Nigel Bruce

How to Look at a Naked Lady

Lady Godiva

This bronze statue by Sir William Reid Dick, installed in 1949, is the main Lady Godiva shrine in downtown Coventry. Technically, it's name is Self Sacrifice. The pastoral setting in the photo above is now long gone. These days the square is paved over (boring in my opinion)

Alice's Mirrors

Lavinia Fontana

Based in Bologna, Lavinia Fontana specialized in portraits of wealthy families and she made a good living from it. But it is the painting below that fascinates the most... It is titled Portrait of a Girl Covered in Hair or Portrait of Antonietta Gonsalvus (1594-1595). Antonietta Gonzalez, the subject of

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Lehi's Dream

Lehi's Dream of the Tree of Life is one of the most beloved and interesting passages in The Book of Mormon, where it can be found in The First Book of Nephi, Chapter 8. The Tree of Life of course appears in Genesis 2-3 in the middle of

Angel Incarnate

Leonardo and The Deluge

In Leonardo's later drawings (around 1515-1517) there are fascinating images like the one below that show the Deluge sweeping down upon a town. I wouldn't be the first to say they foreshadow modern Abstract Expressionism. Water is the key destructive force in these drawings, cloudbursts and

Angel Incarnate

Leonardo's drawings of human anatomy

Leonardo's frank drawings of female and male anatomy resemble his botanical drawings, for he was fascinated by the mirror patterns of the universe. But... The art of procreation and the members employed therein are so repulsive, that if it were not for the beauty of the faces and

Angel Incarnate

Leonardo's 'Saint John the Baptist'

Leonardo's painting St. John the Baptist, which may have been his last, is now in the Louvre. It is a small painting that has divided art critics. Martin Kemp chose it as the cover image of his biography and he calls it "androgynously seductive," which I

Poison Pen Letters

'Letter from an Unknown Woman'

After the film ends, there will be a duel, and both the main characters will be dead. But we don't see the duel. The film's fatalism reminds me of the enigmatic painting The Duel After the Masquerade by Jean-Léon Gérôme (1857-59), shown above, one of several

Women in Trousers

Letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West

Below is the cover of a book of letters between Virginia Woolf and Vita Sackville-West. Woolf was 10 years older than Sackville-West. I find this book cover worth posting because the publishers evidently decided that Sackville-West would get front billing on the cover, with the coy hand pointing at Woolf,

Poison Pen Letters

'Letters to an Unknown Woman'

Some writers permit publication of their private letters only after their own death, sensitive perhaps to public scandal. Prosper Mérimée’s “Lettres à une inconnue” was published in 1874, four years after his death. It reveals he had a lifelong correspondence with a much younger woman, who turned out to

Life as Opera

Life as Opera - Timeline

* 1813 Richard Wagner born in Leipzig * 1821 Lola Montez born Eliza Rosanna Gilbert in Ireland * 1824 La Mogador born as Céleste Vénard in Paris * 1825 Prosper Mérimée’s Clara Gazul published * 1830 Mérimée hears Carmen story * 1833 George Sand/Mérimée fiasco * 1838 Georges Bizet born in Paris * 1842 Rienzi launches

The Age of Consent

Lilith

Lilith the child-stealer is a mysterious figure. She appears only once in the Bible, in Isaiah 34:14, as a kind of screech owl demon in the desolation of Edom (the Jewish prophets repeatedly called for the destruction of Edom by God, because Edom had sided with its enemies). She

Women in Trousers

Lola Montez and Carmen in the Family?

Vita Sackville-West’s grandmother was known as Pepita, a Spanish dancer who took up with Lord Sackville-West, and they had five children together, before Pepita died in 1871. Their youngest child, Victoria, became Vita’s mother. Pepita had appeared on stage as “The Star of Andalusia” and it was good

Life as Opera

Lola Montez in 1847

There appear to be two versions of this painting around - presumably both by Joseph Stieler and commissioned by King Ludwig I. The one above (which I have cropped) is in the Schönheitengalerie (Gallery of Beauties), a collection of portraits in Schloss Nymphenburg in Munich. The one below, however, apparently

Life as Opera

Lola Montez the Pomegranate

As one ardent fan wrote, “Lola Montez was an enchantress. There was about her something provoking and voluptuous which drew you. Her skin was white, her wavy hair like tendrils of the woodbine, her eyes tameless and wild, her mouth like a budding pomegranate. Add to that a dashing figure,

From Russia with Love

London Floods

"I always enjoy London in the rain. Don't see why Russians hate the climate here. Like Russia is any better?" The man turned to the woman next to him. "They were Russian Mafia, you know. I'd rather go with that guy who did

Alice's Mirrors

Lorelei

The famous German legend of the Lorelei (or Lorelay) is really not that interesting. Neither as a sexual fable nor as a tourist destination. It's just a rock (above). What is interesting is why these pilgrimage sites lure us there at all. But, with magical and sacred places,

Angel Incarnate

Lot's Wife

Sodom and Gomorrah - a fable for the ages Apocalyptic stories flourish when times are bad. In the 1490's, following plagues and wars, many believed the end of the world was nigh as the year 1500 approached. Preachers attributed it to society's depravity - sodomy alone

Angel Incarnate

Lucia Brocadelli of Narni

In 15th century Florence, Girolamo Savonarola, the firebrand Dominican friar (I can't type that without seeing the puns) was highly critical of women mystics, damning their "diabolical" illusions. His defenders argued then, as now, that this was done not just to protect himself against his enemies,

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Lucian of Samosata

If Herman Melville had a patron saint it was this man, who lived from circa 125 AD – 180 AD), a "vile Atheist" whom Melville liked because they both enjoyed satirizing "tall tales." Melville is not given enough credit as a satirist; of course not many got

The Judgment of Paris

Places associated with Madame de Maintenon

Born Françoise d'Aubigné in 1635, she was known after her first marriage as Madame Scarron and later as Madame de Maintenon, a title she earned from Louis XIV. She took the name after the estate she bought in 1674, shown below. It is outside Paris, on the way

Kama Sutra

Mandala

Mount Meru is the mythic five-peaked mountain at the center of the universe in Hindu, Buddhist and Jain religions. It is represented here as a mandala (a "circle") and as a yantra (a symbol for meditation). What is interesting about this is that it reverses the traditional Sri

Splendour in the Grass

Byron's 'Manfred', John Martin and Romanticism

Romanticism in English art began, many argue, with the painting below, where a Byronic hero is dwarfed by an overwhelming landscape. This is Sadak in Search of the Waters of Oblivion, an oil painting by John Martin from 1812. The splendid nonsense of the painting's title and the

Spinster

'Mansfield Park'

This is actually my favorite Austen novel. In her earlier writing, she continually emphasizes the need for Love, but by Mansfield Park she is more cynical about Love’s chances: “I pay very little regard,” says Mrs. Grant, “to what any young person says on the subject of marriage. If

Precious Bodily Fluids

Mantua

If Romeo and Juliet were staged in Mantua... Romeo and Juliet is set in Verona, as everybody knows. But what if it were set in Mantua (Mantova)? They are connected already: it is to Mantua that Romeo is banished for killing Tybalt. It turns on the manner of Tybalt'

Spinster

Harris Bigg-Wither and Manydown

Harris Bigg-Wither (21 years old at the time) proposed to Jane (who was almost 27). She accepted and changed her mind by the morning. Did this play a role in her plotting for Pride and Prejudice, Mansfield Park and Emma? Steventon was two and a half miles from the Bigg-Withers&