows Persephone being carried by Hades within, with sophisticated modelling of the heads and fabrics.

Niccolò dell’Abbate’s The Rape of Proserpine (c 1570) gives a fine account of Ovid’s story using multiplex narrative. Under ink-black clouds associated with Hades, the god is seen carrying Persephone up a hill. At the far right, he is about to drive his chariot into a huge cavern, which will take them down into the Underworld.

In the foreground, Cyane is by her pool, and about to literally dissolve into tears in its water. Six other nymphs, the daughters of Achelous, are also protesting at the girl’s abduction.

Rembrandt’s The Abduction of Proserpina (c 1631) is probably the earliest masterpiece to show this story, although it deviates significantly from Ovid’s version. Hades is trying to drive his chariot away, with Persephone inside it. She is putting up fierce resistance, though, and trying to fend him off.

Hanging on to the hem of Persephone’s floral dress is a woman who should perhaps be her mother Demeter, but bears the crescent moon normally associated with Artemis. Hades’ chariot is being drawn by two black horses, through an ethereal almost fluid carpet of flowers. The horses and chariot are about to disappear into a black cleft in the earth, and make their descent to the Underworld.

Peter Paul Rubens also shows a composite story, in his superb The Rape of Proserpina (1636-38). Hades’ face looks the part, his eyes bulging and staring at Athena, who is trying to stop the girl from being abducted. Below the chariot, the basketful of flowers which Persephone had been picking is scattered on the ground.

Rubens shows irresistable movement to the right, as Hades struggles to lift the girl into his chariot. Two winged Cupids are preparing to drive the black horses on, once the couple are secured inside.

Otherwise, Hades makes only occasional appearances when others visit his kingdom. Among those are Orpheus in search of his bride Eurydice.

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Orpheus in the Underworld from 1594 shows Orpheus walking and holding his lyre, to the left of centre. He is approaching Hades and Persephone, who sit at the far left as king and queen of the Underworld.

For both the Greeks and Romans, Hades/Pluto was a god to be feared, associated with their dread of the afterlife. The Romans in particular coined a great many alternative names which they used to avoid invoking the god himself.

Over the last couple of months, I have been looking at paintings dominated by the sky, and what John Constable and others called skying. This final article in the series tries to draw them all together into a history.

From the outset, I didn’t know what to expect. I was already familiar with some of the better-known chapters, including the low horizons of the Dutch Golden Age, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes’ brilliant plein air oil sketches, and John Constable’s skying on Hampstead Heath. Did those fragments fit together like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle, or remain random shards?

When early landscapes broke free from being small vignettes in figurative paintings and established themselves as motifs in their own right, the sky was important but as just a part of the whole.

I started with Giorgione’s revolutionary painting of The Tempest from just after 1500, with a sky which sets the tension in the scene. But it’s kept firmly in its place.

It seems to have been the landscape painters of the ‘low countries’, modern Belgium and the Netherlands, who first turned their attention to the sky, during the Dutch Golden Age in the late seventeenth century. They had a topographic problem, in that wherever they painted, the land is flat and can’t fill a canvas vertically.

The solution, shown here so ably by Jacob van Ruisdael, was to make portraits of towering clouds, as in his View of Haarlem with Bleaching Fields from about 1665. The distant town of Haarlem with its monumentally large church of Saint Bavo – works of man – are dwarfed by these high cumulus clouds, the works of God.

In Southern Europe, the idealised and classical landscapes of Poussin and Claude Lorrain featured many wonderful skies, but they were kept in balance and seldom became the main theme. After the Golden Age, innovative landscape painting moved south, where the climate is more reliable and conducive to painting in front of the motif. At the same time, painting materials became more portable, and oil paint was moved around in ‘bladders’, enabling outdoor oil sketching to replace studies previously made using pen and ink, or other water-based media.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, artists started to converge on Rome, where they went out into the countryside and made the first landscape oil sketches since pioneers such as Velázquez. As most were made on paper, few have survived.

In the late eighteenth century, that trickle of landscape painters grew to include the greatest of all the plein air painters, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819), who arrived in Rome in 1778. But he didn’t intend his works on paper, such as Rome: Study of Clouds (1780s), to be seen by the public, just to serve as a reference library for his finished studio paintings.

Like Valenciennes before him, the British landscape master John Constable (1776–1837) started skying to produce studies to use when composing finished paintings. He was almost certainly unaware of Valenciennes’ teaching, and appears to have evolved his skying and oil sketching independently.

Constable’s attention shifted skywards during the early 1810s, as shown in this oil sketch of Coastal Scene with Cliffs from about 1814. He adopted the low horizon of the Dutch Golden Age, and fills the paper with clouds formed from coarse brushstrokes more typical of Impressionism.

Constable’s skying was best developed when he was working on his ‘six-footers’ and living in London in the 1820s. He walked up to Hampstead Heath, with its fine views over the distant city, and made oil sketches like this Cloud Study, Sunset, painted in about 1821.

JMW Turner’s approach to skies was different again.

Inspired by his own experience of crossing Alpine passes, Turner’s sky in his radical Snow Storm: Hannibal and his Army Crossing the Alps from 1812 is among his most dramatic. He became so carried away by the towering indigo vortex of stormcloud that he almost forgot to show Hannibal’s famous elephants.

Turner may not have painted any ‘pure’ skies, and most like his Approach to Venice from 1844 were products of his studio rather than being made en plein air. Each is an integral part of a landscape view, in which there are foreground details and terrestrial objects in the middle distance. But each also features a sky which is rich in colour, full of light, and a good thirty or forty years ahead of anything else painted by a landscape artist in Europe.

Meanwhile, artists across the rest of Europe were in the throes of a revolution in landscape painting. Every aspiring landscape artist packed their brushes and easel and headed for the sunnier climes of southern Europe to paint outdoors, following the direction of Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes, whose 1800 textbook had become popular with aspiring landscape painters everywhere, except perhaps in Britain. Few of those sketches were exhibited outside the artists’ studios, though, and of those that did reach the hands of collectors, most have since disappeared.

Carl Blechen had studied in Berlin, and eventually travelled south to Italy, where he painted plein air in the Roman Campagna. His copious oil studies were in a similar style to those being painted in the early nineteenth century by others in the area, but were seen as being radically different back at the Academy.

While many headed south, a slower revolution started in the north, on the plains of the Low Countries, along the north French coast, and in the Île de France.

Eugène Boudin lived in Le Havre, on the Channel coast, and it was there in the mid-1850s that he helped Claude Monet become a landscape artist. Boudin’s skies never disappoint, and attained their zenith in his beach paintings of 1864, including his Beach at Villerville.

Mainstream French Impressionism typically featured high horizons, though. Despite its strong culture of painting in oils outdoors, and the general availability of oil paint in tubes, skying seems to have become less popular after about 1850. Skies weren’t a strong part of the mainstream Impressionist agenda, with their limited scope for intensified chroma and lightness. As a result, the most prolific of the Impressionist sky painters were those at the edge of the movement.

In May 1864, Frédéric Bazille and Claude Monet travelled to the Channel coast, Monet’s home ground, but new to Bazille, who a year later painted The Beach at Sainte-Adresse.

Many of the best Impressionist skies were painted by Alfred Sisley, who wrote that he always painted the sky first so as to set the scene and mood for the whole painting.

Eugen Bracht had a longstanding fascination with clouds, reflected in his Evening Clouds from 1911.

Those who followed the Impressionists with newer styles of painting seldom seem to have skied, but some painted the most radically innovative skies to be seen on canvas.

In the last two years of Vincent van Gogh’s life, he painted some truly unique skies, the like of which hadn’t been seen before, or since. In Road with Cypress and Star (1890), he integrates the swirling brushstrokes of the sky with those of the rest of the painting.

The sky assumed even greater importance for some painters in the middle of the twentieth century, among them the Surrealist Paul Nash, whose wartime experiences gave it a more sinister significance. It was the place of aerial warfare, and most of all the source of ‘white flowers’, parachutists, “that dreadful miracle of the sky blossoming with these floating flowers.”

Skies have come and gone in popularity, moving from background to foreground, and back again. They’ve been intimately linked with oil sketching outdoors, and skying has been an activity expected of the best landscape painters. From cumulus clouds towering over Haarlem, to storms drenching the countryside near Rome, and the colours of a calm sunset, it’s so often the sky which sets the mood of a landscape.

