Nigel Bruce

Splendour in the Grass

The Death of Shelley

Shelley was drowned off Viareggio in 1822 when his boat went down. If I may quote an excellent article in The Guardian: "By 1889 Louis Fournier's celebrated painting "The Cremation of Shelley", showed a miraculously undamaged corpse offered up to Heaven on a martyr'

Alice's Mirrors

The Death of Tchaikovsky

Aside from the mysterious death of Jesus Christ, or Rasputin perhaps, it's hard to think of another figure whose death has been so controversial or so colorful. Whether it was an accidental death from cholera, or suicide via arsenic, theories abound. Tchaikovsky's homosexuality and his supposed

The Judgment of Paris

The Devil

The Devil only emerged as a strong character in his own right in the late medieval period - the late 1300's or early 1400's in northern Italy when he took on a garish appearance. (He has his own lineage separate from Satan; for another image here.

Poison Pen Letters

The Disappearance of Aimee Semple McPherson

It is curious to think that in 1926, only 7 months before Agatha Christie disappeared for 11 days, the famous evangelist Aimee Semple McPherson disappeared in Los Angeles for 35 days. Was it a trend? Born in Canada, McPherson based herself in Los Angeles from 1918. Her fame spread rapidly,

Poison Pen Letters

The Disappearance of Margaret Mead

American Anthropologist Margaret Mead went through a similar evolution to Christie but there’s more sex, more anthropology and less mystery. Born in 1901 she married her first husband (there were three) in 1923 after a lengthy engagement. It was all over by 1927 and the divorce was finalized in

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

The Divine Elevator

If religious architecture evokes the pathway to and from Heaven, or down to Hell, there are lots of stories and paintings about it too: Jacob's Ladder, angels visiting earth (Genesis 28), praying monks climbing a ladder toward Jesus and the light (here), distant clouds in the sky seen

Letters from Africa

The DNA Wars

The past is indeed an unknown country. A frenzy developed after 2000 in the now current vogue for DNA analysis in ancestry-tracing. It reached a low point with DNA testing of the Beta Israel and we still see articles like this: "Are Ethiopian Jews descendants of the ancient Israelites?

Alice's Mirrors

'The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife'

Sex between humans and other species obviously occurs. There’s simply too much evidence. In 2013, Scientific American stated: "DNA analyses find that early Homo sapiens mated with other human species and hint that such interbreeding played a key role in the triumph of our kind." But most

The House of Incest

The Electra Complex

According to Freud, a girl child identifies early on with the father but around age five she realizes she doesn’t have a penis, which creates a “castration complex.” So she is forced to identify herself with her mother and, symbolically speaking, attempts to seduce her father. The castration complex

Dreaming of the Virgin Mary

'The Emerald Tablet'

The Emerald Tablet (or Tabula Smaragdina) is the alchemists' Bible and, brief though it is, it is allusive and magical. No wonder it inspired medieval alchemists... I will tell you a thing that is without falsehood and most certain. That which is above is like that which is below,

Oz is China

The Empress CiXi

Empress Dowager CiXi in a photo (above) and in a painting (below) began as a concubine and rose to control the Chinese government for almost 50 years, from 1861 until her death in 1908. CiXi was popularly known as the "West Empress Dowager" (西太后) because she lived inside

The Woman in the Bower

The English Rose

The rose became the floral symbol of England with the marriage in 1236 of Henry III and Eleanor of Provence, who was associated with the Golden Rose of Provence. From this rose was derived the red rose of the House of Lancaster and the white rose of the House of

How to Look at a Naked Lady

The Erotic Art of 19th and early 20th century Vienna

Although Gustav Klimt and Egon Schiele are by the far best known Viennese painters of erotic subjects, there were many others. Peter Fendi (1796–1842) was an accomplished painter and lithographer from earlier in the 19th century, but he is much better known for his erotic art, although there is

How to Look at a Naked Lady

The Evil Eye

Is Voyeurism just the Evil Eye updated for the scientific age? Perhaps Hitchcock and Salvador Dalí thought so. They collaborated on Spellbound (1945) - below - which presages the modern age when security cameras spy on us constantly, for our own protection of course. Also see this page for that

A Tale of Two Women

The Eyes of the Virgin

Sandro Botticelli was dead by 1510, Leonardo da Vinci by 1519 and Raphael in 1520 (aged only 37). It was the end of an extraordinary era in art. But digital technology is giving us new leads in understanding the paintings of those times. Certainly it has helped with a puzzle

The Age of Consent

'The Fall of Man'

It’s called The Fall of Man, and in famous paintings it's the snake’s fault and it’s Eve’s fault: “Her rash hand in evil hour…” Has there ever been a more popular subject in art history? The painting below is by Michelangelo from the Sistine

From Russia with Love

'The Fiery Angel'

Valery Bryusov's The Fiery Angel (Russian: Огненный ангел, translated as Ognenny angel) was published as a serial through 1907 and 1908. What made it interesting for readers was the love triangle it told between three prominent Russian Symbolist writers: Bryusov himself, Nina Petrovskaya and Andrei Bely. The Symbolists

Splendour in the Grass

The Freemasons

The Freemasons of the late 18th century were inspired by Rousseau's ideas, but the reverse is hardly true. Rousseau never would have tolerated their secrecy and their rituals, let alone their emphasis on improving oneself through the study of esoteric knowledge. Nonetheless for his contemporaries, joining the Freemasons

The Woman in the Bower

'The French Chronicle of London'

In this popular tabloid an anonymous writer portrays Eleanor of Aquitaine as the complete sadist. First, she strips the poor innocent Rosamond then she roasts her between two fires. To follow, she places two toads on Rosamond’s breasts to suck away, while she bleeds her slowly to death in

Splendour in the Grass

The French Revolution

The French Revolution as viewed from Britain can be seen in the series of increasingly horrified caricatures of James Gillray, from 1789 through the arrival of Napoleon a decade later. Below is The Blood of the Murdered Crying for Vengeance from 1793, in which Gillray is reacting to the guillotining

Loki's Children

The Golem

How do we create life from inanimate matter? We can't. But, medieval Jewish alchemists and Kabbalists thought it might be possible.  The Golem has had an illustrious history ever since, well, the mid-19th century. Most of his history before that appears to be projections back in time -

Homer's Women

The Gospel of Judas

The Gospel of Judas is an account of conversations between Jesus and Judas in the last days before Jesus was crucified and it suggests they were best friends, contrary to received wisdom, and that Judas turned him in because Jesus asked him to. The idea that Jesus could have been

Alice's Mirrors

'The Great Masturbator'

The Great Masturbator (1929) below was a gift by Salvador Dalí to the Spanish State, and it must have appealed to his sense of humor that the painting would go on display in the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofia in Madrid. At bottom (no puns intended) is Dalí

The Woman in the Bower

The Griselda Story

The Patient Griselda story is the most well known example of the "wife testing" genre, where a husband wonders if his wife might be unfaithful to him and so he sets in motion a series of tests for her. The results can go both ways. Griselda first appears

Loki's Children

The Headless Horseman

The thunderous hooves of Washington Irving's Headless Horseman recalls Odin and Thor bowling with the heads of the dead as they rolled across the night sky. The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (1820) is based on a German folktale. Irving wasn't of German or Dutch descent but