In chiaroscuro, for enlightenment, at the centre of family and friends at dinner, and in special safety lamps carried underground by coal miners.
narrative
the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness.
Cursed to be confined to weaving images on her loom and forbidden from looking directly at the outside world, she breaks that to look at Sir Lancelot.
Shackles of the night, in a well, as a rope ladder how Romeo meets Juliet, trussing up a robber, or hanging John Brown, the abolitionist.
How ropes form a thread running through these four paintings of the Passion and Crucifixion Tintoretto painted.
She fell in love with Sir Lancelot, nursed him back to health after he was badly wounded, but he refused to marry her, or even take her as his lover.
In 1876, Moreau recast Salome as the author of John the Baptist’s execution, amplified by Oscar Wilde, Richard Strauss, and the Dance of the Seven Veils.
The original Biblical account of the martyrdom of John the Baptist says that Herod’s wife Herodias ordered it in revenge, as seen in these paintings.
Waiting the knight’s end, watching a sorceress, flying over a wheat field, or in front of a sleigh. Wherever they go they seem sinister.
Companions to valkyries, accompanying the Wild Hunt, at the Crucifixion and executions, or the first sign of Spring?
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