Paintings of scenes from the hagiographies of Christian saints have been enduring favourites, particularly for churches dedicated to that saint, and for sponsors named after them. The lives of some saints are sufficiently complicated as to offer the artist a choice of different scenes, but in the case of Saint Anthony the Great (of Egypt, the Abbot, etc.), paintings are almost confined to his temptation by the devil.

Saint Anthony was born in 251 CE to wealthy parents in Lower Egypt. His parents died when he was 18. He then became an evangelical Christian, and gave his inheritance away to follow an ascetic life. For fifteen years he lived as a hermit. During this time the devil fought with him, afflicting him with boredom, laziness, and dreams of lustful women, before beating him unconscious.

Friends found him and brought him back to health, so he returned to the desert for another twenty years. This time the devil afflicted him with visions of wild beasts, snakes and scorpions, but again he fought back, eventually emerging serene and healthy. He went to Alexandria during the persecution of Christians there, to comfort those in prison. He returned to the desert, where he built a monastic system with his followers.

His attributes are a bell, a pig, a book, the Tau cross (like a capital T), sometimes with a bell pendant. He is commonly shown being tempted in a wilderness, often by naked women, and is associated with fire (“Saint Anthony’s Fire”).

The visionary nature of his temptation, and the temptations offered him, give a painter a wonderful opportunity to exercise their imagination, and to include content that might otherwise be excluded from places of worship. This weekend I show a selection of paintings of this unique story. This article covers paintings before 1650, and the next will cover the period from 1660 to the early twentieth century.

Painted in 1430-32, Stefano di Giovanni’s St Antony Beaten by the Devils identifies the saint by his Tau crucifix. Three devils, clearly fallen angels by their wings, are beating him with clubs. Those devils are fairly conventional figures, part animal and part man, with horns.

Michelangelo’s The Torment of Saint Anthony (c 1487–88) continues the theme. Saint Anthony is now being held aloft by ten or so devils, including a weird fish with many spines and a trunk-like snout. The devil at the lower left of the group has breasts and a face in its perineum, which almost makes it double-ended.

We then reach a watershed in the unique paintings of Hieronymus Bosch. Records make it clear that he painted several different versions of the Temptation of Saint Anthony, of which it appears that the Lisbon triptych from about 1500-10 is the sole complete survivor, and there’s also the remains of another in a fragment in Kansas City.

Inside the triptych now in Lisbon, the left panel shows Saint Anthony being assisted by three others, as he crosses a small wooden bridge, in a state of complete exhaustion, perhaps after being beaten unconscious by the devil. In the countryside around that group are weird human and portmanteau animal figures. In the sky above, Saint Anthony is seen again, being flown around on the back of another invented animal.

The centre panel shows Saint Anthony in the middle, kneeling in prayer and surrounded by bizarre figures, creatures, and objects, as if in a vision of temptation. In the background a town is burning.

The foreground shows more scenes involving bizarre figures, creatures, and objects. At the left, a jumble of them emerges from the huge shell of a strawberry-like fruit. One of those figures is astride a goose, and playing a harp. In the middle is a small pond, in which a hybrid between a fish and a boat is floating, and a man is seen inside another strange creature.

The right panel shows Saint Anthony seated, with a book open in front of him. He is again surrounded by strange figures and creatures from a vision of temptation. The background shows a prominent windmill and towers, behind which is a wintry landscape with snow on the ground.

In the foreground, in front of the saint, is a circular table, half-covered with a white tablecloth. The table is supported by naked human figures, one of whom has his left foot in a large pot. Another wears an armoured glove brandishing a heavy scimitar, but a creature has passed a thin-bladed sword through its neck. At the left edge of the table, another naked human is blowing a curiously curved trumpet. To the right an abdomen with ears and legs, wrapped in a red cloth hat, has a sword stuck into it.

Matthias Grünewald’s slightly later diptych provides useful contrast between the conventional Visit of St Anthony to St Paul on the left, and his Temptation of St Anthony (c 1515) on the right. These daemons are different from Bosch’s, but are nevertheless highly imaginative in their appearance.

The outside of the left panel of Niklaus Manuel’s Antonius altar shows Demons Tormenting St. Anthony (1520). Its daemons, and the wooden clubs with which they attack the saint, are inventive, but still rooted in Stefano di Giovanni’s of a century before.

Lucas van Leyden’s painting of about 1530 appears to have been directly influenced by Bosch. Leading its small procession of strange creatures is a man with a bird’s head, and a long bill, wearing ice-skates, clearly derived from the creature bearing a note in the foreground of the left wing of Bosch’s triptych. There are several other familiar features in those creatures, but the rest of the painting is more conventional.

