Mr. Biden’s trip to New Orleans, his latest as “consoler in chief,” joins a lengthy history of presidential visits to a city that has seen more than its share of tragedies and disasters.

© Jim Bourg for The New York Times

Shamsud-Din Jabbar visited New Orleans twice, and traveled to Egypt and Canada, before a burst of violence early on New Year’s Day that killed 14 people.

© Emily Kask for The New York Times

Bourbon Street is the lifeblood of the New Orleans tourist industry. But after an attack that killed 14, along with other recent violence, some people who work and live there wish for change.

© Emily Kask for The New York Times

A man who pledged allegiance to the terrorist group carried out a deadly attack in New Orleans on New Year’s Day.

© Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Recordings and interviews detail Shamsud-Din Jabbar’s growing discontent with American society and increasing isolation even within his local Muslim community.

© Emily Kask for The New York Times

After twists and turns, a contentious plan meant to reduce traffic and pay for transit improvements is scheduled to take effect at midnight Sunday.

© Karsten Moran for The New York Times

Bomb-making materials were found at a short-term rental house, and the authorities said they had recovered a transmitter intended to set off explosives on the city’s famous Bourbon Street.

© Emily Kask for The New York Times

Those who died after a man drove a pickup through the French Quarter highlighted the diverse mix of people who are drawn to the city.

© Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

The city was seeing glimmers of optimism for what the new year might bring before the horrendous attack on the French Quarter.

© Emily Kask for The New York Times

Plus, Kenyan villagers get a scare from space.

© Pete Kiehart for The New York Times

This year’s ceremony, hosted by Nikki Glaser, could bring some clarity to a muddled best picture race.

© Robyn Beck/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

They also said they did not see a “definitive link” between the attack and an explosion at a Trump hotel in Las Vegas, but cautioned that it’s too early to be sure.

© Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

City officials were warned in 2019 that the bollards designed to block vehicles did “not appear to work.” They were being fixed when a truck rammed through Bourbon Street on Wednesday.

© Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

The Senate needs to ensure the next cabinet is full of real professionals.

Turo, which investigators say was used to acquire the vehicles involved in the attack in New Orleans and explosion in Las Vegas, was emerging as an alternative car-rental service.

© Ethan Miller/Getty Images

With colorful knitwear, she and her husband, Ottavio, built one of the world’s most recognizable brands, helping to make Milan a capital of “alta moda.”

© Giuseppe Cacace/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The F.B.I. says no connection has been found between the truck explosion outside a Trump Hotel and the truck attack that killed 14 people in New Orleans.

© Ronda Churchill/Reuters

Readers discuss for-profit health insurers and how to reform U.S. health care. Also: A police failure in New Orleans; making polluters pay.

This is what we have learned about a few of the 15 people who died when a man slammed a pickup into crowds on Bourbon Street.

© Edmund D. Fountain for The New York Times

Each year I celebrate the lives and works of artists with anniversaries. This coming year there’s a host of major artists, from the pioneering woman painter Sofonisba Anguissola to John Singer Sargent. Here’s the crowded calendar for the coming twelve months.

8 January: in 1925, George Wesley Bellows died. Born in 1882 and brought up in Columbus, Ohio, he was a co-founder of the Ashcan School with his gritty views of life in New York during the early twentieth century, and after the First World War became famous for painting boxing contests.

13 January: in 1625, Jan Brueghel the Elder died. He was born in 1568, son of Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and specialised in landscapes and floral still lifes. He collaborated with his friend Peter Paul Rubens in some of the finest paintings of the early seventeenth century.

13 March: in 1825, the Norwegian landscape painter Hans Fredrik Gude was born. He trained in Düsseldorf, and returned there to teach later, and then in Karlsruhe. In addition to magnificent views of Norway, he painted in Wales and Scotland, and died in 1903.

14 April: in 1925, John Singer Sargent died. He was born in 1856, and trained, worked and lived for much of his life in Europe, first as a sought-after portraitist in Paris, then in London. One of the most prolific and brilliant oil and watercolour artists of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, he had a particular affection for Venice.

