The horrific story of a count locked away to starve to death, who turned to cannibalism. How that came to be used falsely in Lavater’s physiognomy.
narrative
Popularly intended to transform base metals like lead into gold, alchemy relied on special glassware like alembics, and is included with other ‘dark arts’ in paintings.
Fraudsters, the incestuous Myrrha, mother of Adonis, a counterfeiter, Potiphar’s wife, then the treacherous who betrayed their kin.
Drawing the chariot of Bacchus/Dionysus, fighting with Christian martyrs, in a Paris zoo, or torrential rain in a tropical storm, or being hunted to be turned into a skin.
First a centaur killed by Hercules, then souls being tormented by reptiles, those with fraudulent lives burning in hell, and dismembered parts of those who inflamed dissent.
Lycaon transformed into a wolf, the origin of later werewolves, the she-wolf who fed Romulus and Remus, a shepherd defending his flock, the wolf of Agubbio, the fable of the wolf and the lamb, and others.
Barrators, who traded in public office and bribed courts, hypocrites whose clothes are weighted with lead, and thieves who are stuck in a pit of snakes.
The star of Bethlehem from Giotto to Blake, a solar eclipse seen in Spain in 1905, Donati’s comet, and two impossible events with the sun and moon together in the sky.
Visiting the ‘rottenpockets’ full of tormented souls guilty of pimping, seduction, flattery, selling church privileges, nepotism, fortune-telling, and corruption in public office.
Gravediggers, Christ as a gardener, itinerant foresters, road workers, snow-clearers, a vegetable gardener plagued by moles, and sandcastles on the beach.
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