By about 1540, Cornelis Massijs was still content to paint an almost completely realist image, showing Saint Anthony with two naked women, and another who may be their procuress. But once again there are some small decorations – a pot-bellied man, a creature with an inverted funnel on its head, and a little group at the right – that seem to have invaded from the mind of Bosch.

When we reach Pieter Coecke van Aelst in 1543-1550, the emphasis has changed completely. There are still three normal human figures, of the saint, a tempting nude, and her procuress behind, but the rest of the painting is filled with Bosch derivatives, such as the nun with wings biting someone’s leg, in the foreground. The burning town also makes an appearance in the left distance.

Paolo Veronese’s interpretation from 1552-53 is difficult to read, but the saint is almost completely obscured under a well-muscled devil and a woman whose left breast is exposed. Anthony is sprawled on his back, in his brown habit, his left hand fending off the woman’s hand, his right clutching a book. The devil is holding him down with his left hand, and about to strike him with a club held in his right.

Pieter Huys’s painting of 1577 is more obviously a derivative from Bosch. Saint Anthony could almost have been copied from one of the earlier paintings, and most of the strange figures and creatures have been borrowed and re-interpreted. Musical instruments such as the lute and harp make an appearance, but many of the symbols have been changed. For example, where Bosch’s triptych features round tables with a white cloth, Huys opts for a rectangular table, and the background has a town burning even more violently.

Maerten de Vos’s vision of 1591-4 follows a more traditional line again, although it contains some strange elements that appear more personal. He shows one Saint Anthony apparently carrying another, unconscious Saint Anthony in his arms, rather than the saint supported by friends. There’s a third version of the saint flying in the air, surrounded by daemons, too. That unconscious saint points to a pig, a recognised attribute, but nearby is a pair of lions. One of the more Bosch-like creatures in the right foreground is a portmanteau of human and bird, wears an inverted funnel on its head, and is reading sheet music.

Just a century after Bosch painted his triptych, Jan Brueghel the Elder combines a cavalcade of more traditional figures with a foreground of more bizarre ones derived from Bosch, including an old person’s head with four human legs, and a bird with two heads, one of a cockerel and the other a duck with a clarinet-like bill. A second image of the saint appears in the sky, surrounded by daemons, and a church is on fire in the background.

By about 1650, Joos van Craesbeeck was using some of Bosch’s iconography with his own developments. The use of a human head as a container is probably derived from Bosch’s tree-man and similar devices, but here has become even more realistic. To the right of that, a naked man sits facing backwards on a duck-horse: he is playing a stringed musical instrument, and wearing an inverted funnel on his head. Van Craesbeeck’s humans seem to have grown small red tails too. Oddly, van Craesbeeck doesn’t place the Greek letter Tau on the saint’s robes, but the Roman letter A, perhaps monogrammed with Tau. That appears unique to this painting.

Environmental design interventions play a subtle role in helping the city reduce gun violence.

During the first few years of the twentieth century, the former Nabi painter and print-maker Félix Vallotton had concentrated on painting mysterious interiors, as well as portraits and other figurative works.

By 1907, when he painted this Orientalist Turkish Bath, his figures had become modern in appearance. With their tied-up hair, it would be easy to mistake this as a painting from fifty years later.

That same year, he started painting scenes from classical myth, here Andromeda Standing with Perseus (1907). This shows the sea monster Cetus heading for a defenceless Andromeda, as hero Perseus charges to her aid through a cleft in the black sky. He has lost his classical attribute of the head of Medusa, and here rides the winged horse Pegasus while holding a knight’s lance. The horse’s wings form an edge to the black sky as it carves through the air. Each figure is colour coded: green for the sea monster, pink for the near-victim, and blue for the hero, against a straw-coloured sea.

The following year, he again broke with convention in his painting of The Rape of Europa (1908). In this clean and simplified account, we look out to sea as the naked Europa clambers onto the back of Jupiter disguised as a brown bull. Given the long-established literary and artistic tradition of the bull being white, this can only have been a deliberate choice on his part.

In addition to mythological narratives, Vallotton started painting more landscapes, some of which are unusual and innovative, like La Mare, Honfleur (1909), showing a pond at night near the north coastal town of Honfleur. The black plane of the water has ripples travelling from a point at the right edge. In the left foreground is a stand of long grass and weeds bowed over in an arc, and behind the blossom on a tree glows in the dark.

