Nigel Bruce

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&

Letters from Africa

Marc Chagall's Fiddlers

Black and Jewish - note the prayer shawl and the white hand in the painting above. Chagall painted several of these fiddlers and this one is from 1923-24, shortly after Chagall and his wife Bella returned to Paris from Russia. The Guggenheim prefers to call him "The Green Violinist,

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

'Mardi' as a satire of the Latter Day Saints

What to make of Herman Melville's Mardi... As one LDS scholar puts it, "That Melville could have used The Book of Mormon in writing Mardi is apparent." The island of Serenia in the novel could well be Nauvoo, or Joseph Smith’s utopian flights of fancy

The Woman in the Bower

Marie de France

We don't know much about Marie de France but we do have The Lais de Marie de France, 12 Breton lais (poems) comprising wonderful tales of adultery and romantic love, Celtic magic and the supernatural and they are available today translated in elegant prose (I have the translation

Letters from Africa

Mark Twain and George Washington Cable

Twain and Cable became friends on a promotional book tour together in November of 1884 that reached 80 cities by February of 1885 when Adventures of Huckleberry Finn was published. Twain had invited Cable, famous for Old Creole Days (1879) and The Grandissimes (1880), to join him and, for obvious

The Age of Consent

Mark Twain’s 'Bible'

“Very well, Adam and Eve now knew what evil was, and how to do it. They knew how to do various kinds of wrong things, and among them one principal one – the one God had his mind on principally. That one was, the art and mystery of sexual intercourse. To

Angel Incarnate

Marsilio Ficino and Platonic Love

In 15th century Florence, humanist philosopher Marsilio Ficino and his students revived the notion of platonic love, integrating it into Renaissance Christianity. Beauty, he believed, both physical and moral, could inspire us with a glimpse of the divine. This glimpse could be stimulated best via the Four Furies, which were

The Judgment of Paris

Martin Luther as Faust

The real Faust figure was Martin Luther, who died in 1546, a few years after the necromancer Georg Faust. Both are associated with Wittenberg. Luther was Goethe’s intellectual ancestor, upending the northern European world forever by defying the Devil (the Pope in Rome) just as Faust does. He successfully

Immortal Beloved

Martonvásár

The Brunsvik family had two mansions that Beethoven visited frequently and they are tourist attractions these days. Above and below are photos of the Martonvásár mansion in Hungary. It is where he composed Für Elise, which was not published during his lifetime. The Martonvásár mansion (or Brunsvik Castle) is a

Sacred Prostitute

Mary Magdalene in the History of Art

Mary Magdalene has been one of the most popular subjects for painters and sculptors, and their works reflect the tastes and predilections of their time and place. First is an example of Mary the penitent or hermit: Donatello's extraordinary anguished figure of 1453-55 (above), where Mary resembles Christ.

Life as Opera

Mata Hari as Manon Lascaut?

The composers Massenet and Puccini saw Mata Hari perform in Massenet’s opera Le Roi de Lahore in Monte Carlo in 1906 and they were immediately taken with her. Was she their Manon Lescaut of earlier times? She was certainly an effective Salomé, capitalizing on the scandal and success of

Life as Opera

Mata Hari's Execution at Vincennes

This was once thought of as a photo of the execution, but it is now said to be a film reconstruction in 1920. They seem to have captured the horror of the moment. She was executed by firing squad on 15 October 1917 at the age of 41. The location

Life as Opera

Max Ophuls

Lola Montès was Max Ophuls' last film (in 1955) and though some critics love it, I don't think it compares well with his earlier masterpieces, Letter from an Unknown Woman (1948) and La Ronde (1950). The biggest problem is that there is no sense of the erotic

Life as Opera

'Mazeppa'

Wild and wonderful women... Mazeppa began its career as an epic poem by Byron in 1819, based on existing legends, the story of a page caught in an affair with a married woman from a higher class. When the affair is discovered, the outraged husband has him tied to the

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Medieval Timeline

* 1095 Pope Urban II preaches the First Crusade at the Council of Clermont (the massacre of Jews in Mainz and other cities follows...) * 1099 Capture of Jerusalem and massacre of its Muslim inhabitants * 1140-44 St. Denis Cathedral * 1147 Second Crusade begins (till 1149) * 1153 Death of St. Bernard of Clairvaux

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Mormon / Melville - Timeline

* 1805 Birth of Joseph Smith * 1809 Birth of Abraham Lincoln * 1814 The Golden Pot. A Modern Fairytale by E.T.A. Hoffmann published * 1819 Birth of Herman Melville * 1820 Joseph Smith’s first vision; further visions through the 1820s * 1823 Ethan Smith’s View of the Hebrews published, reflecting widely

Life as Opera

Mérimée's 'Carmen'

Bizet's Carmen is based on Prosper Mérimée's novella of 1845. So what is the novella based on, other than Cervantes' influential and wonderful La Gitanilla (1613), which breaks down cross-cultural stereotypes and actually has a happy ending! Mérimée chose to go the other path. He

Angel Incarnate

Michelangelo and Platonic Love

Passion will not be denied. For Michelangelo the "fire that burned" got the better of him throughout his life and people noticed. It was key to his passion and his fire, which is why his writing is all about suffering and struggle and martyrdom: "I live to

Angel Incarnate

Michelangelo vs Leonardo

Michelangelo and the older Leonardo did not like each other. There was a famous encounter in Florence in 1503 when Leonardo voted for Michelangelo's statue David to be placed inside, instead of outside, and this reportedly enraged Michelangelo. The statue did go on display outside in 1504 replete

Loki's Children

'Midvinterblot'

Sweden’s most famous painting, Carl Larsson’s Midvinterblot (1915), created controversy by celebrating the sacrifice of a pagan Swedish king who died to save his people – an explicit act of seiðr. Its power, of course, was that it reminded everyone that Christ’s death was a sacrifice, echoing the