17 April: in 1825, Henry Fuseli died. Born in 1741 as Johann Heinrich Füssli in Zürich, Switzerland, he fled to England in 1765, where he established his reputation. He specialised in ‘Gothic’ narratives, and was appointed Professor of Painting in the Royal Academy.

9 May: in 1825, James Collinson was born. He was a member of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, but resigned when he considered it was bringing Christianity into disrepute. He remained an outsider afterwards, and died in 1881.

8 July: in 1925, Robert Polhill Bevan died. Born in 1865, he trained in Paris and was invited to join the Camden Town Group by Walter Sickert. He had a particular interest in the remaining working horses in London, and painted their final years.

17 July: in 1925, Lovis Corinth died. Born Franz Heinrich Louis Corinth in 1858, in a village near what’s now Kaliningrad, he trained in Munich, and painted there and in Berlin. He was a founder member of first the Munich Secession then the Berlin Secession. When at the peak of his career in 1911 he suffered a major stroke, but successfully returned to painting.

28 July: in 1925, Léon Augustin Lhermitte died. Born in 1844, he trained in Paris and immediately specialised in painting rural life in realist style, and established an international reputation.

16 October: in 1925, the Norwegian painter Christian Krohg died. Born in 1852, he trained in Karlsruhe under Hans Gude, then in Berlin. He joined the Nordic Impressionists in Skagen, Denmark, and became a prolific social realist. He also wrote and worked as a journalist, and lived much of his career in Oslo, where he became the first director and professor of the State Academy of Art.

16 November: in 1625, Sofonisba Anguissola died. She was born in 1532 in Cremona, Lombardy, and became one of the first women artists to train in Italy. She enjoyed a long and highly successful career as a portrait painter, and even advised the young Anthony van Dyck.

20 November: in 1625, Paulus Potter was baptised. He was born into an artistic family, and was trained in his father’s workshop. He became one of the first specialist animal artists, but died from tuberculosis in 1654 at the age of only 28.

29 December: in 1925, Félix Vallotton died. Born in Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1865, he trained in Paris, and initially painted in a detailed realist style. He joined the Nabis, then afterwards painted a series of strange domestic interiors, followed by transcendental landscapes.

29 December: in 1825, Jacques-Louis David died. He was born in Paris in 1748, where he trained and rose to become the leading Neoclassical artist. He became involved with the French Revolution, and was close to Robespierre and other leaders, for which he was later imprisoned. He then aligned with Napoleon, and following his fall from power, David went into exile in Brussels.

I hope that you’ll join me in celebrating the lives and works of these painters in the coming year, and wish you a happy and successful New Year.

In the first of these two articles tracing the history of paintings of the Bay (or Gulf) of Naples, I reached the late work of Clarkson Frederick Stanfield in the 1850s. Just to recap and save you from having to look back, the Bay sweeps anti-clockwise through three-quarters of circle, from the island of Ischia in the north-west, through the great city of Naples in the north, past the slopes of Mount Vesuvius with the remains of Pompeii, to Sorrento in the south-east, and ends with the island of Capri in the south.

When Edgar Degas was in Italy between 1856-59, he made a number of landscape sketches, some in oil on paper, others like this View of Naples (1860) in watercolour. None seems to have been developed into anything more substantial, though, and he then switched to history painting and portraiture for the next decade or so.

After the rejection of his masterwork Florence from Bellosguardo, the Pre-Raphaelite landscape painter John Brett didn’t hang around in England, but went out to Italy again for the summer of 1863.

Massa, Bay of Naples (1863-64) is perhaps the most spectacular of the oil paintings that Brett completed during this Mediterranean campaign, and appears to have been painted from a vessel on the water.

He had travelled there on board the SS Scotia, although it’s unclear whether that ship served as his floating studio, or he may have transferred to another. The Scotia arrived in the Bay of Naples by 9 September, following which he went to stay in Sorrento, then Capri by November. It’s therefore likely that he continued to work on this finely detailed painting during the winter of 1863-64.

His work wasn’t in vain, as this transformed his career. Alfred Morrison bought this painting for the substantial sum of £250, and Brett was to benefit further from his generous patronage. By August the following year Brett could afford to buy his own yacht, and tried a change of tack: painting the British coast using studies made in front of the motif, and working on his finished paintings in his studio.

Alfred William Hunt’s Bay of Naples – A Land of Smouldering Fire (1871) was probably based on sketches and studies made during his tour of the Mediterranean during the winter of 1869-70. This view is taken from the top of the Vómero, a hill to the west of Naples. In the left foreground is a wall from the fortifications. In the far distance, across the bay, is Vesuvius, still partially lit by the rays of the setting sun.

The Italian Impressionist Giuseppe De Nittis painted this Seascape near Naples in 1873, early in his career.

The following year the Catalan artist Marià Fortuny painted Portici Beach on the waterfront of Naples. Tragically, he contracted malaria while painting there en plein air, and died from that when he was in Rome just a few months later.

Alessandro la Volpe was a local landscape painter, whose View of Capri from 1875 shows the island in a heat haze, from the hills above Sorrento.

Oswald Achenbach’s View of Capri (1884) shows the island from a similar vantage point in the hills above Sorrento. Achenbach was one of several members of the Düsseldorf School who visited Italy on multiple occasions during his career, ending with this extended visit that started in 1882.

Pierre-Auguste Renoir painted Bay of Naples, Evening during his stay of several weeks in Naples in 1881. He had been unable to paint when in Rome earlier, but once he arrived in this city was able to complete figurative works and two matching landscapes of the bay. Although it was recognised that these two views represent morning and evening, for some years they were confused, and this painting was thought incorrectly to show the bay in the morning.

In this painting of Sorrento from 1899, Ukrainian artist Mykhaylo Berkos shows trees growing in an old ruined building facing the Bay of Naples, on the Sorrentine Peninsula closest to Capri.

In his later years, the American landscape artist Charles Caryl Coleman lived on the nearby island of Capri. In 1906, at the start of Vesuvius’ eruption in April, he travelled to the mainland to paint A Shower of Ashes Upon Ottaviano in pastels. This shows the dust- and smoke-laden air of the Naples suburb Ottaviano at ten o’clock in the morning. Although Ottaviano was spared anything worse than dust and smoke in 1906, it was badly damaged during the volcano’s last substantial eruption in 1944.

My last two paintings are both by the Italian-American artist Joseph Stella, who came from the city of Muro Lucano, inland and to the east of Naples.

Stella’s Purissima from 1927 places a mystical woman between the two sacred Ibis birds. In the background is the Bay of Naples, with Mount Vesuvius at the right.

This undated landscape sketch of Vesuvius III probably dates from the same period, and looks south-east across the Bay of Naples, with Castel dell’Ovo nearest.

在 2017 年的日内瓦国际车展上，阿斯顿·马丁可谓大放异彩，不仅展出了当时热销的 Vantage，还带来了 Valkyrie 女武神及其 AMR Pro 版本的量产车型。

那是阿斯顿·马丁与红牛 F1 车队合作的结晶，运用了大量源自 F1 赛场的技术。它的车身设计由 F1 空气动力学专家艾德里安·纽维亲自操刀，还配有 DRS 可变尾翼系统、KERS 动能回收系统、推杆悬挂以及方程式风格的驾驶舱。