Vallotton returned to the story of Perseus and Andromeda in 1910, in his Perseus Killing the Dragon, which is no sequel to his earlier work. Here he catches the height of peripateia and action, as Perseus is slaying Cetus. Andromeda, long freed from her chains, squats, her back towards the action, at the far left. Her face shows a grimace of slightly anxious disgust towards the monster. Perseus is also completely naked, with no sign of winged sandals, helmet of Hades, or any bag containing Medusa’s head. He is braced in a diagonal, his arms reaching up to exert maximum thrust through the shaft of a spear impaling Cetus through the head. The monster is shown as an alligator, its fangs bared from an open mouth.

In Sauciness from 1911, we see a young woman still undressed in her white chemise, her unmade bed behind. She looks at herself in the mirror of a small dressing table, wondering what to wear.

His Honfleur in Fog from 1911 isn’t a conventional view of this small port on the north French coast, as it looks down from Mont-Joli to the west of the town centre. It captures exactly the sort of transient effects that had been the concern of Impressionism, but in Vallotton’s distinctive style.

In 1913, Vallotton returned to transient atmospheric effects in Night With Light Fog. Influenced by his print-making, he distils this scene into simple geometry, with almost two-thirds of his canvas the vague purple forms of the town and sky, and three simple bands below it. The lone lamppost and figure at the extreme left restore context.

He painted this Self-portrait in a Dressing Gown at a turning point in 1914, just as the world was about to enter the Great War, and he was to enter his fifties, the start of the next and final article in this account of his career and art.

The loss of federal funding forced a difficult decision, the executive director of Arkansas TV said: Cut PBS, or go off the air entirely.

© Kristoffer Tripplaar/Sipa, via AP Images

Throughout much of Europe, bread has been a staple food for the whole of recorded history, and has become a symbol of life in both language and visual art.

For the classical civilisations of the Mediterranean, this was embodied in the goddess of Jean-François Millet’s Ceres (The Summer) from about 1864-65. She stands, her breasts swollen and ready for lactation, her hair adorned with ripe ears of wheat, a sickle in her right hand to cut the harvest, and a traditional winnow to separate grain from chaff in her left hand. At her feet is a basketful of bread, with ground flour and cut sheaves of wheat behind. The background shows the wheat harvest in full swing, right back to a group of grain- or hay-stacks and an attendant wagon in the distance.

Bread and its sharing is one of the central symbols of Christian beliefs, most notably in the Last Supper, the meal shared by Christ with his disciples before his crucifixion.

The most famous painting of The Last Supper, and one of the best-known works in the European canon, is of course Leonardo da Vinci’s. Giampietrino’s copy from about 1520 gives the closest impression today of what the original must have looked like. Even this copy has been horribly mutilated: the upper third was cut off, and its width reduced, but at least what remains gives a better idea of the original’s appearance.

Leonardo’s composition wasn’t entirely revolutionary for the time. Previous paintings of The Last Supper had spread the apostles along the length of a table, with Christ at its centre. However, Judas Iscariot was usually placed alone on the near side, his back to the viewer, and sometimes with his bag of silver visible behind his back.

Leonardo shows the moment of surprise and denial when Christ announces that one of those sat around the table would betray him. In this, he was perhaps the first artist to assemble the apostles into small groups, a feature that has been repeated in innumerable images following this. Arrayed along the front of the table is a series of round bread rolls and small glasses of red wine.

After his crucifixion and resurrection, Christ appeared several times to his disciples. In The Supper at Emmaus, painted here by Paolo Veronese, two disciples had travelled on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus as pilgrims, and recognised Christ as he “sat at meat with them, he took bread, and blessed it, and brake, and gave it to them.”

The painting contains separate passages to cue this narrative: on the far left is an asynchronous ‘flashback’ referring to the journey to Emmaus. Christ is in the centre of the painting, identified by his halo, and in the midst of breaking bread. With him at the table are the two bearded figures of the disciples, dressed as pilgrims and bearing staves. On Christ’s right is a servant, acting as waiter to the group. The onlookers dressed in contemporary costume are an aristocratic Italian family of the day, whose portraits are combined.

Christian rites reiterate the Last Supper in Eucharist, and the blessing of bread plays other roles in its religious ceremonies.

Mykola Pymonenko’s Waiting for the Blessing (1891) shows the scene at a country church in Ukraine at dawn on Easter Sunday. The local population is crowding inside, while the women gather with their Paska, traditional ornamental bread that must be blessed before it can be eaten as a brunch.

