Category: art
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Demons’ Soup of Souls
Detail of a medallion with souls being taken by demons and placed in a cauldron, from a Bible moralisée, France (Paris), 2nd quarter of the 13th century, Harley MS 1526, f. 21r, British Library -
XV The Devil
Available as a linocut print via BELOW -
Happy New Year’s Eve!
A Reveller and Death, 1900, Edmund J. Sullivan
From National Gallery of Victoria -
Boo!
Thomas Rowlandson (after G.M. Woodward), Terrour or Fright, 1800, hand-coloured etching, 27.2 x 22.2 cm, The Lewis Walpole Library, Yale University, CT
From Tate Gallery -
Speak! Speak!
Speak! Speak!
1895, Sir John Everett MillaisThe meaning of this painting was felt generally to be obscure and the story as related by Millais’s son J.G. Millais, locates the scene in Ancient Rome: ‘It is that of a young Roman who has been reading through the night the letters of his lost love; and at dawn, behold, the curtains of his bed are parted, and there before him stands, in spirit or in truth, the lady herself, decked as on her bridal night, and gazing upon him with sad but loving eyes’ (Millais, II, p.304). The critic of the Art Journal described “Speak! Speak!” as ‘a powerful canvas, broadly handled and eloquently telling its tale’ (Art Journal, 1895, pp.164-6). In fact, the identity of the female figure at the foot of the bed caused some consternation, an effect which Millais had fully intended, as Millais’s biographer M.H. Spielmann recorded: ‘When I remarked that I could not tell whether the luminous apparition was a spirit or a woman he was pleased: “That’s just what I want”, he said; “I don’t know either, nor”, he added, pointing to the picture, “does he” ‘ (quoted in Flint, p.261).
Painting and background information from the Tate gallery, UK.
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Medieval Witches in Flight
Illumination depicting two witches on a broomstick and a stick, in Martin Le Franc’s “Ladies’ Champion,” 1451 * Image from Wikimedia -
Two Ghosts
Two Ghosts from the Famous Ghosts Series, Japanese color woodblock print from the mid-19th century, from the Minneapolis Institute of Art