怎么看都是一辆四个轮子的 F1 赛车。

但那是一辆只属于少部分人的玩具，限量生产 150 台，这里面还算上了用于测试的原型车、测试车，以及 25 台赛道版本——真正量产的公路版本只有 99 辆。

就连阿斯顿·马丁自家 F1 车手阿隆索，也是在今年才有幸获得了属于他的 Valkyrie。

那么我们这些普通人，怎么办呢？阿斯顿·马丁给了我们一个更接地气的选择。

阿斯顿·马丁的「转型之作」

阿斯顿· 马丁 Valhalla，一款原定于 2021 年发布的中置超跑，在跳票了 3 年以后，终于成功问世。

虽然它依旧延续了 Valkyrie 的造型，但和「老前辈」比起来，Valhalla 已经「脚踏实地」了许多，总算不是那种一辈子都没机会见着一次的样子。

在产量上，Valhalla 也比 Valkyrie 的 99 辆多了不少，直接上到 999 辆，是一辆真正意义上的量产车型，就连阿斯顿·马丁执行主席劳伦斯·斯特罗尔也说：

作为阿斯顿·马丁首款量产的中置超跑，Valhalla 是这个超豪华品牌的真正转型之作。

老斯特罗尔口中的「转型」，不是别的，正是现在进行得如火如荼的「新能源转型」。

Valhalla 不仅是阿斯顿·马丁首款量产中置超跑，同时也是第一款采用 PHEV 动力形式的超跑，一台 4.0L V8 双涡轮增压发动机和三台电机共同组成了它的动力系统，能够在全时四驱的模式下迸发出 1079 马力和 1000Nm 的扭矩，2.5 秒破百，然后朝着 350km/h 这一限速目标不断逼近。

具体来看，虽然 Valhalla 足足比 Valkyrie 少了四个气缸，用上了阿斯顿·马丁有史以来最强大的配置。

这台 V8 引擎采用「Hot V」结构，拥有两个耦合紧密的高流量双涡管涡轮，还用上了干式油底壳以降低重心，内部的平面曲轴设计还可以提高发动机的响应速度。

在各种尖端配置的加持下，Valhalla 的发动机能够在 7200rpm 时爆发出 812 马力的峰值功率，动力完全输出到后轴。尾气则通过带有主动式阀门的轻量化排气，形成了可调节的纯正阿斯顿·马丁排气声浪。

前轴的动力则由两台 400V 的 150kW 电机提供，同时它们还负责扭矩矢量分配以提高牵引力和车头响应，并主动消除转向过度和转向不足，还能在换挡时提供扭矩填充来消除涡轮迟滞，纯电模式的驱动也是由这两台电机负责。

不过数据就有点不太好看了，在纯电模式下，Valhalla 的最高时速为 140km/h，纯电续航里程只有 15km——

为了不为车身增加不必要的负重，Valhalla 的电池容量只有 6.1kW。

在 Valhalla 的后桥，还有一台集成到变速器中的后置电机来充当启动发电机，且同样支持动力输出、提供扭矩填充，带来更猛烈且连续的加速；后轴上的电子限滑差速器也确保了车辆的可操控性。

它的变速箱也有点意思，是一个带电子倒挡的八速双离合变速箱。阿斯顿·马丁还创新性去掉了倒挡机构，借助电机来实现倒车功能，以减轻变速箱的重量。

对于超跑来说，在各个地方抠重量实属常规操作。阿斯顿·马丁这次用上了与 AMPT（阿斯顿·马丁性能技术公司）合作打造的碳纤维单体壳座舱，并为 Valhalla 配备了铝制副车架。不过，尽管采用了大量轻量化材料，但复杂的混动系统依旧让它的车重来到了 1655kg。

眼看车身是没办法了，阿斯顿·马丁便着手于优化簧下质量。

悬挂上，Valhalla 前悬用上了推杆悬挂（可透过碳纤维车身看到）。这样的悬架构成可以将减震器从前轮内侧的气流中移出——就像 F1 赛车那样，从而改善流向后侧冷却器的气流。

前后刹分别配备了 410mm 和 390mm 的前碳陶刹车盘，以此来抑制这辆千匹猛兽。另外还有两种不同的锻造轮毂，搭配专注于赛道的米其林 Pilot Sport Cup2 轮胎，号称减轻了 12kg 的簧下质量。

