Curtains in Raphael’s remarkable trompe l’oeil, concealing a nude, opened by the peeping tom, revealing a lost lover, and as separator between players and spectators.
Américo
The visions of Joan of Arc painted by Jules Bastien-Lepage, the American Gari Melchers, Odilon Redon, John William Waterhouse, and others.
Added to portraits to indicate the sagacity of the subject, owls were dear to the heart and brush of Hieronymus Bosch.
Faust lusts after the young Gretchen. Mephistopheles sets up a meeting, and the girl is soon in love with Faust, ready to do anything for him. And so she does.
She has been a symbol of French nationalism, of the revanchism following the Franco-Prussian War, and then of early feminism: some wonderful paintings of Joan’s divine visions.
What do Bosch’s many owls signify? Wisdom, night, or something more sinister?
The Eclectic Light Company 