February | 2019 | Lions and Lilies

By Cathy T

Since 2013 Lions and Lilies have put together an advent calendar to post daily onto our Facebook page in the days leading up to Christmas. It usually reflects some facet of our books or medieval life in general, and this year we presented the popular ‘Elf on the Shelf’ to represent Christmas and posed them to imitate famous medieval paintings.

The process was more time-consuming than usual, but the results were a lot of fun! Mind you, it was not easy getting these elves to sit in a particular way or hold a weapon or musical instrument of some kind, or indeed, even getting them to stand was a challenge! So, with this in mind, please enjoy the following paintings and in some cases, the story behind the picture, or some facts on the artists. As always with our advent calendars, we take 12 pictures each, in this case all photos with odd numbers were taken by Cathy A, and the photos with even numbers were by me, Cathy T. So, please excuse where my lady looks a little ‘chubby’ – it’s not that she found the box of chocolates in my fridge, it was more what was under her gown to assist her to stand!

As February is the month that celebrates St Valentine’s Day – the month for lovers, it seemed the perfect time to post this.

1. Abelard and Heloise

As is tradition for Lions and Lilies, today is the first day of our Advent Calendar. We wanted to do something a little different (and fun) this year, so enlisted the help of some very naughty elves who will be recreating some of our favourite ‘medieval’ images. The original work is by Edmund Blair Leighton, titled ‘Abelard and his pupil, Heloise’.

Please note in this shot, the wind just happened to blow the candle flame in the correct direction!

2. The Lady of Shalott – John William Waterhouse

Artwork by John William Waterhouse based on the poem by Lord Alfred Tennyson.

The Lady of Shalott is a lyrical ballad based upon a 13thC Italian novel that recounts the Arthurian legend of Elaine of Astolat.

Tennyson wrote two versions of his poem, one in 1833 with 20 stanza and the second in 1842,with only 19 stanzas. The ending to the poem was changed to cater to the Victorian morals, the first version having included a parchment written by the lady, herself, in what was regarded as a suicide note.

For any reading this not familiar with the poem, the story is as follows:

Trapped in a tower by the threat of a curse, Elaine can only view the outside world through a mirror. She is forbidden to ever look upon Camelot and spends her days endlessly weaving all that she sees in the mirror until one day, it’s a knight called Lancelot. Drawn by his handsome looks, he is like a shining star and she forgets herself and watches him ride down to Camelot. The mirror cracks, and knowing the curse has come upon her now, she leaves her tower-prison and takes a boat upon the river but alas, her hopes of seeing Lancelot again are not to be. By the time she arrives at Camelot, she is dead.

Here are the two different endings:-

1833

They crossed themselves, their stars they blest,
Knight, minstrel, abbot, squire and guest.
There lay a parchment on her breast,
That puzzled more than all the rest,
The well-fed wits at Camelot.
“The web was woven curiously
The charm is broken utterly,
Draw near and fear not – this is I,
The Lady of Shalott.

1842

Who is this? and what is here?
And in the lighted palace near
Died the sound of royal cheer;
And they cross’d themselves for fear,
All the knights at Camelot:
But Lancelot mused a little space;
He said, “She has a lovely face;
God in his mercy lend her grace,
The Lady of Shalott.”

A wonderful visual representation – To celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of Alfred, Lord Tennyson (1809-1892), Lincoln based WAG Screen made a film based on Tennyson’s poem, The Lady of Shalott. (Sung by Loreena McKennitt.)

The Lady of Shalott by WAG Screen

3. La Belle Dame Sans Merci

O what can ail thee, knight-at-arms,
Alone and palely loitering?
The sedge has withered from the lake,
And no birds sing!

Original ‘La Belle Dame Sans Merci’ by Frank Dicksee, based on the poem ‘The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy’ by John Keats

4. King Copetua and the Beggar Maid – Edmund Blair Leighton

Today’s picture the elves wanted to re-create is ‘King Copetua and the beggar maid,’ this painting by Edmund Blair Leighton.

According to legend, Copetua was an African king known for his lack of any sexual attraction to women. One day while looking out a palace window he witnesses a young beggar woman called Penelophon, suffering for lack of clothes. Struck by love at first sight, Cophetua decides that he will either have the beggar as his wife or commit suicide.

Walking out into the street, he scatters coins for the beggars to gather and when Penelophon comes forward, he tells her that she is to be his wife. She agrees and becomes queen, and soon loses all trace of her former poverty and low class. The couple lives a quiet life but are much loved by their people. Eventually they die and are buried in the same tomb.

5. Enid and Geraint

The romantic tale of Enid and Geraint, believed to be the oldest of the Arthurian tales, as depicted by Rowland Wheelwright and the Lions and Lilies elves.

6. My Fair Lady – Edmund Blair Leighton

Edmund Leighton was the son of the artist Charles Blair Leighton (1823–1855) and Caroline Leighton (née Boosey). He was educated at University College School, before becoming a student at the Royal Academy Schools. He married Katherine Nash in 1885 and they went on to have a son and daughter. He exhibited annually at the Royal Academy from 1878 to 1920.

Leighton was a fastidious craftsman, producing highly finished, decorative pictures, displaying romanticized scenes with a popular appeal. It would appear that he left no diaries, and though he exhibited at the Royal Academy for over forty years, he was never an Academician or an Associate.

7. The Kiss

‘The Kiss’ is an 1859 painting by the Italian artist Francesco Hayez. It is possibly his best-known work. Francesco was a prolific painter who focused on depicting historic images either of a biblical nature or from classical literature.

8. The Shadow – Edmund Blair Leighton

The Shadow is based upon the Greek myth of Debutades, a Corinthian girl who drew the portrait of her beloved on the wall of her bed-chamber by tracing the outline of his shadow cast by the lamp-light on the night before he departed for war. Leighton changed the setting for the drama to the battlements of a medieval castle, below which the young crusader’s ships are waiting.

9. Chivalry

Sir Francis Bernard Dicksee KCVO, PRA was an English Victorian painter and illustrator, best known for his pictures of dramatic literary, historical, and legendary scenes.

Dicksee’s father, Thomas Dicksee, was a painter who taught Frank as well as his sister Margaret. Dicksee enrolled in the Royal Academy in 1870. He was elected to the Academy in 1891 and became its President in 1924. He was knighted in 1925, and named to the Royal Victorian Order by King George V in 1927.

10. God Speed – Edmund Blair Leighton

The woman ties a red sash around the knight’s arm, which he is meant to return, a medieval custom which assured both parties that they would be reunited, alive and well.

God Speed was the first of several paintings by Leighton in the 1900s on the subject of chivalry. Early in Edmund’s career his teacher had told him ‘in art, it is never too late to alter your work if it is wrong,’ and two hours before God Speed was to be delivered to Burlington House, a dissatisfied Edmund laid a sheet of glass over the canvas and rapidly painted in an alteration. Liking the changes, he took a razor and in moments, removed work that had taken him a full week to complete. Within two hours the required change was made and in a perilously wet condition, the painting was sent off to the Royal Academy.

11. Taming the Tarasque

As depicted within the Hours of Henry VIII by Jean Poyer

According to the Golden Legend “There was, at that time, on the banks of the Rhône, in a marsh between Arles and Avignon, a dragon, half animal, half fish, thicker than an ox, longer than a horse, with teeth like swords and big as horns, he hid in the river where he took the life of all passers-by.

The Tarasque was said to have come from Galatia, which was the home of the legendary Onachus, a scaly, bison-like beast which burned everything it touched. The Tarasque was the offspring of the Onachus and the Leviathan of biblical account; disputably a giant sea serpent.

The king of Nerluc had attacked the Tarasque with knights and catapults to no avail. But Saint Martha found the beast and charmed it with hymns and prayers and led back the tamed Tarasque to the city. The people, terrified by the monster, attacked it when it drew nigh. The monster offered no resistance and died there. Martha then preached to the people and converted many of them to Christianity. Sorry for what they had done to the tamed monster, the newly Christianised townspeople changed the town’s name to Tarascon.

12. The Accolade – Edmund Blair Leighton

Edmund painted The Accolade in 1901, after God Speed. There are many stories considering the origin and inspiration for the painting, although none of them are confirmed.

The painting depicts an ‘accolade’ – the ceremony to award knighthood. It is usually shown as the tapping of the flat side of a sword on the shoulders of a candidate. In Blair’s example, the ‘knight-elect’ kneels in front of the monarch on a cushion. The monarch lays the side of the sword’s blade onto the knight’s right shoulder, then raises the sword gently over the knight’s head and places it on his left shoulder but an early form of the accolade (between men) would have been a hefty strike about the neck and then an embrace. Whichever form was used, the reasoning is the same— that the participant should never forget they have been granted the gift of knighthood and henceforth must behave in accordance with the laws of chivalry. The newly appointed knight rises, and is presented with a belt about his waist, a new set of spurs and the insignia of his order.

13. End of Song

– Edmund Blair Leighton

Painted in 1902, the painting was sold by auction in June 2000 for more than two hundred and fifty thousand pounds and remains in the possession of a private collector.

14. Britomart and Amoret – Mary F Raphael

Britomart (the knight) and Amoret (the lady) are characters in Edmund Spenser’s knightly epic, The Faerie Queene.

Amoret – the long-suffering Amoret, is subject to some of the most horrific tortures in the Faerie Queene. Her life is a series of near rapes, imprisonments, and trials against her will. She’s almost raped and eaten alive by the savage, tied to a pillar, her chest pierced by a long, spear-like pen while her heart is removed, and her blood used as ink in the house of the evil magician, Busirane. The use of her blood and her body as a physical source of ink for writing suggests that Amoret might be emblematic of the larger exploitation of female bodies and female suffering in poetry, particularly love poetry. Her name, which means “love,” and her many trials also point to the general idea that love necessarily involves a certain amount of pain and suffering.

Britomart – The Knight of Chastity – Ssssh, don’t tell my boy-elf! He has no idea he was playing a woman!

Britomart’s armour keeps her gender hidden from the rest of the world. She has amazing fighting skills with dazzling beauty and a romantic heart but her biggest fault is her over-reliance on sight and images; looking instead of thinking. We often see her charging knights first and asking questions later, which leads her to attack her very own beloved, Arthegall, before realizing who he is. Britomart has to learn how to distinguish between being dazzled by an image and contemplating the inner person. This is most explicitly challenged in the house of Busirane where Britomart is overly captivated by the murals of rape that cover his walls. When Britomart ought to be acting, she’s obsessed with looking. But, the house of Busirane is also the place where she overcomes this fault by eventually finding Amoret and saving her from Busirane’s illusions and sorcery.

15. The Lady of Shallot

– Jeff Barson

Jeff’s bio reads – For years I was an artist living in Manhattan. I spent my time painting for clients that included the New York City Opera, Ballentine, Coca-Cola, yada-yada-yada times 30. And since, through numerous misadventures, I garnered myself at least a little of a reputation, I was commissioned to paint portraits of Princess Diana as well as Vivien Leigh for the 60th anniversary of the release of Gone With The Wind. Now, I live in Park City, Utah with my wife Shelly and our little girl Maddy.

16. Lamia and the Soldier – John William Waterhouse

In Greek mythology Lamia was a beautiful woman beloved of Zeus, but after Zeus’s jealous wife Hera destroyed all Lamia’s children, (or caused Lamia herself to kill her own offspring), Lamia became disfigured from the torment, transforming into a terrifying being who hunted and killed the children of others.

In later classical periods, Lamia shifted to that of a sultry seductress who enticed young men and devoured them. She was in the habit of targeting young men for food ‘because their blood was fresh and pure.’

The picture is inspired by Keats’ poem, Lamia, ‘about a bridegroom who discovers on his wedding night that his bride is a monstrous half-serpent who preys on young men.’ It is made clear she bears the guise of a snake, which she wants to relinquish in return for human appearance.

By the Early Middle Ages, lamia (pl. lamiai or lamiae) was glossed as a general term referring to a class of monsters. Isidore of Seville defined them as beings that snatched babies and ripped them apart. Christian writers also warned against the seductive potential of lamiae. In his 9th-century treatise on divorce, Hincmar, archbishop of Reims, listed lamiae among the supernatural dangers that threatened marriages.

17. The Dedication

– Edmund Blair Leighton

Painted in 1908 and currently held by a private collector.

18. An Arrival – Edmund Blair Leighton

Having decided upon his arrangement, Edmund Blair Leighton’s next care was to choose some incident or theme which would demonstrate it. He painted many romantic medieval scenes, sometimes using a crowd to place a ‘brilliantly lighted group’ against the sombre gloom of grey masonry, or as in the case of An Arrival, a single subject whose attention takes us beyond the stone wall. He first makes some sketches in black and white, followed by more in colour. When once it was suggested that perhaps his arrangement might be improved with a change in the layout, his reply was that then he would not be the painting the same picture, but a different one! He advised that the original design should be finished, and the new one painted later, if necessary.

19. Helleili and Hilldabrand

– Frederick William Burton

The subject is taken from a medieval Danish ballad translated by Burton’s friend Whitley Stokes in 1855, which tells the story of Hellelil, who fell in love with her personal guard Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. Her father disapproved of the relationship and ordered her seven brothers to kill the young prince. Burton chose to imagine a romantic moment from the story before the terrible end: the final meeting of the two lovers. The painting is currently displayed at the National Gallery of Ireland.

20. Stitching the Standard – Edmund Blair Leighton

Stitching the Standard depicts a damsel on the battlements of a medieval castle making the finishing touches to a standard or pennant again using the cream/grey masonry background. In a peaceful scene, away from the bustle of the castle, the woman completes her needlework in quiet recluse, finishing the banner her loved one will carry into war. The gentle setting is in stark contrast to the banner’s destination and one of the ways in which Edmund Blair Leighton could invoke the nature of his story into his work. In 1928 the painting was sold at Christie’s under the title of ‘Preparing the Flag,’ and again in 1977 as ‘Awaiting his Return.’ One year later it was resold at Sotheby’s to a private collector in Belgravia.

21. Heraldic Chivalry

– Alphonse Maria Mucha.

Alfonse Maria Mucha was a Czech painter, illustrator and graphic artist, living in Paris during the Art Nouveau period, best known for his distinctly stylized and decorative theatrical posters of Sarah Bernhardt. He produced illustrations, advertisements, decorative panels and designs which became among the best-known images of the period.

In the second part of his career, at the age of 43, he returned to his homeland and devoted himself to painting a series of twenty monumental canvases known as The Slav Epic, depicting the history of all the Slavic peoples of the world, which he painted between 1912 and 1926. In 1928, on the 10th anniversary of the independence of Czechoslovakia, he presented the series to the Czech nation. He considered it his most important work. It is now on display in the National Gallery in Prague.

22. Aucassin and Nicolette – Maryanne Stokes

Who will deign to hear the song, solace of a captive’s wrong;

Telling how two children met, Aucassin and Nicolette …

Aucassin and Nicolette (12th or 13th century) is an anonymous medieval French chantefable, or combination of prose and verse.

The story begins with a song which serves as prologue; and then prose takes up the narrative. It recounts the tale of Aucassin, son of Count Garin of Beaucaire, who so loved Nicolette, a Saracen maiden turned Christian, who had been sold to the Viscount of Beaucaire. The lovers are imprisoned but manage to escape and, after many vicissitudes (including flight, capture, and shipwreck), are able to marry. The story ends by saying that now the two have found (lasting) happiness the narrator has nothing left to say.

Aucassin et Nicolette is preserved in a single manuscript, kept in France’s Bibliothèque Nationale.

23. Tristan and Isolde – John William Waterhouse

John William Waterhouse was an English painter known for depicting women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend.

Born in Rome to English parents who were both painters, Waterhouse later moved to London, where he enrolled in the Royal Academy of Art. He soon began exhibiting at their annual summer exhibitions, focusing on the creation of large canvas works depicting scenes from the daily life and mythology of ancient Greece.

24. The Vigil – John Pettie

The ‘Vigil of Arms’ was one of the religious exercises which, in the Middle Ages, preceded the conferment of knighthood. The process of inauguration was commenced in the evening by the placing of the candidate under the care of two `esquires of honour, grave and well-seen in courtship’, who were to be `governors in all things relating to him’. By them he was conducted to his appointed chamber, where a bath was prepared, hung within and without with linen, and covered with rich cloths, into which, after they had undressed him, he bathed. While he was in the bath two `ancient and grave knights’ attended him to inform, instruct, and counsel him on the order and feats of chivalry, and when they had fulfilled their mission they poured some of the water of the bath over his shoulders, signing the left shoulder with the cross. He was then taken from the bath and put into a plain bed without hangings, until his body was dry, when the two esquires put on him a white shirt and over that `a robe of russet with long sleeves having a hood thereto like unto that of a hermit’. Then the two ancient and grave knights returned and led him to a chapel, the esquires going before them `sporting and dancing’, with `the minstrels making melody’. And when they had been served with spiced wine they went away, leaving only the candidate, the esquires, `the priest, the chandler, and the watch’, who kept the vigil of arms until sunrise, the candidate passing the night `bestowing himself in visions and prayer’.

That is the moment chosen in the present picture. Dawn steals through the dim aisles, but the kneeling candidate does not notice it, and his beautiful haggard face remains turned towards the altar, with eyes full of mystic devotion. Helmet and armour are on the raised step before him, and he holds patiently the cross hilt of his sword. Soon he will receive the Holy Sacrament and be invested with the full honour of knighthood.

This picture gains in dramatic force from the cool bareness of the Norman nave, and there is a strong popular appeal in the fine sentiment of the subject. This description of the scene depicted is borrowed from Mr E. T. Cook’s “Handbook to the Tate Gallery”:

We hope you enjoyed this.