Cronus

Saturn Devouring His Son is the name given to a painting by Spanish artist Francisco Goya.

It depicts the Greek myth of Cronus (in the title Romanised to Saturn), who, fearing that his children would supplant him, ate each one upon their birth.

 

 It is one of the series of Black Paintings that Goya painted directly onto the walls of his house sometime between 1819 and 1823.

After Goya's death the work was transferred to canvas, and now resides in the Museo del Prado in Madrid.

Saturn Devouring His Son, a disturbing portrait of the god Saturn consuming one of his children, was one of six works with which Goya decorated the dining room. According to Roman myth, it had been foretold that one of the sons of Saturn would overthrow him, just as he had overthrown his father, Caelus.

To prevent this coming to pass, Saturn would eat each of his children as soon as they were born. His wife Ops eventually hid his sixth son, Jupiter, on the island of Crete, deceiving Saturn by offering a stone wrapped in swaddling in his place. Just as the prophecy had predicted, Jupiter eventually supplanted his father .

Goya may have been inspired by Peter Paul Rubens' 1636 picture of the same name. Rubens' painting, also held at the Museo del Prado, is a brighter, more conventional treatment of the myth: his Saturn exhibits none of the cannibalistic ferocity portrayed in Goya's rendition.

However, some critics have suggested that Rubens' portrayal is the more horrific: the god is portrayed as a calculating remorseless killer, who – fearing for his own position of power – murders his innocent child.

Goya's vision, on the other hand, shows a man driven mad by the act of killing his own son. In addition, the body of the son in Goya's picture is that of an adult, not the helpless baby depicted by Rubens.

Goya had produced a chalk drawing of the same subject in 1796-7 that was closer in tone to Rubens' work: it showed a Saturn similar in appearance to that of Rubens', daintily biting on the leg of one of his sons while he holds another like a leg of chicken, with none of the gore or madness of the later work.

 Cannibalism ...as old as the hills.

Medusa

The three Gorgon sisters—Medusa, Stheno, and Euryale—were children of the ancient marine deities Phorcys and his sister Ceto, or sometimes (and much less probably), Typhon and Echidna, in each case chthonic monsters from an archaic world.

 This painting above of her head is by an unknown Flemish artist.

Their genealogy is shared with other sisters, the Graeae, as in Aeschylus's Prometheus Bound, who places both trinities of sisters far off "on Kisthene's dreadful plain":

Near them their sisters three, the Gorgons, winged
With snakes for hair— hated of mortal man—

While ancient Greek vase-painters and relief carvers imagined Medusa and her sisters as beings born of monstrous form, sculptors and vase-painters of the fifth century began to envisage her as a being both beautiful as well as terrifying. In an ode written in 490 BC Pindar already speaks of "fair-cheeked Medusa".

In a late version of the Medusa myth, related by the Roman poet Ovid (Metamorphoses 4.770), Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, "the jealous aspiration of many suitors," priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped, or seduced, by the "Lord of the Sea" Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged virgin goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone. In Ovid's telling, Perseus describes Medusa's punishment by Athena as just and well-deserved.

In the majority of the versions of the story, while Medusa was pregnant by Poseidon, she was beheaded by the hero Perseus, who was sent to fetch her head by King Polydectes of Seriphus as a gift.

With help from Athena and Hermes, who supplied him with winged sandals, Hades' cap of invisibility, a sword, and a mirrored shield, he accomplished his quest.

The hero slew Medusa by looking at her harmless reflection in the mirror instead of directly at her to prevent being turned into stone.
When the hero severed Medusa's head from her neck, two offspring sprang forth: the winged horse Pegasus and the giant Chrysaor who later became the hero wielding the golden sword.

This painting of the head of Madusa is by Caravaggio

Jane Ellen Harrison argues that "her potency only begins when her head is severed, and that potency resides in the head; she is in a word a mask with a body later appended... the basis of the Gorgoneion is a cultus object, a ritual mask misunderstood."

In Odyssey xi, Homer does not specifically mention the Gorgon Medusa:

"Lest for my daring Persephone the dread,
From Hades should send up an awful monster's grisly head."

Harrison's translation states "the Gorgon was made out of the terror, not the terror out of the Gorgon."

According to Ovid, in North-West Africa Perseus flew past the Titan Atlas, who stood holding the sky aloft, and transformed him into stone. In a similar manner, the corals of the Red Sea were said to have been formed of Medusa's blood spilled onto seaweed when Perseus laid down the petrifying head beside the shore during his short stay in Aethiopia where he saved and wed his future wife, the lovely princess Andromeda.

Furthermore the poisonous vipers of the Sahara, in the Argonautica 4.1515, Ovid's Metamorphoses 4.770 and Lucan's Pharsalia 9.820, were said to have grown from spilt drops of her blood.

Perseus then flew to Seriphus where his mother was about to be forced into marriage with the king. King Polydectes was turned into stone by the gaze of Medusa's head.

Then he gave the Gorgon's head to Athena, who placed it on her shield, the Aegis.h/t wiki

Judith Beheading Holofernes

Holofernes was an Assyrian invading general of Nebuchadnezzar, who appears in the deuterocanonical Book of Judith.

It was said that the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar dispatched Holofernes to take vengeance on the nations of the west that had withheld their assistance to his reign.

The general laid siege to Bethulia, commonly believed to be Meselieh, and the city almost surrendered.

It was saved by Judith, a beautiful Hebrew widow who entered Holofernes's camp and seduced him. Judith then beheaded Holofernes while he was drunk. She returned to Bethulia with the disembodied head, and the Hebrews defeated the enemy.

Holofernes is depicted in Geoffrey Chaucer's The Monk's Tale in The Canterbury Tales, and in Dante's Purgatorio (where Holofernes is to be found on the Terrace of pride). As a painter's subject it offers the chance to contrast the flesh and jewels of a beautiful, festively attired woman with the grisly victim, an Old Testament parallel to the New Testament vignette of Salome with the head of John the Baptist.

 I`m sure you will agree,not a woman to be messed with.
The painting is by a favourite of mine,Caravaggio
This is the first time Caravaggio chose such a highly dramatic subject.

The original bare breasts of Judith were later covered by the semi-transparent blouse. The rough details and the realistic precision (correct down to the tiniest details of anatomy and physiology) have caused some to think that the painting was inspired by two highly publicized Roman executions of the time: that of Giordano Bruno and Beatrice Cenci in 1599.

The model for Judith is Fillide Melandroni, a well-known courtesan of the day, whom Caravaggio used for several other paintings from around this time, notably Saint Catherine and Martha and Mary Magdalene. Leonardo da Vinci's drawing Study for a Caricature inspired the servant woman.ht/wiki

The look of cold concentration on Judith`s face, as she cut off his head is a chilling and masterful piece of art work.

Fools

This is called The Ship Of Fools its by my favourite artist Hieronymus Boche

The Ship of Fools is an allegory that has long been a fixture and reminder in Western literature and art.

The allegory depicts a vessel populated by human inhabitants who are deranged, frivolous, or oblivious, passengers aboard a ship without a pilot, and seemingly ignorant of their own direction.

This concept makes up the framework of the 15th century book Ship of Fools (1494) by Sebastian Brant, which served as the inspiration for Bosch's famous painting, Ship of Fools: a ship—an entire fleet at first—sets off from Basel to the paradise of fools.

In literary and artistic compositions of the 15th and 16th centuries, the cultural motif of the ship of fools also served to parody the 'ark of salvation' (as the Roman Catholic Church was styled).
h/t wiki




The owl in the tree is symbolic of heresy, as is the Muslim crescent on the pink banner that flies from the ship's mast.

The lute and bowl of cherries have erotic associations.

The people in the water may represent the sins of gluttony or lust.

