Nigel Bruce

A Tale of Two Women

Quetzalcoatl

Quetzalcoatl, the "feathered serpent" - deity of the Toltecs, Aztecs and Mayans - was said, in one of the local legends, to have been driven into exile by his people. But, he promised to return. This legend was capitalized upon by the Spanish conquistadors and priests who elevated

Loki's Children

Ragnarök

Ragnarök is Revelation and Genesis. Both have a god of thunder and a giant dragon who opposes him, but Revelation suffers from a mix of numerology and astrology and it has nothing to do with science. It’s very personal, subjective, the view of one man. That said, I'

Angel Incarnate

The Renaissance in Florence

There are surprisingly few good paintings of old Florence but Fabio Borbottoni (1820-1901), produced the best of them. He was an accountant for a railway company and he painted Florence in his spare time as the old city was remodeled around him. His Romantic paintings are really set hundreds of

From Russia with Love

Repin's 'Easter Procession in the Region of Kursk'

Did you start here? This painting from 1880-83 by Ilya Yefimovich Repin represents the agnostic option. Agnostics generally enjoy the grand sweep of history, even when it has a religious aspect. Agnostics are more likely to become absorbed by the detail in this picture, in the lives of other people,

Life as Opera

Wahnfried

Richard and Cosima Wagner made their home at Wahnfried in Bayreuth, shown above, which was largely funded by Ludwig II, and they are both buried there. There is a statue of Ludwig too (below). The name literally means "where my delusions, madness (wahn) have found peace, freedom (fried)."

Kama Sutra

Richard Gere Kisses Shilpa Shetty

In 2023, an Indian court finally cleared Richard Gere on obscenity charges 16 years after the infamous Shilpa Shetty kisses shown above. In 2007, Shetty and Gere attended an AIDS awareness event in Mumbai, where Gere kissed Shetty's cheek several times. Radical Hindus were infuriated, because kissing in

Precious Bodily Fluids

'Rigoletto'

The story of Verdi's Rigoletto (1851) is loosely based on Victor Hugo's play Le roi s'amuse ("The King Amuses Himself"). Hugo's play was written in 1832, but banned after one performance since it went out of its way to insult

From Russia with Love

Roerich's 'Guests from Overseas'

Did you start here? Because this is the cynical option – are they Viking invaders or are they guests? How do you feel about immigration? Or maybe these are Russians arriving in London? Cynicism is governed by self-interest and none of the other paintings has a sense of humor. There are

Voices and Saints

Nicholas Roerich's 'Joan of Arc'

Nicholas Roerich's Joan of Arc triptych, shown below, is from 1931. Joan and the French armies are on the right, the English enemies on the left and the Virgin Mother and Christ mediating in the middle. Above is a detail showing Joan burning at the stake. Roerich (1874-1947)

The Woman in the Bower

'Roman de la Rose'

In the century that followed Henry and Eleanor, the rose garden metaphors associated with Fair Rosamond and courtly love were adapted by the most famous of French medieval poems, Roman de la Rose. In this allegorical dream-poem, the lover tells of his quest for the rose (his love) inside the

The Woman in the Bower

Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 'Rosamond'

This is Rossetti's pre-Raphaelite Rosamond (1861), hiding out in the royal manor of Woodstock. Note the red silk cord in her hand, by which she would know if Henry was on his way. The model here is Fanny Cornforth, whom Rossetti often used. She became his housekeeper after

Women in Trousers

Rousseau and Fables

The patron saint of Sexual Fables is Jean-Jacques Rousseau (leavened with a little Cervantes and a little Montaigne). In Confessions (which are not really confessions), Rousseau wrote that fables "wrap useful truths in sensible and agreeable forms." By this he meant that sometimes naked truths are difficult or

Splendour in the Grass

Rousseau's 'Émile, or On Education and Illegitimacy'

The revolutionary impact of Rousseau's Émile, or On Education (1762) lay in the implication that if we are all born equal ("In the natural order men are all equal"), then there is no inherent difference between a child born illegitimate and a child of wealthy, even

The Age of Consent

Rubens' 'Castor and Pollux'

Peter Paul Rubens' Castor and Pollux Abduct the Daughters of Leukyppos, alternatively known as The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1617-1618). Virtually no art critics (feminists aside) are willing to address the 17th century context here of sexual violence - the abduction and rape of women by men.

Homer's Women

Nausicaa in paintings

Pieter Lastman's Odysseus and Nausicaa (1619) is not quite how I imagined her. This is by French caricaturist and painter Jean Veber: Ulysses and Nausicaa (1888). Valentin Serov's version (1910) reminds me of a Fellini movie... Finally, this is French painter Lucien Simon's Nausicaa

The Judgment of Paris

Goethe and 'The Rape of Ganymede'

It is difficult to miss the homosexual theme in the painting below, The Rape of Ganymede by Rubens (1611), where the eagle is Zeus, but most major painters and writers treated the theme at some point in their career. So what, then, was on Goethe's mind when he

A Tale of Two Women

Rubens' 'The Virgin as the Woman of the Apocalypse'

Rubens' The Virgin as the Woman of the Apocalypse (1623-24): notice the moon on which she stands and the blue shroud. She is accompanied by the warrior Archangel Saint Michael on the left and God at the top and of course she has already delivered the child. The lines

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Sacred Geometry

Sacred Geometry is the notion that the divine can be found in art, music, landscapes, pretty much anything. In architecture and astronomy the metaphors are usually horizontal or numerical in nature, often reflecting the idea that the earth below could reflect the heavens above: pagan circles (the Sun and Moon)

Kama Sutra

'Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam'

Sahib Bibi aur Ghulam is set in Calcutta (now Kolkata) and it is Bollywood's Citizen Kane. It traces a historical arc, from the turn of the 20th century, when the British Raj was at its tipping point, through 1962 when the film came out, when India was suffering

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

'Sailing to Byzantium'

Arguably the most brilliant poem ever written about aging, W.B. Yeats' Sailing to Byzantium (written 1926-27) is about sailing off into eternity. Yeats died in 1939. I deliberately chose the image below not from Byzantium itself, because Byzantium is a state of mind. To attempt to identify its

Voices and Saints

Saint Catherine of Alexandria

Many paintings and altarpieces of Saint Catherine are particularly brutal. The Martyrdom of Saint Catherine of Alexandria (below), painted by Lucas Cranach the Elder around 1506, is from the beginning of his career. Catharine was said to have converted 50 scholars to Christianity and, for this, she was sentenced to

Voices and Saints

Saint Margaret of Antioch

I have included a selection of paintings of St. Margaret and in none of them does she have a hair out of place, let alone blood on her dress. Below is Raphael's version from around 1518. Supposedly she has just survived being eaten alive by Satan in the

Voices and Saints

Saint-Denis

Saint-Denis on Notre Dame holding his head... This image is circa 1475-1500 by miniature painter Jean Bourdichon.

Sacred Prostitute

Sainte-Baume

The sacred grotto of Sainte-Baume (Grotte Sanctuaire de la Sainte-Baume) is at the foot of a massif a little southeast of the small town of Plan-d'Aups-Sainte-Baume and it's not easy to visit. The grotto or cave is a 45-minute drive southwest of the town of St.

Sacred Prostitute

Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer

The town has an official population of less than 3,000 people for much of the year but when it swells to almost 80,000 in May and through the summer holidays, it can become a tourist trap. The Gypsy (Romani) tradition is the most interesting and the most controversial: