Hand of fate kraken mask full#

Hand of fate kraken mask full#

Or at least partially viewed as there was a technical difficulty and I was interrupted in full flow! To view the entire ‘Elevenses with Lynne’ archive, head to the Free Art Videos page. The video of this episode can be viewed here. So insisted on, and laboured at, besides, that every sufferer gives you the same occasion for wonder as poor old Duncan awoke, in Lady Macbeth, when she marvelled at his having so much blood in him. Grey-bearded men being boiled, fried, grilled, crimped, singed, eaten by wild beasts, worried by dogs, buried alive, torn asunder by horses, chopped up small with hatchets: women having their breasts torn with iron pinchers, their tongues cut out, their ears screwed off, their jaws broken, their bodies stretched upon the rack, or skinned upon the stake, or crackled up and melted in the fire: these are among the mildest subjects. These represent the martyrdoms of saints and early Christians and such a panorama of horror and butchery no man could imagine in his sleep, though he were to eat a whole pig raw, for supper.

Stefano Rotondo a damp, mildewed vault of an old church in the outskirts of Rome, will always struggle uppermost in my mind, by reason of the hideous paintings with which its walls are covered.

He didn’t mince his words when he wrote about the works in Pictures from Italy, published in 1846: For an idea of what’s to come, here’s a description by Charles Dickens. Yes, St Stephen is one of the least gruesome images in the series. These frescoes were painted in 1582 at the height of the Counter Reformation so glorifying Rome and Catholicism was important.Īnd the catalogue of bodily horrors in the name of martyrdom that this fresco cycle represents was clearly part of that. The artist, Niccolo Circignani, was more than likely asked to present Rome as the successor to Jerusalem. I’m not convinced, however, looking at the architecture, that this scene is representative of Jerusalem in the 1st century A.D. I think this could be James the Great who was the first of the apostles to be martyred and he did, according to the New Testament, get his head chopped off.

Over to the left in the background is a man identified as Jacobus. I imagine that this is a reference to the 12 apostles being dispersed, metaphorically if not geographically, after Stephen’s death because you can see some figures with halos being harangued by others brandishing branches. In the background to the right we have a group that the artist identifies with a ‘B’ as the apostles (there’s a guide to the lettering below the fresco).