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Edward Coley Burne-Jones - Saint George 1877

art_Burne_Jones_Saint_George_1873_77

I am a huge fan of Burne-Jones. His paintings are always touching and very intimate in an almost personal way. Not many painters are able to connect to deeply by using ’simple’ topic.

On this painting Saint George doesn’t come across as the dragon kicking hero, full of testosterone and male desire to save the damsel in distress. He is rather a melancholic-charming fellow. His gaze is almost shy and he seems to feel a bit awkward as well.

I love how Burne-Jones integrated the serpent and the damsel on Saint George’s shield design. Plus the red flag from his lance representing blood or passion in a very subtle way …

orangeguru (02-10 20:42) | No Comments | Permalink
Edward Coley Burne-Jones - Love Among the Ruins

art_Edward Coley Burne-Jones - Love Among the Ruins

Click image for more drama.

Breath taking moment from a great master. Open the big image and get lost in this painting …

orangeguru (11-23 6:26) | No Comments | Permalink
Edward Coley Burne-Jones - The Arming of Perseus

art_Burne-Jones- The Arming of Perseus

Click image for a larger version.

Even Heroes need support. But not often in our lifes we receive the help of a divine intervention and extra special weapons for the task at hand.

From Wikipedia:

Perseus, or Perseos the legendary founder of Mycenae and of the Perseid dynasty there, was the first of the mythic heroes of Greek mythology whose exploits helped establish the hegemony of Zeus and the Twelve Olympians in the mainland of Greece. Perseus was the hero who killed Medusa.

After some time, Polydectes fell in love with Danae and desired to remove Perseus from the island. He thereby hatched a plot to send him away in disgrace. Polydectes announced a banquet wherein each guest would be expected to bring him a horse, that he might woo Hippodamia, “tamer of horses”. The fisherman’s protegé had no horse but promised instead to bring the head of Medusa, one of the gorgons, whose very expression turns people to stone. The Medusa was horselike in archaic representations (Kerenyi 1959:48), the terrible filly of a mare—Demeter, the Mother herself— who was in her mare nature when Poseidon assumed stallion form and covered her. The issue of her foaling were the gorgon sisters. Polydectes held Perseus to his rash promise.

For such a heroic quest, a divine helper would be necessary, and for a long time Perseus wandered aimlessly, without hope of ever finding the gorgons or of being able to accomplish his mission should he do so.

According to the iconography of the vase-painters, the gods Hermes and Athena came to his rescue. They did not know the way themselves, being of a younger generation of deities, but they knew ancient ones who would know; they led him to the Graeae, sisters of the gorgons, three perpetually old women with one eye and tooth among them. Perseus snatched the eye at the moment they were blindly passing it from one to another and would not return it until they had given him directions. He also received winged sandals, a magic wallet (kibisis), the cap of Hades that made one invisible, also known as the Cap of Darkness, an adamantine sickle such as the one that reaped the genitals of Uranus, and a mirrored shield. With all this, “Like a wild boar he entered the cave” where he came upon the sleeping gorgons. By viewing Medusa’s reflection in his shield he could safely approach and cut off her head. Seeing her own reflection in the shield, the Gorgon herself was turned to stone. The other two gorgons pursued him, but in his cap of invisibility he escaped.

orangeguru (10-23 22:27) | No Comments | Permalink



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