The inverted funnel is symbolic of madness

The large roast bird is a symbol of gluttony.

The knife being used to cut it down may be a phallic symbol or it may be symbolic of the sin of anger.

A monk and a nun are singing together.
This has some erotic overtones (especially with the presence of the aforementioned lute) since men and women in monastic orders were supposed to be separate.

The painting as we see it today is a fragment of a triptych that was cut into several parts.
The Ship of Fools was painted on one of the wings of the altarpiece, and is about two thirds of its original length.
The bottom third of the panel belongs to Yale University Art Gallery and is exhibited under the title Allegory of Gluttony.
The wing on the other side, which has more or less retained its full length, is the Death of the Miser, now in the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC.

The two panels together would have represented the two extremes of prodigiality and miserliness, condemning and caricaturing both.
The painting is oil on wood, measuring 58 cm x 33 cm (23" x 13"). It is on display in the Musée du Louvre, Paris.

“The artist alone sees spirits. But after he has told of their appearing to him, everybody sees them.”

h/t think exist.com

All Hallows Eve

Halloween has origins in the ancient festival known as Samhain (pronounced sow-in or sau-an), which is derived from Old Irish and means roughly "summer's end".

This was a Gaelic festival celebrated mainly in Ireland and Scotland.
However, similar festivals were held by other Celts – for example the festival of Calan Gaeaf (pronounced kalan-geyf) which was held by the ancient Briton

The festival of Samhain celebrates the end of the "lighter half" of the year and beginning of the "darker half", and is sometimes regarded as the "Celtic New Year".

The celebration has some elements of a festival of the dead. The ancient Celts believed that the border between this world and the Otherworld became thin on Samhain, allowing spirits (both harmless and harmful) to pass through.

The family's ancestors were honoured and invited home whilst harmful spirits were warded off. It is believed that the need to ward off harmful spirits led to the wearing of costumes and masks.
Their purpose was to disguise oneself as a harmful spirit and thus avoid harm. In Scotland the spirits were impersonated by young men dressed in white with masked, veiled or blackened faces.

Samhain was also a time to take stock of food supplies and slaughter livestock for winter stores. Bonfires played a large part in the festivities.
All other fires were doused and each home lit their hearth from the bonfire. The bones of slaughtered livestock were cast into its flames.
Sometimes two bonfires would be built side-by-side, and people and their livestock would walk between them as a cleansing ritual.

Another common practise was divination, which often involved the use of food and drink.
The name Halloween and many present-day traditions, derive from the Old English era.h/t wiki


The picture above is by John Faed

Its called    ¨Tam O Shanter and the Witches ¨ its based on a poem by Robert Burns

Religious Murder

This loathsome soul is Matthew Hopkins,the self styled Witch Finder General.


Matthew Hopkins, born in Grantham, Lincolnshire, was one of six children born to James Hopkins, a Puritan clergyman, vicar of Wenham, in Suffolk.


Because of the way he presented evidence in trials, Hopkins is commonly thought to have been trained as a lawyer but there is scant evidence to suggest this was the case.

According to his book The Discovery of Witches, he began his career as a witch-finder when he claimed to have overheard various women discussing their meetings with the Devil in March 1644 in Manningtree, a town near Colchester, where he was living at the time.

In fact the first accusations were made by John Stearne and Hopkins was appointed as his assistant. As a result of the accusations, nineteen convicted witches were hanged and four of the accused died in prison.

Hopkins and Stearne, accompanied by the women who performed the pricking, were soon travelling over eastern England, claiming to be officially commissioned by Parliament to uncover and prosecute witches.

Parliament was well aware of his and his team's activities, as shown by the concerned reports of the Bury St Edmunds witch trials of 1645.
His witch-finding career spanned from 1645 to 1647. While torture was technically unlawful in England, he used various methods of browbeating to extract confessions from some of his victims.