In the third episode, at Duessa’s suggestion, the monster Orgoglio took the Redcrosse Knight alive and threw him into the dungeon of his castle. The knight’s attendant dwarf told Una of this, so they headed off to try to rescue him. As they are tracing the way to the castle, they come across the young Prince Arthur, who promises to free the Redcrosse Knight for Una. Arthur bears a shield whose light blinds people and can turn them to stone.

Canto 8

Faire virgin, to redeeme her deare,
Brings Arthure to the fight:
Who slayes the Gyaunt, wounds the beast,
and strips Duessa quight.

When they reach Orgoglio’s castle, Arthur leaves Una outside in safety as he enters its grounds. His squire blows his magic horn to open the gates, to be greeted by the monster, with Duessa and her menacing seven-headed beast. Orgoglio swings his oak-tree club and buries it three yards [3 metres] deep in the ground with the force of its impact, but Arthur springs aside, then cuts off the monster’s left arm with his sword.

Arthur’s squire tries to block Duessa from bringing her beast into the fray, but is stopped by one of her poisonous potions, and falls under the beast’s claws. Arthur cleaves one of its heads in two, forcing the beast to withdraw. Orgoglio, now recovered from the loss of his arm, swings his club at Arthur, who takes the mighty blow on his magic shield, tearing its cover away.

As Arthur reels from that blow, the shield does its work, blinding Orgoglio and stunning Duessa’s beast. This allows the prince to chop off one of the monster’s legs, then behead him. With that, Orgoglio’s body shrivels up like an empty bladder. Arthur’s squire holds Duessa captive, and Una rushes in to thank the prince.

Arthur then enters the castle in quest of the Redcrosse Knight. Its keeper is a blind old man whose head is twisted round on his neck, who denies any knowledge of the knight. Arthur takes his rusty keys and starts searching. There are rooms full of treasure, others running with gore, until finally he reaches the dungeon and the Redcrosse Knight, who has been starved almost to the point of death.

The prince carries the knight back out to Una, and asks whether the evil Duessa should die. Una says that her deceipts should be removed, then she should be released. When Duessa is stripped, all there is left is an ugly old hag, with the filthy tail of a fox and misshapen feet, so Duessa flees to hide.

Canto 9

His loves and lignage Arthure tells:
the knights knitt friendly hands:
Sir Trevisan flies from Despeyre,
Whom Redcross knight withstands.

The Redcrosse Knight convalesces until he is strong enough to travel again. Prince Arthur reveals precious little of his past to Una, talking of being raised by an old but highly skilled knight, and tutored by the wizard Merlin. His current mission is the result of a vision of the fairest maiden, with whom he has fallen in love, the Queen of Faries. He is therefore in quest of her now.

Although Redcrosse is still weak, the time comes for Arthur to leave them. The two knights seal lifelong loyalty to one another with gifts before Arthur departs. Redcrosse receives a diamond box containing a few drops of a potion to heal all wounds.

The Redcrosse Knight and Una resume their journey slowly, and haven’t travelled far when a knight rides furiously towards them. He has no helmet, and around his neck is rope noose. His name is Trevisan, and he tells them that he had been riding with a colleague Terwin when they met a man called Despair. With his doom-laden talk, Despair had driven the two knights to suicide, Terwin to kill himself with a knife given by Despair. Trevisan was about to hang himself when he mustered the courage to flee from Despair.

The Redcrosse Knight follows Trevisan’s directions to the Cave of Despair, amidst dead trees at the foot of a cliff. On the trees swing the bodies of many who have hung themselves, and at their foot are others who flung themselves from the clifftop above. Inside, by the skeletal figure of Despair is the body of Terwin, the knife still in his breast. Redcrosse accuses Despair of his murder, but Despair argues the case for suicide and invites the knight to let death put an end to his suffering too. Little by little, Despair persuades the knight to end his life, and gives him a dagger with which to kill himself.

Una has silently entered the cave, and strikes the knife from the Redcrosse Knight’s trembling hand, appealing to his courage and honour. She then escorts him out of the cave, leaving Despair to once again unsuccessfully attempt to take his own life.

Note about Turner’s Cave of Despair:

This curious and almost unreadable painting is one of at least two made by JMW Turner of scenes from Spenser’s Faerie Queene, the other being in Turner’s Liber Studiorum, published in 1811. Long thought to show the Underworld, or an allegory of time, it was first proposed as showing the Cave of Despair by John Gage. In 1829, Turner apparently wanted to buy Benjamin West’s painting also shown above, but didn’t. Gage reads this painting as showing Una revealing Duessa as an old hag in the right foreground. The Redcrosse Knight is apparently in the centre, and above is the form of an owl. Perhaps these are easier to see in the original than in this image of it.

Principal Characters

Prince Arthur, son of Uther Pendragon, bearer of a magic shield which blinds his enemies and turns them to stone, and future king.

Despair, a hermit who lives in a cave, with the sole mission of persuading others to end their lives in suicide.

Duessa, Una’s opposite, personifying falsehood, and the symbol of the Roman Catholic Church.

Orgoglio, a giant about twenty feet (over six metres) tall, the son of Mother Earth.

Redcrosse Knight, hero of Book 1, “Holiness”, a knight on his first adventure, Saint George.

Terwin, a knight, colleague of Trevisan, who commits suicide when driven to by Despair.

Trevisan, a knight, colleague of Terwin, who almost hangs himself as a result of Despair, but flees from him at the last moment.

Una, accompanies the Redcrosse Knight, and the symbol of the ‘true’ (Protestant) Church.

References

Wikipedia on The Faerie Queene, with a partial summary
Wikipedia on Edmund Spenser

Richard Danson Brown (2019) The Art of the Faerie Queene, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 8732 5. (Note: this isn’t about visual art, but literary art and poetics.)
AC Hamilton (ed) (2007) Spenser, the Faerie Queene, 2nd edn, Routledge. ISBN 978 1 4058 3281 6. (Critical edition.)
Elizabeth Heale (1999) The Faerie Queene, A Reader’s Guide, 2nd edn, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 65468 5.
Douglas Hill (1980) Edmund Spenser, The Illustrated Faerie Queene, Newsweek Books. No ISBN.
Richard A McCabe (ed) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 1987 0967 1.

The city of Rome has a turbulent history, which was perhaps bloodiest during the reigns of its seven kings, before it became a republic. Its seventh and last king, Tarquinius Superbus, was self-made, literally taking over the throne in around 534 BCE and having his predecessor assassinated shortly afterwards. After that, his conduct remained as oppressive and autocratic until it reached a crisis in about 510 to 507 BCE, when a rape and suicide led to his downfall and the establishment of the Republic of Rome.

The story of Lucretia, who died by her own hand, is well known. Various versions, all of which date from about 500 years later, contain slightly different details, so I’ll here try to offer as much of a consensus as I can.

Lucretia, the daughter of Spurius Lucretius, the prefect of Rome and a “man of distinction”, was married to one of its consuls, Lucius Tarquinius Collatinus, who was the son of the king’s nephew. For whatever reason, Sextus Tarquinius, the son of King Lucius Tarquinius Superbus, was being entertained by Lucretia and her household, her husband being away at the siege of Ardea.

At night, Sextus entered Lucretia’s bedroom, and offered her the choice of submitting to his sexual advances and becoming his wife, or he would kill her and one of her slaves, and claim that he had caught them engaged in adulterous sex. He then raped her, and left.

The following morning she dressed in black and met with her father and witnesses, in front of whom she gave account of what had happened, and called for vengeance. While her father and the witnesses were discussing the matter, she drew a dagger and stabbed herself in the chest, dying in front of them.

Her husband returned, was distraught, and swore an oath on the dagger that he would overthrow the current king’s dynasty and end its tyranny. Those mourning Lucretia’s death swore the same oath on it, and the blood of Lucretia. Her body was then paraded in the Roman Forum, and fuelled the overthrow of the king and Rome’s early monarchy.

A story of passion, strong emotion, and gravity, this has been depicted in many paintings, with written accounts by Chaucer, Shakespeare, and many others. Benjamin Britten also wrote an opera The Rape of Lucretia, first performed in 1946.

Sandro Botticelli’s comprehensive account of The Story of Lucretia, painted in 1500-01, is not one of his well-known works, but tells the story effectively using multiplex narrative. At the left, Lucretia is raped at knifepoint by Sextus Tarquinius. She then commits suicide in shame, and anger erupts through Rome. Her body is carried from her house (right) and placed in the Forum. There, her husband and his friends swear to overthrow the king (centre), and this brings about the new constitution.