Bread appears elsewhere as a symbol of life, particularly in the context of poverty and charity.

Edmund Blair Leighton’s Charity of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary from about 1895 shows a famous woman who built a hospital where she personally served the sick. Born in 1207, she died in 1231 at the age of only twenty-four. Leighton doesn’t show her in a nursing role, though, but handing out loaves to feed the poor.

Elizabeth Nourse painted some social realist works looking at the lives of the rural poor. Among these is The Family Meal from 1891, which was awarded a medal at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and is seen here as an engraving in its catalogue. Parents sit with their two young children at an almost bare table. Their meal consists of a pot of soup and the remains of a loaf of what appears to be stale bread. The older child looks expectantly at her mother, who stares despondently at the table. Her husband stares down at his empty bowl.

The wonderfully named Philip Hermogenes Calderon painted his “Lord, Thy Will Be Done” in 1855. This quotation is derived from the Gospel account of what became the Lord’s Prayer, and has subsequently been used on many Christian religious occasions.

A young mother cradles her baby on her lap, looking up to the left. She’s living in difficult circumstances, but isn’t destitute, and wears a wedding ring on her left hand. The carpet is badly worn, and the coal scuttle empty, but there’s a loaf of bread on the table: she has her ‘daily bread’, another reference to the Lord’s Prayer. A portrait of a fine young man hangs above the mantlepiece, indicating her husband and the baby’s father is currently absent on military service. Several issues of The Times newspaper are scattered on the floor at the right, as if the woman has been following news of a military campaign overseas. Under the table is a letter, most probably from her husband.

Christian Krohg’s The Struggle for Existence, also translated as The Struggle for Survival from 1889 shows Karl Johan Street in Oslo in the depths of winter, almost deserted except for a tight-packed crowd of poor women and children queuing for free bread. These people are wrapped up in patched and tatty clothing, clutching baskets and other containers in which to put the food. A disembodied hand is passing a single bread roll out to them, from within the pillars at the left edge. That was yesterday’s bread; now stale, the baker is giving it away only because he cannot sell it.

Next week I will show paintings of bread as food.

If he learns the right lessons, the mayor-elect could pull off something remarkable.

The illuminated manuscript, confiscated from the Rothschild banking dynasty during the Holocaust, is expected to draw at least $5 million.

Painting in the Dutch Republic during the Golden Age was rich in landscapes, interiors and images of everyday life, but didn’t abandon storytelling. Many of Rembrandt’s finest works are religious narratives and tales drawn from classical mythology and history. This article shows a selection of paintings by the less famous, and how their stories extended beyond those that had been most popular in the Renaissance.

The Annunciation (1667) is a large canvas, and among the few religious paintings that Adriaen van de Velde made following his marriage to a Catholic woman, and his conversion to Catholicism. Although the angel is a little awkward, it seems hard to believe that this was painted by a landscape specialist.

Three years later, van de Velde painted a classical myth in his superb Vertumnus and Pomona (1670). Vertumnus was the Roman god of seasons and change, who could assume whatever form he wished. Book fourteen of Ovid’s Metamorphoses tells the story of his transformation into the form of an old woman, seen here on the left, so that he could gain entry to Pomona’s orchard and seduce her. Sadly, the yellow he used to mix greens has faded in parts, leaving some of his vegetation blue.

Jan Lievens’ painting of Quintus Fabius Maximus from 1656 may refer to this Roman’s victory at Tarentum, as told in Plutarch’s Lives. The great Carthaginian general Hannibal was only five miles away at the time of the Roman repossession of Tarentum, and this made Hannibal realise the impossibility of mastering Italy.

Paintings of fables, that had already started to become popular among Flemish artists at this time, appeared in the Republic to the north. Among them was the story of the Satyr and the Traveller, or the Man and the Satyr. A man made friends with a satyr; when the man’s hands were cold, he blew on them to warm them up. When the two were eating together, the man blew on his hot food in order to cool it down. The satyr decided that he couldn’t trust a creature whose breath blew both hot and cold, so broke off their friendship.

In 1653, Constantijn à Renesse, a former pupil of Rembrandt, painted his version of this fable in Satyr at the Peasant’s House. This shows one of the family blowing on the hot food in their spoon, although at this stage the satyr hasn’t reacted to the contradiction.

Jan Steen, in his telling of The Satyr and the Peasant “Who Blows Hot and Cold” from about 1660, gives a clearer account, with the satyr looking worried at the viewer, as a man (still wearing his hat) blows on a bowl of hot stew. He also pays attention to delightful details such as the cat skulking under the table, and a rich supporting cast.