He used sleep deprivation as a sort of bloodless torture. Another one of his methods was to first search for the Devil's mark on a woman; this would be a boil. If she had a familiar (cat or dog) he would suspect that the familiar was sucking the woman's blood.

This boil would be known as the third nipple. Then he would cut her arm with a blunt knife and if she did not bleed she was a witch. He also used a "swimming" test to see if the accused would float or sink in holy water, the theory being that witches had renounced their baptism, so that all holy water would reject them.

He also employed "witch prickers" who pricked the accused with knives and special needles, looking for the Devil's mark (a mole or birthmark) that was supposed to be dead to all feeling and would not bleed. It was believed that the witch's familiar would drink their blood from the mark as milk from a teat.

Hopkins and his colleague John Stearne, together with their female assistants, were well paid for their work.

Samuel Butler's satire Hudibras commented on Hopkins's activity, saying:

Has not this present Parliament

A Lieger to the Devil sent,

Fully impowr'd to treat about

Finding revolted witches out

And has not he, within a year,

Hang'd threescore of 'em in one shire?

Some only for not being drowned,

And some for sitting above ground,

Whole days and nights, upon their breeches,

And feeling pain, were hang'd for witches.

And some for putting knavish tricks

Upon green geese and turky-chicks?

And pigs, that suddenly deceast

Of griefs unnat'ral, as he guest;

Who after prov'd himself a witch

And made a rod for his own breech.

The last line refers to a tradition that disgruntled villagers caught Hopkins and subjected him to his own "swimming" test: he floated, and it was therefore suspected that he was hanged for witchcraft himself but, no evidence of this ever happening exists.

Most historians believe that Hopkins died of illness, possibly tuberculosis, in his home. The parish records of Manningtree in Essex record his burial on 12 August  1647.


h/t wiki.

"What else is woman but a foe to friendship, an inescapable punishment, a necessary evil, a natural temptation, a desirable calamity, a domestic danger, a delectable detriment, an evil of nature, painted in fair colors..¨

The word woman is used to mean the lust of the flesh, as it is said¨ I have found a woman more bitter than death, and a good woman more subject to carnal lust...Women are naturally more impressionable...Women are intellectually like children...She is more carnal than a man, as is clear from her many carnal abominations...Therefore a wicked woman is by her nature quicker to waver in her faith, and consequently quicker to abjure the faith, which is the root of witchcraft..."
- Malleus Maleficarum

The "Malleus Maleficarum" was written by Heinrich Kramer and Jacob Sprenger in 1486. Sprenger and Kramer were both members of the Dominican Order and were Inquisitors for the Catholic Church’s inquisition against heretics. Heresy in this sense was an error in understanding and of faith in the Catholic religion, ultimately discernible by God alone.

On December 5, 1484 Pope Innocent VIII had issued the famous "witch-bull" to Kramer and Sprenger in response to their asking for explicit authority to prosecute witchcraft. This papal bull would be used as the preface for the "Malleus Maleficarum." The Summis desiderantes affectibus recognized the existence of witches and gave full papal approval for the Inquisition against witches and gave permission to do whatever necessary to get rid of them, thus opening the door for the bloody witch hunts that ensued for centuries.

During the ensuing "burning times," approximately 40,000 executions occured over 250 years in Europe, the largest quantity of which occurred in Germany. One small town in Germany lost their entire female population to the flames.

In Wurzburg, a series of burnings claimed a horrific list of victims, none of whose names survive:
"Three play-actors".
"Four innkeepers".
"Three common councilmen of Wurszburg".
"Fourteen vicars of the Cathedral".
"The burgomasters lady" (The wife of the mayor).
"The apothecarys wife and daughter".
"Two choristers of the cathedral".
Gobel Babelin, "The prettiest girl in town".
"The wife, the two little sons and the daughter of councillor Stolzenberg."
Baunach, "The fattest burgher (merchant) in Wurzburg".
Steinacher, "The richest burgher in Wurzburg".