As he grew older, Veronese attained a maturity which enabled him to tackle highly emotive subjects, such as Lucretia, one of his most moving paintings.

Veronese shows Lucretia in her funereal black robes, clearly in opulent surroundings judging by the rich but sombre drapes, with the dagger held at her breast. She wears fine jewellery, as would be appropriate for a woman of her status, and her hair is elaborately decorated with pearls and stones.

Her face is cast down, as if starting the collapse after she had thrust her dagger into her chest, its expression masklike, as death starts to overwhelm her. Her left hand holds her robes up above the dagger, which is grasped in her right hand. The viscid, dark blood covering the end reveals that it has already been thrust in, and has just been withdrawn. As she now crosses the threshold of death, she will fade back into the blackness of her robes, and the oblivion beyond.

The daughter of a painter who became probably the finest of the successors to Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi was herself raped by Tassi when a pupil of his. She then had to undergo the ordeal of his trial. Never afraid to tackle such challenging and emotive subjects, she is believed to have painted several versions of Lucretia. A later painting (from c 1630-5) may have been made by her, or Massimo Stanzione, but this version is distinctively hers.

She shows Lucretia with her robes in disarray, seated, and looking up. Her face is contorted, her brow knotted, and her lips pursed. She has none of the fine jewellery which might be expected, and her black garb is replaced by fabric the same dark red as congealing blood. She brandishes the dagger in her left hand, its blade pointing up into the air, but almost concealed in the surrounding black gloom. Her right hand grasps her left breast from underneath, pushing it upwards as if to clear the way for the thrust of the blade.

It is not immediately clear whether she has already driven the dagger into her chest: I suspect not, and that she is just about to make that final voluntary effort, in a swift arc with her left hand.

Having been fortunate enough to see both the next paintings together, in the 2014 Late Rembrandt exhibition, I can guarantee that making the effort to see them both is worthwhile. They are among the most moving of Rembrandt’s works, and I think two of the most emotive paintings ever created. Although painted just two years apart, in 1664 and 1666, and apparently using the same model, they are quite different in mood and narrative content.

In the earlier painting, Lucretia is seen just about to run the dagger home into her chest. Rembrandt dresses her in fine contemporary clothes, rather than the black robes of the story, and she is richly decorated with jewellery. She is seen facing the viewer, but her head is slightly inclined to the right, and she stares emptily at her right hand. Her face shows calm resignation to her fate, with a tinge of wistful sadness.

Her arms are outstretched, to the edges of the canvas. The left hand is grubby and held open, palm towards the viewer, perhaps protesting her virtue. The right grasps the handle of a dagger, which is just being brought around in an arc to impale her chest and bring her end.

The later painting is more remarkable still: Lucretia has already pierced her chest with the blade. Her fine clothing has been pulled back to reveal her simple white shift, which has a broad streak of fresh, bright red blood running down from the point at which the dagger was inserted.

Her arms are outstretched here too, but for very different purposes. The right hand still clutches the dagger, which has dropped to waist level already. Her left hand is dragging a beaded bell-pull, presumably to summon her family to witness her final moments on earth.

It is her face, though, which makes this painting. Her eyes, moistened by welling tears, are looking away to the right of the painting, in an absent-minded stare. Her brow is tensed with subtle anxiety. She knows that she is about to die, and is preparing herself for that moment.

The next painting was a surprise discovery to me. One of the few narrative works painted by the most prominent and successful British portraitist of the late 1600s and early 1700s, it’s a far cry from his many depictions of the great and the good of the day. Painted in 1672-5, it follows from the paintings above.

Lucretia is here caught at the moment that the dagger is piercing her chest. She is not wearing the standard black robes of the story, but a plain dress which has been thrown open to bare her chest and right breast. Her head and eyes are cast up (in a posture similar to that shown by Artemisia Gentileschi), as if looking towards her destination in heaven. She appears tensed and anxious, and her mouth is part open as if she is gasping as the metal passes through the wall of her chest.

The dagger is gripped in her right hand, which is driving it into her body. Her left arm hangs by her side, inactive, and behind her is a deep red drape, reminding us of the blood which will soon run from her wound.

Among the leaders who drove out and overthrew the king were Brutus and Publicola, who with popular support instituted a republic under two consuls. However, Publicola’s hopes of being elected to the office were dashed when Lucretia’s husband, Tarquinius Collatinus, was chosen instead.

Publicola then briefly withdrew from public life, while remaining loyal to the new republic. Tarquinius Superbus sent envoys to announce his abdication from the throne, but demanding return of his riches, and to be allowed to live in exile. This sowed dissension between the consuls and among the senators, and some, the Vitelli and Aquilli families who were relatives of the consuls, conspired to kill the consuls and support the monarchy – the Tarquinian Conspiracy. Among the conspirators were two brothers of Brutus’ wife, and his two sons.

The plot was discovered, Brutus and the other consul had the conspirators executed in front of them, although Brutus is reported to have shown understandable emotion when they were killed. Once they had been executed, the headless corpses were returned to their families, which brings me to the last painting for today, Jacques-Louis David’s The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons from 1789.

David was completing this painting at the start of the French Revolution, which turned out to be an appropriate moment for its story. In the background at the left, the lictors (bearers) are bringing the two bodies in, Brutus sat in front, turned away and looking towards the viewer. To the right of centre, his wife – who has lost both her sons and two brothers – is very anxious and disturbed, holding her right hand out in a welcoming gesture, and embracing her two young daughters to her bosom. On a table covered with a blood-red cloth by her is a set of Roman scissors, as a symbol of the execution.

With little facial expression (from only Brutus’ wife and one daughter), David uses body language and composition to great effect, and is careful to hint at the corpses with subtlety rather than show then in full gore.

When it was rumoured in the press that the monarchy intended to prevent this painting from being shown in the 1789 Salon, there was uproar, and it was permitted. It was quickly seen as showing the values required of the French people in supporting the revolution, even if they had to see members of their own family die in the process.

Tarquinius Superbus hadn’t given up hope of being the king of Rome again. In the next article in this series, I’ll look at paintings of Rome at war with the Etruscan Lars Porsena, and one of its most famous legends of valour.

Reference

Wikipedia’s excellent comparative account of the text narrative.

It’s one of the most spectacular journeys in Europe, to board a train, drive a car or – if your legs are up to it – to cycle from Toulouse south into the Pyrenees mountains. Each year, it’s a stage of the Tour de France, and TV coverage of that is well worth watching. Just as comfortable from the armchair is this trip taken in paintings.

The city of Toulouse is now the centre of Europe’s aerospace industry. Built on the banks of the River Garonne, it has a long and sometimes turbulent history. It also has a long and glorious artistic tradition, including the great landscape oil sketcher, Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes (1750–1819). Sadly, his sketches seem to have been painted in the Roman Campagna rather than in south-west France. Toulouse was also the home of the Naturalist Édouard Debat-Ponsan (1847–1913), some of whose work decorates the Capitol building in the city, as do the large paintings of Henri Martin (1860–1943).

In Martin’s day, a century ago, those banks seem more peaceful than those in Paris, allowing this odd collection of figures to promenade in his 1906 painting The Banks of the Garonne, Walkers or Dreamers. The figures are, from the left:

• Gilbert Martin, eldest son of the artist,
• René Martin, the other son of the artist,
• Bellery-Desfontaine, a local decorator and painter,
• Jean-Paul Laurens, Martin’s teacher, who came from near Toulouse,
• William Viénot,
• Henri Marre, a painter,
• Marie Martin, the artist’s wife,
• René Martin a second time,
• an unknown man,
• Emilio Boggio, a Venezuelan painter,
• Jean Jaurès, a Socialist politician who was assassinated in Paris in 1914.

This painting is now in the Capitole de Toulouse, where you can see others by Martin, including what must be one of the world’s largest surviving Symbolist paintings, set in the countryside not far from that city.

Martin painted Summer, or Mowers three years earlier, in 1903. Small clusters of men are cutting the hay in this meadow with their scythes, as three young women are dancing in a ring on the bed of flowers, and another sits nursing an infant. The whole image has been built from Martin’s fine strokes of rich colour, to make the view shimmer in the late afternoon sunlight.

