Nigel Bruce

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 and rape

Why is rape ever a subject of art? Does "abduction" of women in ancient Greek myths make it any better? What was Peter Paul Rubens thinking here with Castor and Pollux Abduct the Daughters of Leukyppos, alternatively known as The Rape of the Daughters of Leucippus (1617-1618), shown

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): a new Virgin Mary for the Counter-Reformation era. She is accompanied by the warrior Archangel Saint Michael, along with two other warrior women, and God is at the top. She is a Virgo Bellatrix who doesn't need

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

Saint Catherine is the original patron saint of philosophers and students, anorexics and bulimics, who still struggle with that wheel. She developed a popular following during the Crusades, prior to her encounter with Joan of Arc and she merits a revival today. However, many paintings and altarpieces of Saint Catherine

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

This small town on the Camargue coast of southern France has an official population of less than 3,000 people for much of the year, but it swells to almost 80,000 in May and through the summer holidays. The Gypsy (Romani) tradition is important here: if the Romani first

Sacred Prostitute

Salome and Judith - and David

Above is a painting of Salome holding the severed head of John the Baptist, by Titian early in his career, around 1515. Or at least that is the popular view. She appears in a sensual madonna-like pose. An alternative view argues that it is in fact Judith with the Head

Sacred Prostitute

Caravaggio and decapitation

Caravaggio's Salome with the Head of St. John the Baptist was painted at the end of his career, around 1610 and there is a similar one in Madrid. He had explored much the same idea in many of his earlier paintings like Judith Beheading Holofernes (the sad fate

Life as Opera

Salome in modern paintings

Early Christian accounts of Salome do not feature any erotic dances, but by medieval times she has most of her clothes off and she is a dangerous temptress. That reputation stayed with her through the centuries, and it's fair to say she was always very popular. Gustave Flaubert,

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

Salvador Dalí and Hitchcock's 'Spellbound'

Dalí was surely the greatest painter of dreams. The image below was one of his studies for Hitchcock's Spellbound in 1944. Is blue the color of dreams? To see how it was used in the film, click here and look at the back of the image. Up top

Angel Incarnate

'Salvator Mundi'

This small painting has been the subject of much debate: is it by Leonardo or not? It was restored and revealed in 2011 and it has many of his trademarks - the focusing gaze directly back at the painter and the viewer, the soft and gentle hues of the face,