向一级方程式看齐

虽然恩佐·法拉利曾经说过「只有无法制造出优秀发动机的人才会研究空气动力学」，但在现代超跑里，空气动力学已经成为了一个必点的技能点。

虽然 Valhalla 的造型设计保守了许多，但我们依旧能够在它身上看到硕大的扩散器和用于发动机进气和变速箱冷却的车顶进气道。

阿斯顿·马丁表示，这一独特的车顶气道采用一体式歧管，全新的增压空气冷却器（ACAC）能够为 V8 发动机提供更低温度的空气，来压榨更强大的动力。

后方的主动式尾翼是主动式空气动力学的重要组成部分，最大可升高 255mm，在 240km/h 时产生 600kg 的下压力。

除了看得到的尾翼，还有一个主动式前翼隐藏在 Valhalla 的格栅后方，这辆车的制动不仅仅是依靠与柏油路面的接触，在驾驶员大力制动时，前后扰流板会在 0.5 秒内协同工作，将下压力的压力中心向后移动，提供极致的制动性能和更高的稳定性。

这套主动空气动力学系统不仅可以在制动时发挥作用，在「赛道模式」下，前后扰流板都会活跃起来，通过不断改变姿态来优化下压力和车身平衡。

当你不需要它们时，它们也能完美收起，不破坏优雅的车身线条。

此外，Valhalla 还直接照搬了 F1 赛车的侧裙设计，用上了 5 个涡流发生器。它的车门也凹成了一个风道，将气流引导至进气口。马丁表示，即便没有展开尾翼，它的车身也有着极好的启动效应。

用转动的方式打开旋翼式车门，你会发现，在 Valhalla 内部，阿斯顿·马丁这次也换了一个思路。

和之前的 Vantage、Vanquish 都不同，Valhalla 的座位明显紧凑了不少，驾驶座更靠近车辆中线，臀高比也更低，脚跟几乎与臀部齐平。马丁说，这套座椅尽可能地还原了 F1 赛车的坐姿，副仪表台上的各种按钮也都触手可及。

我们渴望捕捉驾驶体验中的纯粹情感。

阿斯顿·马丁深知，Valhalla 作为一款中置引擎超级跑车，其驾驶体验的重要性远超传统 GT 车型。因此，在 Valhalla 的内饰设计中，驾驶感受被置于至高的地位，而豪华感则退居其次，为纯粹的驾驶激情让路。

车载娱乐系统就没什么好介绍的了，反正都是要接 CarPlay 的。

ONE MORE THING

其实除了 Valkyrie，在开头提到的 2019 年日内瓦车展上，阿斯顿·马丁还发布了一台叫 Vanquish Vision 的概念车。

官方表示，这辆概念车将会成为阿斯顿·马丁品牌首款入门级中置后驱超跑，对标当时的法拉利 F8 Tributo、兰博基尼 Huracán 等车型。

它虽然不会像 Valhalla 那样用上这么多的碳纤维，但也会采用铝合金车体，并延续现有的外部造型，而且还更加内敛优雅。

更重要的是，这辆入门车大概率不会限量，如果你不小心错过了 999 辆 Valhalla 里的其中一辆，那么不妨留意一下这辆车。阿斯顿·马丁计划在 2022 年推出它的量产版本。

我知道，现在是 2024 年 12 月。再等等吧，Valhalla 跳票了 3 年才出来，这辆更便宜的小车，自然也就延后了。

#欢迎关注爱范儿官方微信公众号：爱范儿（微信号：ifanr），更多精彩内容第一时间为您奉上。

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Your holiday baking wouldn’t be the same without it.

Few modern Christmas traditions have their origin in Gospel accounts of the Nativity. Read those, and you’ll see no mention of the ox and ass that appear inside the shed depicted widely over much the last 1,600 years. Although literary sources for them don’t appear until the eighth century, they started to feature in visual art in about 400 CE, and became frequent in miniatures in manuscripts from the tenth century onwards.