During the 1890s, Henri Martin had fallen in love with the countryside around Toulouse, near the small town of Cahors, where there is now a whole museum devoted to his work. When the Great War broke out in 1914, he was working in Paris, so decided to move to the small village of Labastide-du-Vert near Cahors.

In what was probably the last of Martin’s major public commissions, The Memorial (1932), he painted this triptych of a single continuous scene, showing the people of Cahors honouring those who died during the Great War.

Like many villages in this area, Labastide-du-Vert has grown around a bridge over a river, in this case the River Lot. This is Martin’s View of Labastide-du-Vert from 1910, when he was but a visitor.

In the period between the wars Martin painted many views of Labastide, including The Bridge at Labastide-du-Vert (c 1920).

Martin seems to have painted further south too, into the foothills of the Pyrenees, which is probably the setting of The Green Valley at Dawn (c 1890-1900), which is reminiscent of some of Monet’s early series paintings in its emphasis on the transient effects of light.

There are a great many unpainted landscapes as you make your way to the south and west gradually ascending into the Pyrenees.

In 1899, the Hungarian artist József Rippl-Rónai visited this region and painted this Nice Landscape in the Pyrenees, an unusual work for a member of the Nabis. Shortly afterwards, he returned to Hungary, where he became the father of modern Hungarian painting.

As the countryside rolls steadily higher, you reach spa towns such as Bagnères-de-Luchon. Although picturesque and popular for ‘cures’, few painters of international repute seem to have reached them, or committed their views to canvas. From there to the border with Spain, the land rises more violently, with rugged ridges, plunging waterfalls and serene lakes such as Lac d’Oô. Unlike the French Alps, these have only been depicted in topographic works, with a few exceptions by Gustave Doré and the animal painter Rosa Bonheur.

Rosa Bonheur seems to have visited the Pyrenees on at least two occasions. Her Spanish Muleteers Crossing the Pyrenees from 1857 incorporates one of her most spectacular landscapes, some of which were painted in collaboration with her father. Mules like these were at the time an important means of trade over the Pyrenees, via traditional routes over passes which had been used by animals and humans for millenia.

Over twenty years later, her Weaning the Calves (1879) is set in a glorious summer landscape, with a dry stone herdsman’s hut at the left. Herdsmen in those mountainous areas lived away from their families, in the mountain grazing lands, for the summer season, with their herds and flocks – the transhumance, a separation which is still remembered by the older populations there.

One of the great strengths of even early photography is its immediacy and visual reportage. Take a traditional film camera shot of any newsworthy story, and within a couple of hours you can have prints which record the event. This has become even simpler and quicker with digital photography too, with news stories such as that huge and tragic explosion in Beirut viewed across the world within minutes.

Although visual artists could never match that, there are plenty of examples of paintings being made in sufficient time of an event to count as reportage. In this article and its sequel tomorrow I look at a selection of examples, and some which might look like news but actually aren’t.

During the Dutch Golden Age, the voracious appetite of the middle and upper classes for paintings extended to those depicting large and destructive fires, known as brandjes. Quite a few landscape artists painted the occasional brandje, but it was Egbert van der Poel who probably painted more than any other artist in history. Van der Poel moved to Delft in 1650, and four years later was a victim of the massive explosion in a gunpowder store there on 12 October 1654. That killed one of his children, and he moved again to Rotterdam.

Although awesome paintings, the great majority of these brandjes were painted long after the event, and some seem to have been composites or even imaginary.

Van der Poel, at least, seems to have based at least some of his brandjes on contemporary sketches of real fires. The Fire in the Nieuwe Kerk, Amsterdam, in 1645, was clearly made in front of the motif using washes with touches of pen and brown ink. Perhaps he was the first ‘ambulance chaser’ who travelled out to sketch fires, from which he painted his famous brandjes in the studio.

Benjamin West spent much of his career in quest of the ‘modern history’ painting which came close to reportage of current events.

Of all West’s ‘modern history’ paintings, The Death of Chatham is the most contemporaneous, as he painted it immediately after the sudden collapse and later death of William Pitt the Elder, the First Earl of Chatham, in the House of Lords on 7 April 1778.

Chatham had been the political architect of the British success in the Seven Years’ War between 1757-63, which had won the British power in North America. He was a strong opponent of American independence, and when the Duke of Richmond proposed the withdrawal of British troops from America, Chatham made his way to the House of Lords to answer Richmond’s motion. Chatham appeared feeble at the start of his speech, and when he finished he collapsed, as shown in West’s painting. He did not die then, but just over a month later.

For West, an American who by this time had lived in Britain for fifteen years and received a salary from its king, this must have been an emotive subject. He manages to avoid overdramatising the moment, but in doing so understates it.

West was unfortunately upstaged by his former protegé John Singleton Copley, whose more dramatic version of this motif was painted much later, in 1779-80, and immediately became the definitive painting of the event. Indeed, some consider unjustly that this work made Copley an equal partner with West in creating the new ‘modern history’ painting.

Sometimes, artists just happen to be in the right place at the right time, as the Venetian Francesco Guardi was in 1789.

In the winter of 1789, Venice’s oil depot at San Marcuola caught fire. Although Guardi was 77 at the time, he painted the scene in his Fire in the San Marcuola Oil Depot, Venice, 28 November 1789. This is one of three versions of his painting; this is believed to be a copy made between 1789-1820, and is now in the Rijksmuseum, the others being in the Alte Pinakothek, and the Gallerie dell’Accademia.

During the Napoleonic Wars, between 1803-15, civilians living in European cities were dragged into battles as their homes came under bombardment, and buildings were set alight. One example of this is the Second Battle of Copenhagen, in which the Royal Navy attacked the Danish fleet when in Copenhagen harbour. This brought much of the city under bombardment, which caused serious fires.

The Danish painter Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg was a student in the city at the time, and painted several works in which he depicted the effects of the bombardment, including The Terrible Bombardment of Copenhagen (1807), which shows the Church of Our Lady well ablaze.

In Copenhagen, the night between 4 and 5 September 1807 seen from Christianshavn (1807), Eckersberg gives a broader impression of the effects on the port area at the height of the bombardment.

John Constable had a couple of chance encounters with newsworthy events. The first occurred when he was living in Hampstead in about 1826. He enjoyed going out to sketch in oils on Hampstead Heath, mainly skying.

It was there one evening that Constable painted this marvellous oil sketch of Fire in London, Seen from Hampstead.

But it was on 16 October 1834 that Constable had his greatest opportunity, when fire completely destroyed the Old Palace of Westminster, the seat of the English parliament at the time.

When the old Palace caught fire, most of London turned out to watch the flames. John Constable was in a cab, stuck in a jam on Westminster Bridge, where he painted this Fire Sketch (1834), showing the north end of the building ablaze. He did not, apparently, try to develop it into anything more substantial.

With Constable, his arch-rival, stuck in a cab on Westminster Bridge, JMW Turner was still on the ‘south’ bank, at the far end of that bridge. From there, or rather later, he painted one version of The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16th October, 1834 (1834-5) in oils, which is now in Philadelphia. The two prominent towers behind the fire are those of Westminster Abbey.

Turner’s other canvas shows a view from near what is now Hungerford Bridge, still on the ‘south’ bank of the Thames because of the traffic jam. At that time there was no Hungerford Bridge: the first bridge built at that point in 1845 was a suspension footbridge designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, and was replaced with a more massive structure to carry trains to Charing Cross Station, in 1864.

In this view, Westminster Bridge is silhouetted against the flames, instead of being lit by them, and the massive towers of Westminster Abbey appear ghostly in the distance. This version is also in the USA, in Cleveland.

Turner capitalised successfully on this spectacle, although these paintings were not the atmospheric sketches that they might appear. A lot of Turner’s oil paint has been applied wet on dry, showing that he must have worked on each for several weeks, at least, in the studio.

In the first of these two articles looking at paintings which were made in sufficient time of a major newsworthy event to count as reportage, I looked mainly at paintings of large fires from the Dutch Golden Age, to Constable and Turner vying for depictions of the great fire which destroyed the English seat of government on 16 October 1834.

One place to visit in Europe if you want a good view of an active volcano is the Bay of Naples, from where many have painted views of Mount Vesuvius erupting. Surprisingly few of those were completed even within the same year of the eruption, though.

One exception to this was the British landscape and marine artist Clarkson Frederick Stanfield, whose watercolour sketch of An Eruption of Mount Vesuvius 1839 must have been painted in front of the motif in early January of that year, when Vesuvius was active.

