Seen above is Lamia, the Serpent Woman by Anna Lea Merritt. Be wary of her beauty, for she means to consume you. In mythology, Lamia is a mistress of Zeus and her affair with him angered Hera so much that she transformed Lamia’s children into monstrous beings. Grief-stricken, Lamia devours any child she finds, thus becoming a monster herself. Like…
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- Books, Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Edward Robert Hughes, Evelyn De Morgan, fairy tales, Paintings, Personal, Shakespeare
Art is a Mirror
When I was fifteen years old, my father taught me how to drive. I was eager, yet scared; I couldn’t believe that I had actually passed the test to get my learner’s permit. Dad wanted to give me ample opportunity to practice before beginning Driver’s Ed at school, so we drove together often. He’d pick a destination and I would…
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Freddie Mercury and the madness of Richard Dadd
Richard Dadd is a Victorian artist that both shocks and fascinates me. He demonstrated a great talent for drawing early in life and entered the Royal Academy at age twenty. He founded The Clique with fellow artists Augustus Egg, Alfred Elmore, William Powell Frith, Henry Nelson O’Neil, John Phillip and Edward Matthew Ward. Which means that this post doesn’t technically fit…
- Alexa Wilding, Arthur Hughes, Burne-Jones, fairy tales, Femme Fatale, Georgiana Burne-Jones, Millais, myth, Nature, Ophelia, Shakespeare, Waterhouse
The lure of water-women
In Rossetti’s 1853 drawing Boatmen and Siren, one of the boatmen is captivated by the siren, but is saved from certain death by his companion. The accompanying inscription was written by Jacopo da Lentino, a Italian poet of the Rennaissance era whose work was translated by Rossetti in The Early Italian Poets: I am broken, as a ship Perishing of…
- Arthur Hughes, fairy tales, frank codogan cowper, frank dicksee, Keats, La Belle Dame sans Merci, Pre-Raphaelite Subjects and Themes
Alone and palely loitering: La Belle Dame sans Merci
La Belle Dame sans Merci translated from the French means “the beautiful lady without pity” or “the beautiful lady without mercy”. It is possible that the poem is based on the ballad of ‘True Thomas’, also known as ‘Thomas the Rhymer’, which tells how a man was enchanted by the queen of Elfland and lured to her home, where he…