The Seventh burning
"A wandering boy, twelve years of age".
"Four strange men and women, found sleeping in the market-place".

The thirteenth/fourteenth burning
" A little maiden nine years of age".
" A maiden still less (than nine)".
" Her (The little girl's) sister, their mother and their aunt".
" A pretty young woman of twenty-four".

The eighteenth burning
"Two boys of twelve".
"A girl of fifteen".

The nineteenth burning
" The young heir of the house of Rotenhahn", aged nine.
A boy of ten.
A boy, twelve years old.

Although most heretics were women, a great many men were also taken, tortured, and put to death. This is a letter from one such victim at the notorious Bamberg in Germany; a poignant epitaph to one of Europe's most hideous crimes:

"Many hundred thousand good-nights, dearly beloved daughter Veronica. Innocent have I come into prison, innocent have I been tortured, innocent must I die. For whoever comes into the witch prison must become a witch or be tortured until he invents something out of his head - and God pity him - bethinks him of something."

"And then came also - God in highest heaven have mercy - the executioner, and put the thumbscrews on me, both hands bound together, so that the blood spurted from the nails and everywhere, so that for four weeks I could not use my hands, as you can see from my writing.

Thereafter they stripped me, bound my hands behind me, and drew me up on the ladder. Then I thought heaven and earth were at an end. Eight times did they draw me up and let me fall again, so that I suffered terrible agony."

The author of this letter, Johannes Junius, did indeed confess to being a witch, and in August of 1628, was burned at the stake. He managed to send his final letter to his daughter, which ended by saying:

"Dear child, keep this letter secret, so that people do not find it, else I shall be tortured most piteously and the jailers will be beheaded. So strictly is it forbidden...Dear child, pay this man a thaler...I have taken several days to write this - my hands are both crippled. I am in a sad plight. Good night, for your father Johannes Junius will never see you more."

I think todays Pope and every Pope after owes the poor souls all over the world who were {and still are} tortured and murdered on the orders of Pope Innocent V111 an apology .....don`t you?..don`t hold your breath.

Pope Innocent V111...what an utter merciless bastard.Don`t you just love Christianity.

I think i can guess where his soul resides now.
May he rot!

Finally be ye all of one mind,having compassion one of another,love as brethren,be pitiful,be courteous.
Peter 3:8

The Ferryman

This scary looking old man is Charon.                                                              He is frequently in the art of ancient Greece. Attic funerary vases of the 5th and 4th centuries B.C. are often decorated with scenes of the dead boarding Charon’s boat.

On the earlier such vases, he looks like a rough, unkempt Athenian seaman dressed in reddish-brown, holding his ferryman's pole in his right hand and using his left hand to receive the deceased.

Hermes sometimes stands by in his role as psychopomp. On later vases, Charon is given a more “kindly and refined” demeanor. Aristophanes, in The Frogs, had him spewing insults regarding people's girth.

In the 1st century B.C., the Roman poet Virgil describes Charon in the course of Aeneas’s descent to the underworld (Aeneid, Book 6), after the Cumaean Sibyl has directed the hero to the golden bough that will allow him to return to the world of the living:

There Chairon stands, who rules the dreary coast -

A sordid god: down from his hairy chin

A length of beard descends, uncombed, unclean;

His eyes, like hollow furnaces on fire;

A girdle, foul with grease, binds his obscene attire.

Other Latin authors also describe Charon, among them Seneca in his tragedy Hercules Furens, where Charon is described in verses 762-777 as an old man clad in foul garb, with haggard cheeks and an unkempt beard, a fierce ferryman who guides his craft with a long pole.

When the boatman tells Hercules to halt, the Greek hero uses his strength to gain passage, overpowering Charon with the boatman's own pole.
In the second century, Lucian employed Charon as a figure in his Dialogues of the Dead, most notably in Parts 4 and 10 (“Hermes and Charon” and “Charon and Hermes”).