In 1859, a devastating fire struck Frederiksborg Castle, near Hillerød in the north of Sjælland (Zealand), Denmark. Set in a huge deer park, the castle was used as King Frederick VII’s residence during the 1850s. When he was resident on the night of 16 December 1859, the weather was bitterly cold. The king asked for a fire to be lit in a room; because its chimney was being repaired, this allowed the fire to spread.

It was so cold that the moat around the castle was frozen, preventing any serious attempts to control the fire, and allowing it to spread quickly to most of the buildings. Thankfully the king’s collection of more than three hundred paintings were saved.

An anonymous view of Frederiksborg Castle on Fire (1859) appears to be a quick oil sketch made at the height of the fire during that night. It was followed by several studio paintings which were much less timely.

Another well-painted newsworthy event were the floods around Paris in 1876, when the River Seine burst its banks, causing widespread flooding both in March and the following autumn.

Flood at Port-Marly (1876) is perhaps the most famous of Alfred Sisley’s paintings of the floods in March, and was among his paintings exhibited at the Second Impressionist Exhibition, held at the Galerie Durand-Ruel in Paris in April 1876. Although the sky is broken, it still looks like rain, as local residents take to their boats on what should have been dry land.

In another view of the same building from a different angle, in Boat in the Flood at Port-Marly (1876), Sisley captures the complex rhythm of the leafless pollards standing proud of the water.

War artists have specialised in reportage. Those who painted unofficial accounts of the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 did so in the following years. By the Great War of 1914-18, though, many painters captured images within hours or days of their occurrence.

François Flameng’s A Park Gate of the Château de Plessis-de-Roye (1918) shows a particularly poignant scene, set in this village in the Oise, again to the north-east of Paris. During the battle of Matz, part of the second battle of the Marne, in June and July of 1918, nearly five thousand French cavalry were killed here, and the village was razed to the ground.

Now mainly remembered for his paintings of the First World War and his teaching, Henry Tonks trained and practised as a surgeon until he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art in London in 1892. As far as I am aware, he is the only significant painter to have changed professions in this way, although many artists have started training as doctors before switching to art.

When war broke out in 1914, Tonks returned to medicine, first in England, then the following year he served as a medical orderly on the Marne, in France, where he used his pastels to paint Saline Infusion: An incident in the British Red Cross Hospital, Arc-en-Barrois, 1915.

Saline intravenous infusions were still relatively novel at that time, and war surgery was busy re-learning many of the lessons of the past. Tonks preserved the anonymity of his models although his drawing is otherwise anatomically precise – as would be expected of a former teacher of anatomy.

Towards the end of the war, Tonks travelled with John Singer Sargent, also an official war artist. When the two visited Arras in 1918, Sargent made sketches which he later used for his huge studio painting Gassed (1919). Here, Tonks’ contemporaneous sketch shows a cellar being used to receive and assess the wounded in An Underground Casualty Clearing Station, Arras.

Sometimes, you have to be very careful when reading a painting which looks like it’s immediate reportage.

On the morning of 31 August 1927, the maids working in a manorhouse close to Edvard Munch’s studio were using an electric vacuum cleaner when fire broke out in that room. The maids and occupants of the house fled. Munch and other neighbours helped the owners rescue many of their possessions. The local fire brigade attended promptly, and the fire was soon brought under control. It was claimed that Munch set his easel up during the fire, and painted The House is Burning! (1927) there and then.

After careful research, though, it turns out that Munch’s painting is almost certainly based on a photograph published in a newspaper the following day, which was carefully recomposed and augmented to heighten its drama.

I finish with two examples of paintings made by court artists, who have been officially and unofficially making visual records of figures and proceedings in courts where photography has been prohibited.

This is the image that the press wanted of someone tried for murder in 1971. Robert Clark Templeton’s Drawing for CBS Evening News of Bobby G. Seale and others (1971) shows the head and shoulders of the accused, who co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and was here on trial in New Haven, CT, for the murder of Alex Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and the case was declared a mistrial.

Another fine example of courtroom art is Elizabeth Williams’ portrait of Faisal Shahzad, The “Times Square Bomber” Sentencing, Manhattan Federal Court: October 5, 2010 (2010). Shahzad had pleaded guilty to five counts of federal terrorism-related crimes committed when he planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York, on 5 May 2010, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

War and court artists continue to use their skills to show us what is newsworthy.

There are many other primordial deities, Titans and their children who have rarely been featured in visual art. In this article, I feature three who have had their moments of fame, and are children of the Titans Iapetos and Clymene: Atlas, Prometheus, and Epimetheus. A fourth son, Menoitios, has remained in obscurity, as he was soon struck by one of Zeus’s thunderbolts and despatched to Erebus.

Atlas

Atlas has in modern times become the victim of misunderstanding: he doesn’t stand in the barren mountains named after him bearing the globe. According to classical myth, his burden is the heavens. If you think about that modern misconception, even with your disbelief well and truly suspended, he could hardly stand on the earth holding the earth on his shoulders.

Although Atlas appears in a few classical myths, he has seldom been painted, and then in association with the story of Perseus as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses, and as the sucker in the eleventh labour of Heracles (Hercules).

Once Perseus has beheaded Medusa and tucked her severed head into his rucsac (kibisis), he flies away in his magic sandals. As he flies over the desert sands of Libya, the blood still drips from Medusa’s head and falls onto that sand, where it transforms into snakes. With dusk approaching, he decides to set down in the lands of Atlas. Perseus introduces himself to Atlas, mentioning his divine paternity, and asks for rest and lodging for the night.

The seventh painting in Edward Burne-Jones’ Perseus Series, his Atlas Turned to Stone (1878), shows the aftermath of Atlas’ failure to offer hospitality: he has been turned to stone by the residual power of Medusa’s face, and now stands bearing the cosmos on his shoulders as Perseus flies off to Ethiopia for his rescue of Andromeda.

In the eleventh labour of Heracles (Hercules), the hero tricks Atlas into stealing some apples from the Garden of the Hesperides. While Atlas is busy doing that, Heracles takes on the giant’s role by holding up the heavens.

John Singer Sargent’s Atlas and the Hesperides, painted at the end of his life in about 1922-25, shows the giant still carrying the heavens on his shoulders, as seven naked Hesperides sleep on the ground around him.

Prometheus

Of the three brothers, it is Prometheus who has been most favoured by artists (and writers, composers, etc.), and is the centre of an elaborate creation myth as well as the victim of horrific punishment.

Piero di Cosimo’s The Myth of Prometheus from 1515 tells much of the classical myth using multiplex narrative, in which Prometheus appears severally in different scenes which the artist has brought together into a composite.

After the overthrow of the Titans, when Zeus and the Olympian gods are firmly in command, Prometheus presents a huge cow to be shared between the gods and humans, apparently with the intention of deceiving Zeus. He tricks Zeus into taking what appears to be a larger share of the meat, which in truth contains the animal’s bones instead.

For this, Zeus witholds fire from mankind, driving Prometheus to steal it in a burning fennel stalk, and give it to the mortals. This angers Zeus further, so he asks the Titan to mould earth together to form a maiden, whom Athena dresses with clothes and floral wreaths. This is Pandora, declared by Zeus to become an evil to all mortal men.

As punishment for his sins against Zeus, the latter has Prometheus chained to a column, and each day an eagle arrives and feeds on the Titan’s liver, which regenerates overnight. This unceasing torment is finally relieved when Heracles, with the consent of Zeus, kills the eagle. According to some later accounts, Prometheus is then released from his chains and goes on to father (by an unknown partner) Deucalion, the only male human to survive the subsequent flood.

Louis de Silvestre’s The Formation of Man by Prometheus with the Aid of Minerva from 1702 shows Prometheus, holding a torch, and Athena/Minerva, wearing her distinctive helmet, with the human formed from the earth which Prometheus had moulded. They are surrounded by allusions to other deities, including Hera’s peacocks.

This scene has become further elaborated at the hands of Jean-Simon Berthélemy in Prometheus Creating Man in the Presence of Athena from 1802, a ceiling in the Louvre which was repainted by Jean-Baptiste Mauzaisse in 1826. Father Time is at the lower right, with the Muses above him, and the Fates at the far left.

In Otto Greiner’s Prometheus from 1909, the Titan appears to have become the creator of mortal man, as he sits in the midst of a primaeval landscape.

Giuseppe Collignon painted Prometheus Steals Fire from Apollo’s Sun Chariot in 1814, as a ceiling mural in the Palazzo Pitti in Florence, Italy. Prometheus and Athena are at the left, the former holding a torch aloft, and the goddess with her helmet and spear.

By far the most popular scene involving Prometheus is his bondage and gruesome torment by the eagle eating his liver, a set-piece usually titled Prometheus Bound.

Early in his career, in about 1611-18, Peter Paul Rubens tackled this brilliantly. The offending brand still burns at the lower left corner as a cue to the Titan’s offence against Zeus.

Jacob Jordaens seems to have reworked Rubens’ composition in about 1640, including the brand, and has added visual references to the stories of Zeus choosing the bones of the cow, Prometheus fashioning the body of a maiden, and the figure of Hermes for good measure.

Thomas Cole’s romantic landscape from 1847 was perhaps inspired by later versions of the story, in which Promethus was chained to a rock pillar in the Caucasus Mountains. The eagle is seen in mid-air in the valley, starting its ascent to feed.

Gustave Moreau’s Prometheus from 1868-9 was one of two paintings which he exhibited at the Salon in 1869, and is an unusual interpretation which substitutes vultures for Hesiod’s eagle.

In Romantic literature, the story of Prometheus had been used as an analogy for that of the persecuted artist, who takes their great gift to man, only to end up being tortured horribly for doing so. Read superficially as narrative, Prometheus’s impassive face reflects his stoicism in the face of the vulture feeding from his liver. Above his head is the flame that he gave to mankind. A second, dead vulture indicates the perpetuity for which Prometheus will suffer, at least until Heracles intervenes.

Moreau’s daring depiction calls on symbols of Christ’s suffering: the appearance of Prometheus is messianic, he adopts a posture which is reminiscent of the flagellation of Christ, and above all, the flame could represent the Holy Spirit.

Epimetheus

The sequel of Pandora and her ‘box’ is told most fully in Hesiod’s Works and Days, where she is the original woman. After she was formed from earth by either Hephaestus/Vulcan or Prometheus, other gods gave her properties to determine her nature. Athena dressed her in a silvery gown, and taught her needlecraft and weaving. Aphrodite shed grace on her head, together with cruel longing and cares. Hermes gave her a shameful mind and deceitful nature, together with the power of speech, including the ability to tell lies. Other gifts were provided by Persuasion, the Charities, and the Horae.

Pandora also carried with her a large earthenware jar (pithos, in Greek) containing toil and sickness that bring death to men, diseases, and a myriad of other pains. Zeus gave her as a gift to Epimetheus, brother of Prometheus. She then opened her jar, and released its evils into the earth and sea. The only thing remaining in the jar was Hope, who stayed under its lip.

This marked the beginning of the second age of mankind, its Silver Age, in which people knew birth and death, as humans had become subject to death, and Pandora brought birth too. In other accounts, Epimetheus married Pandora, and the couple had a daughter Pyrrha, who married Deucalion with whom she survived the flood.

The now-forgotten Henry Howard painted The Opening of Pandora’s Vase in 1834. Pandora, faithfully dressed, crouches to duck the torrent of woe, evil and pain which streams from the jar, as Epimetheus tries in vain to reseal its lid.

The seventh and final king of Rome, Tarquinius Superbus, had sent envoys to announce his abdication from the throne and make unacceptable demands on the city. From this arose the Tarquinian Conspiracy, and execution of those involved in that plot. But the former king hadn’t abandoned hope of returning to the throne: he had been welcomed by the Tuscans, and they marched on Rome with their army in an attempt to restore him. This led to slaughter, and the soldiers of both sides became disheartened by their heavy losses. After hearing a god pronounce that the Romans had lost one man fewer than the Tuscans, the Romans rallied and finally defeated and captured the remaining enemy.

After this, Publicola celebrated the triumph, and became the first consul to drive into the city of Rome on a four-horse chariot.

However, he was thought by many to be living as if he were a king. When he heard of this, he razed his house to the ground overnight, making himself homeless in the process. He was then provided with a more modest house than before. In a wave of reforms, he restored the senate, provided defendants with a means of appealing to the people from the judgement of the consuls, and lifted taxes from the citizens of Rome.

Meanwhile, Tarquin had become a supporter of Lars Porsena, the most powerful leader in Italy at the time. Porsena sent a message to Rome, telling it to restore Tarquin to his throne; the city inevitably refused, so Porsena declared war against it. When the Etruscan forces attacked Rome, Publicola went out to engage Porsena’s army in battle, but was wounded and carried back into the city. Porsena’s men then reached a wooden bridge which, had they taken it, would have let them into Rome.

This was Rome’s weak point, the Sublicius bridge over the River Tiber, which guarded the eastern edge of the city. The Romans were lined up ready for battle there, so the larger army of Etruscans drew up their line of battle ready to attack. By the time that the two Roman commanders had been carried away wounded, their forces were starting to crumble. They then panicked, and headed for the bridge, where the Etruscans quickly got the better of them. It looked as if Rome was about to be seized by its enemy after only brief and feeble resistance.

This is shown well in Coldeel’s animated GIF of the battle above.

According to the legend, three Romans turned imminent defeat into success: Spurius Lartius, Titus Herminius Aquilinus, and Publius Horatius Cocles. These three formed a human barrier on the bridge, allowing the retreating Romans to pass back into the city, but blocking any progress by the Etruscans.

Following sustained attacks, Lartius and Herminius were forced to abandon their positions on the bridge, leaving its defence to Horatius alone. He instructed his fellow Romans to demolish the bridge from the Roman bank, and so prevent the enemy from using it to enter the city. While they did that, he continued to hold attacks at bay.

Francesco Pesellino’s cassone panel showing Horatius Cocles Defending the Sublician Bridge from about 1450 is a magnificent and inventive depiction, which shows Horatius mounted on a horse. As there are at least two (possibly a third) figures of Horatius on his horse, this shows multiplex narrative.

This miniature by the Master of Boccace of Munich shows Horatius Cocles Defending Rome (1542). Unfortunately it places the site of demolition on the wrong side of Horatius, between him and the enemy, which would of course have changed the story completely.

Elia Castello’s brightly coloured stucco of Horatius Cocles Defending Rome (1602), in the New Residence in Salzburg, Austria, is one of the earliest depictions which appears consistent with the Roman accounts. Even with such a narrow bridge, though, it begs the question as to how a single man could ever have fended off an entire army for the time that it took to break the bridge.

It is Charles Le Brun’s wonderful Horatius Cocles Defending the Bridge (c 1642-43) which I think first captures the story faithfully and brings it to life.

Horatius is seen putting up his spirited fight on a stone pier on the side of the bridge opposite the city, as Romans are hastily removing a wooden bridge behind him. Above and behind Horatius, Minerva, goddess of battle, grasping her characteristic staff, holds a laurel wreath over Horatius’ head. In the foreground, the god of the River Tiber lounges on the bank, pouring water from his large flagon (which never becomes empty). It can only be a matter of minutes before the bridge is adequately broken, and Horatius jumps into the Tiber below.

Once the bridge behind him had been demolished, with several significant wounds and still wearing his armour, Horatius Cocles knew it was time to get out. He jumped into the River Tiber and swam to the Roman shore, where he was welcomed as a great hero, and rewarded with the land that he was able to plough around in a day, which became the estate of the Horatius family. The Etruscans still laid siege to Rome, but on this occasion, around 509 BCE, did not occupy and sack it.

This plate from Urbino in Italy also uses multiplex narrative to tell its story of Horatius Cocles Defending the Bridge. The hero is again mounted on horseback, and its multiple images of Horatius in the Tiber seem to recognise the problems of trying to wear armour when in the water.

I have been unable to trace the original painting or drawing made by Giulio Romano from which Diana Scultori made her engraving of Horatius Cocles in about 1590. She too uses multiplex narrative, showing Horatius both on the bridge and in the Tiber. Unfortunately she also positioned the breach in the bridge between the Roman and Etruscan forces, rather than between the Roman forces – or more specifically Horatius Cocles – and the Roman shore.

This pair of paintings by an unknown follower of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, above and below, used to be in Cleveland, OH, but were sold more recently. That above has been given the title of Horatius Cocles Defending Rome Against the Etruscans and below is The Wounded Horatius Cocles Swimming the Tiber. The Sublicius bridge is made to look quite flimsy and ad hoc, and when Horatius Cocles takes to the water in his armour, he floats even higher than if he had been wearing a lifejacket.

Ever since this legend was told in the histories of early Rome, Horatius Cocles has been used as an example of the virtues of self-sacrifice; in the words of Thomas Macaulay in his Lays of Ancient Rome:
How well Horatius kept the bridge
In the brave days of old.

Even the Romans who told the story of Horatius Cocles seem to have considered it more of a legend than accurate history. There are good arguments that it was a very successful attempt to hide the shockingly poor performance of the Roman army in a tale which held self-sacrifice ‘for the benefit of the state’ as a great moral virtue. It’s also a clever explanation for the family estates.

During the siege, Rome was struck by famine. Publicola, who was by then in his third term as consul, kept order in the city throughout.

One attempt was made to kill Lars Porsena, by a Roman named Mucius, who posed as a Tuscan/Etruscan and gained entrance to Porsena’s camp. When he had killed someone who he thought might be Porsena, Mucius was arrested and taken to the king, who had just had burning coals brought to him for a sacrifice. Mucius held his right hand over the flames, unflinching while his flesh burned. This so impressed Porsena that he released Mucius, who then warned the king that there were three hundred other Romans inside his camp waiting to kill him.

For his bravery, Mucius gained the name of Scaevola, meaning left-handed.

Rubens and Anthony van Dyck worked together to paint Mucius Scaevola Before Lars Porsena before 1628. The Roman is seen holding his right hand in the flames, with the body of the dead Tuscan at his feet. Porsena, sat on his throne, is considering how to respond.

Matthias Stom’s painting of Mucius Scaevola in the Presence of Lars Porsena from about 1642 is more dramatic with its skilful use of light, with a similar composition.

Publicola realised that Porsena would be more valuable as an ally, and invited him to arbitrate in the dispute over Tarquin. This forced the former king to refuse, which displeased Porsena, who promptly ended his war against Rome.

When Publicola became consul for a fourth term, war was looming again, this time between the Sabines and Romans. He cunningly won over one of the Sabine leaders, gave him land, and a seat in the senate. Some remaining Sabines launched an attack against Rome, but Publicola counter-attacked and put them to flight. The city had once again managed to avoid occupation and sacking.

In the fourth episode, the Redcrosse Knight, still weak from his incarceration by Orgoglio, went to the Cave of Despair, where he almost ended up taking his own life, had Una not struck the knife from his hand. She then escorted him out of that cave, and helped him recover his strength, courage and honour.

Canto 10

Her faithfull knight faire Una brings
To house of Holinesse;
Where he is taught repentaunce, and
The way to hevenly blesse.

Una takes the Redcrosse Knight to an old house to recuperate; its aged mistress is Dame Celia, a godly and virtuous woman, who has three daughters Fidelia (Faith), Speranza (Hope) and Charissa (Charity). The pair are greeted by Humilitá, the family’s porter, who takes them to the steward of the household Zele [Zeal] and the lady’s squire, Reverence.

Soon afterwards they meet Celia who introduces two of her daughters. Fidelia, wearing white, bears a golden cup in which there’s a serpent coiled in wine mixed with water. In her other hand she carries a book of secret lore, sealed with blood. Speranza, in blue, holds a silver support for her to lean on as she gazes constantly to heaven. Celia’s third daughter, Charissa, is married, and has recently given birth to a son.

Celia agrees to let Una and the knight stay to rebuild his strength before he tackles the dragon. After a good night’s rest, Fidelia is the first to attend to the knight, instructing him of the discipline of holiness and of God’s grace. She tells him of her great powers, and causes Redcrosse to fill with remorse for his past sins, for which Speranza comforts him. Celia explains to Una that the knight’s sins must be cleansed, and to assist she brings physicians named Patience, Amendment, Penance with his whip Remorse, and finally Repentance. After those, he is taken to Una, who is full of joy at his recovery, so together they visit Charissa, who sits on an ivory chair surrounded by children, her breasts bared ready to feed the youngest.

A multitude of babes about her hong,
Playing their sportes, that joyd her to behold;
Whom still she fed, whiles they were weake and young,
But thrust them forth still, as they wexed old;
And on her head she wore a tyre of gold,
Adornd with gemmes and owches windrous fayre,
Whose passing price vneath was to be told;
And by her syde there sate a gentle payre
Of turtle doves, she sitting in an yvory chayre.

From Charissa, the Redcrosse Knight learns of God’s love, before he’s handed over to the care of Mercy, an old matron. She takes him along a narrow path to a hospice founded by Charissa, where seven devout men tend the poor and the sick. After resting there, the knight ascends a steep slope to a chapel, where he meets an ancient man named Contemplation, who takes the knight up a steeper climb to a mountain summit.

From that peak, Redcrosse can see a distant city formed of pearl and precious gems, which he is told is the City of God, the new Jerusalem, peopled by those whose sins have been redeemed by the Son of God. Contemplation tells the knight that this heavenly city surpasses the beauty of Cleopolis, the earthly city of the Faery Queen. He then reveals to the knight that he is descended from the Saxon kings of England, and was stolen as an infant by an elf, who took him to Faeryland, as he is to become Saint George of England.

With that, the knight parts from Contemplation and returns to Una and Celia. He quickly regains his strength, allowing Una and the Redcrosse Knight to depart from Celia’s house and resume their quest.

Canto 11

The knight with that old Dragon fights
Two days incessantly:
The third him overthrowes, and gayns
Most glorious victory.

Una and the Redcrosse Knight at last arrive in her native land, where her parents are besieged in their castle by the fearsome dragon. As they approach the castle with its lofty tower made of brass, they hear the earth-shaking roar of the dragon. As they get closer, they see that its body is as big as a hill. The dragon catches sight of the knight’s armour shimmering in the light and charges towards him. Una makes for safety as the dragon spreads its vast wings. Covered with clanking brass armourplate, it draws closer, so that the knight can see its triple rows of iron teeth and smell the sulphurous smoke emerging from its nostrils.

The knight prepares his lance and charges, but the dragon strikes with its tail, knocking him and his charger to the ground. Redcrosse remounts quickly and charges, striking the brass scales a mighty blow which only annoys the dragon further, which responds by taking to the air and snatching horse and rider in its talons. The knight fights free, forcing the dragon to drop him and his mount, and allows him to charge again and stab the dragon at the base of its left wing.

The dragon feels the pain of Redcrosse’s lance and roars mightily as black blood pours from the wound. Flames shoot from its mouth, its tail curls round and drags the horse to the ground. The knight lands heavy blows with his sword which are sufficient to stun the dragon. As it tries to withdraw, its wounded wing malfunctions, so it sears the knight with flames before knocking him over again with its tail.

The Redcrosse Knight falls helplessly into the Well of Life, where he spends the night in prayer, and arises rejuvenated just before dawn the following day. When the dragon comes to attack him, the knight cleaves through the armourplate on its head with a heavy blow from his sword. The dragon lashes its tail out with the pain of the wound to its skull, and drives its barbs clean through the knight’s shield and armour into the flesh of his shoulder. Ignoring the pain from this wound, Redcrosse slahes his blade through the tail and severs it from its body.

Amid more bellowing, fire and smoke, the dragon grasps the knight’s shield in its talons and drives him to the ground. Redcrosse strikes back with his sword, hacking off one of the dragon’s two front paws, which allows him to retrieve his shield and get back onto his feet. At that, the dragon belches fire at the knight, blowing him back against the Tree of Life, with a rich crop of rosy apples. Nearby is another heavily-laden fruit tree bearing the knowledge of good and evil. The knight falls into the stream formed by balm pouring from the Tree of Life, where he spends a second night being healed of his wounds.

The Redcrosse Knight rises before dawn on the third day of his combat with the dragon, healed and refreshed by the balm. After a moment’s hesitation, the dragon starts his attack, its mouth wide open to eat the knight whole. Redcrosse thrusts his sword up into that cavity and drives his blade deep. As he draws his sword back, the dragon’s blood gushes out. Its body collapses like a falling mountain, and it dies.

Canto 12

Fayre Una to the Redcrosse Knight
betrouthed is with joy:
Though false Duessa it to barre,
Her false sleightes doe imploy.