It’s probably Duccio’s Nativity with the Prophets Isaiah and Ezekiel from 1308-11 that formed the prototype for paintings over the following centuries, with its humble shed set into rock, the Holy Family, attendant ox, ass and sheep, shepherds and angels. This triptych was installed at the high altar in the cathedral of Siena, Italy, on 30 June 1311, and remained there for nearly two centuries, only being removed in 1506.

By the dawn of the nineteenth century, artists like William Blake were departing from that well-worn tradition.

By comparison, Blake’s Nativity from 1799-1800 is extraordinary. On the left, Joseph supports the Virgin Mary, who appears to have fainted. Jesus has somehow sprung from her womb, and hovers in mid-air, arms outstretched as if preparing for crucifixion. On the right, Mary’s older cousin Elisabeth greets the infant with her own son John the Baptist on her lap. Although most unconventional, at the top right Blake still includes the familiar oxen, and a cross or star burns bright through the window at the top.

Jean-Léon Gérôme was one of the first to set the traditional Nativity scene inside a different context, as a reminder of the events that were taking place at the eastern end of the Mediterranean during the reign of the Roman Emperor Augustus. In The Age of Augustus, the Birth of Christ (c 1852-54), the emperor sits on his throne, overseeing a huge gathering of people from all over his empire. Grouped in the foreground in a quotation from a conventional nativity is the Holy Family, whose infant son was to transform the Roman Empire in the centuries to come.

Later in the nineteenth century, progressive artists interpreted the traditions amid more contemporary surroundings.

Fritz von Uhde’s Sacred Night triptych, painted in 1888-89, shows three scenes from his contemporary recasting. In the centre is a modern interpretation of the classic Virgin Mary and Child, with the adoration of the magi on the left, and a delightful angelic choir singing amid the barn’s rafters on the right.

Uhde’s undated Christmas Night concentrates on the Nativity, in another atmospheric interpretation of the Holy Family of Joseph, the infant Christ, and the Virgin Mary in their improvised accommodation in Bethlehem.

Maurice Denis also transcribed several Biblical narratives into more recent settings. One of his most impressive is this thoroughly modern Nativity from 1894, where the birth of Jesus takes place in a contemporary French town. However, the artist couldn’t omit the traditional ox and ass behind the Holy Family, and the guiding star still burns bright in the sky.

Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale’s watercolour of The Nativity is another contemporary interpretation of the cowshed, singular in the dress of the mother attending to her infant. Joseph is absent, though, as is the traditional ass or donkey.

Joseph Stella’s Crèche from 1929-33 is an ingenious framing. At its centre is the Nativity crib so often shown at Christmas, with an audience who might have been drawn from the artist’s home city in Italy, playing traditional bagpipes in homage.

That conveniently leads us to tomorrow’s final article covering paintings of the Christmas festival. Until then, I wish you a very merry Christmas!

A reporter and photographer documented life in New York City’s shelter system for migrants, through the eyes of those living there.

The continent’s parlous economy and ascendant far right foretell a grim future.

The association between two plants, holly and ivy, with the feast of Christmas appears peculiarly British, and best expressed in the traditional carol The Holly and the Ivy. Apparently, holly has been a symbolic reference to Jesus Christ since the Middle Ages, now explained by its red berries representing the drops of blood of the crucifixion, and the crown of thorns worn by Jesus. Ivy then forms a symbolic reference to Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary.

This is seen in cameo in two paintings by British artists of the nineteenth century.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti painted a couple of works on and about Christmas, of which A Christmas Carol from 1867 is probably the more interesting. His model is Ellen Smith, described as a ‘laundry girl’, who is dressed in items from the artist’s collection. There are several allusions to Christmas, particularly the Virgin and Child just above the model’s face, and a sprig of holly with its red berries at the end of her musical instrument.

Sophie Gengembre Anderson’s undated Christmas Time – Here’s The Gobbler! includes a larger spray of holly on the wall at the top right.

Otherwise, holly is only exceptionally identifiable in paintings, and the only reference I have found is in a single work by James Tissot, where it appears together with ivy, but not in reference to Christmas.

Tissot painted The Farewells soon after his flight to London following the Franco-Prussian War and Paris Commune. This couple, separated by the iron rails of a closed gate, are in late eighteenth century dress. The man stares intently at the woman, his gloved left hand resting on the spikes along the top of the gate, and his ungloved right hand grasps her left. She plays idly with her clothing with her other hand, and looks down, towards their hands.

Reading her clothing, she is plainly dressed, implying she is perhaps a governess. A pair of scissors suspended by string on her left side would fit with that, and they’re also symbols of the parting taking place. This is reinforced by the autumn season, and dead leaves at the lower edge of the canvas. However, there is some hope if its floral symbols are accurate: ivy in the lower left is indicative of fidelity and marriage, while holly at the right invokes hope and passion.

Ivy has longer and more extensive traditions throughout European painting, although it too is only exceptionally identifiable.

In mythology, a thyrsus or thyrsos is a form of staff or even spear decorated with plant matter. In its strictest form, it should be a wand made from the giant fennel plant, decorated with ivy leaves and tipped with a pine cone or artichoke. It’s almost invariably an attribute of the god Dionysus (Roman Bacchus), and his devotees, maenads or bacchantes. It’s thus associated with prosperity, fertility and their over-indulgence in the form of hedonism. In the extreme, it can be tipped with a metal point and used as a club.

Annibale Carracci’s Triumph of Bacchus and Ariadne (1597-1602) is a marvellous fresco on a ceiling in the Palazzo Farnese in Rome. Dionysus is sat in his chariot with his thyrsus, here a long staff wound with ivy leaves but without any tip. Although a feature of many other paintings, this is one of very few decorated with ivy.

Ivy also makes an appearance in a not dissimilar painting with open narrative, this time by Philip Hermogenes Calderon in 1856.

Calderon’s Broken Vows is an early ‘problem picture’. A beautiful young woman, displaying her wedding ring, stands with her eyes closed, clutching a symbolic ‘heart’ area on her chest to indicate that her love life is in trouble. On the ground near the hem of her dress is a discarded necklace or ‘charm’ bracelet. The ivy-covered wall behind her would normally indicate lasting love, which was her aspiration.

A set of initials are carved on the fence, and on the other side a young man holds a small red flower in front of his forehead, which a young woman is trying to grasp with her right hand. The wooden fence appears tatty, and has holes in it indicating its more transient nature, and affording glimpses of the couple behind, but only tantalisingly small sections of their faces.

Calderon here deliberately introduces considerable ambiguity. The eyes of the shorter person behind the fence are carefully occluded, leaving their gender open to speculation. Most viewers are likely to conclude that the taller figure behind the fence is the unfaithful husband of the woman in front, but that requires making assumptions that aren’t supported by visual clues. Whose vows are being broken? Calderon invites us to speculate.

Like laurel, ivy can also be worked into a crown.

Francisco Pradilla’s watercolour of A Flute Player Crowned with Ivy is a delightful example from 1880. But it took Pierre Puvis de Chavannes to envisage ivy being used instead of a length of rope.

In Puvis’ Fantasy from 1866, one of the two people in this idyllic wooded landscape is using a length of ivy to school a winged white horse, either Pegasus or a hippogriff.

Although seldom clearly identifiable in landscape paintings of trees, one of Paul Nash’s last conventional landscapes is an exception.

Oxenbridge Pond from 1927-28 shows a pond at Oxenbridge Farmhouse, Iden, not far from the artist’s home. Patterns of brushstrokes are assembled into the textures of foliage, ivy covering a tree-trunk, even the lichens and moss on the trunk closest to the viewer, at the right edge.

Reference

Wikipedia on the carol The Holly and the Ivy.

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