In the thirteenth century, Dante Alighieri described Charon in his Divine Comedy, drawing from Virgil's depiction in Aeneid 6. Charon is the first named mythological character Dante meets in the underworld, in the third canto of Inferno.

Elsewhere, Charon appears as a cranky, skinny old man or as a winged demon wielding a double hammer, although Michaelangelo's interpretation, influenced by Dante's depiction in Inferno, canto 3, shows him with an oar over his shoulder, ready to beat those who delay (“batte col remo qualunque s'adagia”, Inferno 3, verse 111). In modern times, he is commonly depicted as a living skeleton in a cowl, much like the Grim Reaper or Dickens' Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come.

In [[Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief]], Charon is first depicted as "tall and elegant, with chocolate coloured skin and bleached blond hair shaved military style". although as he enters the underworld he morphs into a skeleton.
h/t wikipedia

Here Charon is seen using his paddle to persuade souls and sinners to board his boat to be ferried across Hades.

Both these drawings were by Gustave Dore

       

The Beheading of St John

                                          The  Beheading of St John

John the baptist is executed for a ladies revenge...WHERE?....was God ,as the executioner used his knife to cut the last few tendons of his neck ...where? was the omnipotent one.....was John forgotten?

Regarding John's death, Josephus states that Herod had John killed to preempt a possible uprising. Matthew links John's death as well with Herodias, as he related that her daughter Salome^[39] so much delighted Antipas with a dance that he vowed to grant her any wish to which, after asking her mother (Herodias), she demanded the head of John the Baptist.

This is the most important painting that Caravaggio made in Malta. It is still in the Oratorio di San Giovanni (now St John Museum) in La Valletta.

This is one of Caravaggio's most extraordinary creations, for many it is his greatest masterpiece.
It is characterized by a magical balance of all the parts.

It is no accident that the artist brings back into the painting a precise reference to the setting, placing behind the figures, as a backdrop, the severe, sixteenth century architecture of the prison building, at the window of which, in a stroke of genius, two figures silently witness the scene (the commentators are thus drawn into the painting, and no longer projected, as in the Martyrdom of St Matthew, toward the outside).

This is a final compendium of Caravaggio's art. Well-known figures return (the old woman, the youth, the nude ruffian, the bearded nobleman), as do Lombard elements

The technical means adhere to the deliberate, programmatic limitation to which Caravaggio adapts them; but amid these soft tones, these dark colours, is an impressive sense of drawing that the artist does not give up, and that is visible even through the synoptic glints of light of his late works.

This eminently classical balance, which projects the event beyond contingency, unleashes a harsh drama that is even more effective to the extent that, having given up the "aesthetic of exclamation" forever, Caravaggio limits every external, excessive sign of emotional emphasis.

The painter signed in the Baptist's blood: "f ¨This is the seal he placed on what may well be his greatest masterpiece.

 h/t web gallery of art



I am curious..what crime did the two onlookers commit,or indeed did they commit a crime at all.
To watch imprisoned while a man is  beheaded,a tad unnerving methinks. 

¨Men loved darkness rather than light,because their deeds where evil¨.
st John 3.19

Dante and Virgils Hell

What is this picture saying to you?,look at it closely!,what does it say to you?, how does it make you feel?.

The dramatic painting is by William Adolphe Bouguereau {18:25 19:05}

Painted in 18:50 it depicts the two poets Dante and Virgil as  Virgil guides Dante through the 5th of the 9 circles of Hell.
They are standing by the river Styx,where the souls of the Wrathful and Sullen are punished.
The Wrathful souls spend eternity viciously attacking each other while beneath the surface of the foul river are the souls of the Sullen,those who shut out the light of the sun from their lives,they forever suffer in the darkest place in Hell.
And so the tortured Sullen souls sing and repeat this lament for eternity.                     

 Sullen we were in the air made sweet by the Sun,
 in the glory of his shining our hearts poured a bitter smoke.
 Sullen were we begun,sullen we lie forever in this ditch.