With the dragon dead, a fanfare blows from the castle, and Una’s parents and their court emerge to pay homage to the Redcrosse Knight. They take the couple back into the castle and prepare a feast of celebration. As they dine, the king invites the knight to remain, but Redcrosse explains that he has to return to serve the Faery Queen. The king then rewards him with betrothal to his daughter, and makes him heir to his kingdom.

As Una and the knight are bowing in gratitude, a messenger arrives warning that Redcrosse is already pledged to another, and can’t be so betrothed, according to a letter signed “Fidessa”. The court falls silent as the king asks the knight to explain.

The Redcrosse Knight explains that this woman calling herself Fidessa is in fact the sorceress Duessa, which Una confirms. The king calls his guards to arrest the messenger, who turns out to be none other than the evil magician Archimago, so is chained in the dungeon. The king wants no further delay in his daughter’s marriage, and declares that their wedding shall take place immediately, a service which he conducts forthwith.

There is then even greater celebration throughout their kingdom, allowing the couple time together in perfect bliss. At the end of that honeymoon, though, the Redcrosse Knight rides back to serve his Faery Queen, leaving Una to await his return.

That completes the story of Una and the Redcrosse Knight (alias Saint George), and is the end of the first book of The Faerie Queene.

Principal Characters

Archimago, an evil sorceror who tries to stop all knights in the service of the Faerie Queen.

Dame Celia, a pious and godly woman, who keeps an old house devoted to the service of God, and has three daughters, Fidelia (Faith), Speranza (Hope) and Charissa (Charity).

Charissa (Charity), the only married daughter of Celia.

Duessa, Una’s opposite, personifying falsehood, and the symbol of the Roman Catholic Church.

Fidelia (Faith), oldest daughter of Celia.

Orgoglio, a giant about twenty feet (over six metres) tall, the son of Mother Earth.

Redcrosse Knight, hero of Book 1, “Holiness”, a knight on his first adventure, Saint George.

Speranza (Hope), a daughter of Celia.

Una, accompanies the Redcrosse Knight, and the symbol of the ‘true’ (Protestant) Church.

References

Wikipedia on The Faerie Queene, with a partial summary
Wikipedia on Edmund Spenser

Richard Danson Brown (2019) The Art of the Faerie Queene, Manchester UP. ISBN 978 0 7190 8732 5. (Note: this isn’t about visual art, but literary art and poetics.)
AC Hamilton (ed) (2007) Spenser, the Faerie Queene, 2nd edn, Routledge. ISBN 978 1 4058 3281 6. (Critical edition.)
Elizabeth Heale (1999) The Faerie Queene, A Reader’s Guide, 2nd edn, Cambridge UP. ISBN 978 0 521 65468 5.
Douglas Hill (1980) Edmund Spenser, The Illustrated Faerie Queene, Newsweek Books. No ISBN.
Richard A McCabe (ed) (2010) The Oxford Handbook of Edmund Spenser, Oxford UP. ISBN 978 0 1987 0967 1.

It’s very unusual for a war artist to die in the conflict that they’re covering, but that’s what happened to the British artist Eric Ravilious (1903–1942): on 2 September 1942, he flew in one of three aircraft on a search and rescue mission and never returned. He was only thirty-nine.

Until relatively recently, Ravilious was almost unheard of even in the UK. His design and publishing work was once popular, but he saw himself primarily as a painter. In this and tomorrow’s articles I show a small selection of his paintings which I hope will introduce you to his quietly wonderful art.

He admitted to two major influences in his work: the slightly eery landscapes of Samuel Palmer (1805–1881), whose work was in turn influenced by William Blake, and Paul Nash (1892–1946), who taught Ravilious and has both stylistic and thematic similarity.

Samuel Palmer’s Harvest Moon (c 1833) was one of the works he painted at Shoreham, and shows a team of mainly women cutting corn by moonlight, stacking the sheaves on the wagon seen at the right. Its soft light, night sky, and rich golds and greens create a strong feeling of enchantment and eternity, feelings engendered by some of Ravilious’ paintings.

In 1924 and 1925, Paul Nash taught part-time at the Royal College of Art in London. Among his students there were Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden, who were both greatly influenced by Nash’s work. He enjoyed some commercial success in his exhibition at the Leicester Galleries in London, which generated sufficient income for the Nashes to overwinter on the Mediterranean coast of France, and visit Florence and Pisa.

Ravilious was born in Acton, London, and brought up in Eastbourne, Sussex, on the Channel coast, where his parents ran an antique shop. After studying at the local school of art, he went on to the Design School at the Royal College of Art in 1922, where he was later to be taught by Nash.

Coincidentally, when Nash was visiting Florence, Ravilious was also in Italy, in Florence, Siena and Tuscany, thanks to a travelling scholarship. Ravilious had learned wood engraving from Nash, and Woodland outside Florence (1925) is a fine example of Ravilious’ early prints. Its trees are strongly reminiscent of those seen in Renaissance paintings, including Botticelli’s Primavera from about 1482.

In 1928, Ravilious’ major work was a series of large murals, which were sadly destroyed in bombing in 1941. At some time he travelled to the Welsh border, where he painted this Wet Afternoon with View of the Church of St Mary, Capel-y-ffin, Powys (1928). This tiny village is about eight miles from Hay-on-Wye. The lone figure walking between high hedges is thought to be the artist.

In 1930, Ravilious married ‘Tirzah’ Garwood, an artist and engraver whom he had first met when he was teaching at Eastbourne College of Art in 1925. The couple moved to Hammersmith in London, where they remained until 1932.

River Thames, Chiswick Eyot (1933) shows influence in its style from Paul Nash. This is an uninhabited island in the River Thames to the west of London, seen here on a quiet winter’s day, with a single figure.

After their stint in London, Ravilious and his wife lodged with their friend Edward Bawden in Great Bardfield, in north Essex, until the Raviliouses bought their own house in Castle Hedingham, which isn’t too far away.

Two Women in a Garden (1933) shows Charlotte Bawden reading under a tree, while Tirzah Ravilious is shelling peas, in the garden of the Bawdens’ house in Great Bardfield.

In November that year, Ravilious had his first solo exhibition at the Zwemmer Gallery in London, which proved very successful with over half his watercolours sold. He had also been busy making woodcut illustrations for books and other publications. If you have ever seen Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack, the definitive annual publication on cricket, every edition since 1938 has featured his woodcut of the game in Victorian times on its front cover.

During the 1930s, he learned lithography, producing a set of lithographs of shops for a popular (and now collectable) book titled High Street, with author J M Richards. He also gained a commission from the Wedgwood pottery for ceramic designs, including coronation mugs. Some of these remained in production for twenty years.

During the 1930s, the Raviliouses started to spend time in Sussex, where they became close friends with Peggy Angus, whose house The Furlongs at Beddingham, East Sussex, became a second home. Eric Ravilious became particularly fond of painting the chalk downs there, as in his Windmill (1934). This isn’t a windmill in the classical sense, but a smaller wind-driven pump to extract water from the chalk, mainly for irrigation.

Ravilious also painted some greenhouse and garden scenes in the nearby village of Firle, including The Greenhouse: Cyclamen and Tomatoes (1935). Firle has a little-known place in gardening history, as the garden where the first greengage (a cultivar of plum) was grown outside its native Iran, in the Market Garden of Firle Place, the estate of Sir William Gage, who gave his name to the fruit.

Like some of his other mature works, this explores three-dimensional visual effects and perspective projection, making the succession of greenhouses look almost infinite.

The Vicarage, Castle Hedingham, Essex (1935) was painted back in north Essex, apparently following a light dusting of snow in the winter. The white weatherboarding on the upper storey of the building at the left is typical of the area vernacular style.

Village Street, Castle Hedingham, Essex (1936) is another view of the village, this time in wet conditions, with two cyclists and a pedestrian – a heavily-populated painting for Ravilious.

For Caravans (1936), Ravilious is back to stay with Peggy Angus in The Furlongs in Sussex, in the late autumn. These old-fashioned caravans were apparently owned by the Raviliouses, and appear to have been intended to be drawn by horses.

The Lifeboat (1938) appears to have been painted on the south coast, and shows one of the many beach-launched lifeboats operated by the Royal National Lifeboat Institution.

During the late 1930s, Ravilious took an ardent anti-fascist stance, and supported Artists Against Fascism. His friends dissuaded him from joining the army, but he remained determined to play his part, as I’ll describe in tomorrow’s concluding article.

References

Wikipedia
Artist’s website, operated by his family.

There are now several excellent books in print showing his work too.