Steen went on to paint two unusual accounts of what happened in schools across country districts in the Republic.

His The Village School from about 1665 shows physical punishment in a contemporary school. The child at the right holds out a hand for teacher to strike it with a wooden spoon, and is already wiping tears from his eyes. A girl in the middle of the canvas is grimacing in sympathy.

A few years later, Steen painted a scene in a larger and more chaotic classroom, in The Village School from about 1670. Although there are two staff sat at the teachers’ desk, the man is distracted, perhaps in cutting himself a fresh quill. The woman teacher sat next to him is engaged in explaining something to a pupil. Around them, all hell is breaking loose. In the distance, a boy is stood on one of the trestle tables. Older children are teaching younger ones, and a small group at a table at the right are trying to write while others get up to mischief. One younger child in the middle of the foreground has fallen asleep against a hat.

Gerrit Dou approaches social realism in his detailed account of The Young Mother from 1658. As she sits at her needlework, her child is attended in their wickerwork crib by a young nurse. Around them is an eclectic collection of objects, from a large cabbage, hanging game and a bundle of carrots at the right, to a bird cage and an upholstered chair at the left. Suspended above them is a chandelier, and a wooden spiral staircase ascends to the next floor. This family appears to be living in affluent squalor.

There was even an anthropomorphic fad for paintings showing gatherings of birds ‘singing’ together, and I think Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s Concert of the Birds from 1670 is probably the best example of those entertaining paintings.

The holidays became easier when my children could meaningfully participate in religious and household rituals.

Centuries of experience with painting using oil paints have proved the importance of a robust support and a ground that isolates the paint layer from its support. Older use of wood panels with a gesso ground consisting largely of gypsum or chalk ensured the paint layer wouldn’t be subjected to mechanical stress, and would remain isolated from the underlying wood. Canvases became popular because of their relative lightness particularly in larger sizes, but still require an isolating ground layer both to protect the canvas from damage by the paint, and to prevent discolouration of the paint.

When sketching in oils in front of the motif became increasingly popular in the late eighteenth century, those paintings weren’t intended for public view, but as an aid for the artist when composing finished paintings in the studio. Rather than gather hundreds of small oil sketched on canvas or panels, the first plein air painters usually used paper or cardboard as support and ground. Subsequently, when their studios were sold off following their death, surviving oil sketches were usually laid on canvas for preservation and display.

Although he probably wasn’t the first to compile a library of oil sketches, those gathered by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes when he was painting in the Roman Campagna in the 1780s are among the most brilliant. This untitled view of the countryside near Rome is thought to have been painted in about 1783.

At about the same time, the Welsh painter Thomas Jones was doing the same thing in and around Naples as well. This tiny view of A Wall in Naples was painted in about 1782, and is now one of the gems in London’s National Gallery. Below is a detail.

Jones was taught by the Welsh artist Richard Wilson, but none of his oil sketches have survived. Jones’ Capella Nuova outside the Porta di Chiaja, Naples is another example that’s significantly larger, and now in the Tate Gallery.

Valenciennes went on to assemble a large library of his oil sketches that he used for his studio paintings following his return to Paris. He was admitted to the Academy in 1787, published an influential manual of perspective and painting in 1799, and became Professor of Perspective at l’École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1812.

Among the aspiring young landscape painters who followed in the footsteps of Valenciennes was Camille Corot, who was taught by Achille Etna Michallon, who in turn had been taught by Valenciennes. Corot painted in the Roman Campagna between 1825-28, using the same techniques of applying his oil paint direct to sheets of paper.

Corot painted this View of Rome: The Bridge and Castel Sant’Angelo with the Cupola of St. Peter’s in 1826-27. This is one of the best-known bridges over the River Tiber, and not far from the centre of the city. The view is taken from the north-east of the bridge, on the ‘left’ bank, probably close to the Piazza di Ponte Umberto I, looking towards the south-west (‘right’ bank). The painting is sketchy rather than finely finished, and appears to have been painted en plein air onto a sheet of paper that has subsequently been laid on canvas.

This View of the Convent of S. Onofrio on the Janiculum, Rome is another from Corot’s first campaign in Rome.

Corot’s years in Italy were formative in his own development, and one of the key elements he put in place to hand on to Camille Pissarro and other Impressionists. The Bridge at Narni is one of his finest oil sketches.

Others followed Valenciennes’ instructions, among them Carl Blechen, a brilliant German landscape painter who sketched the Tiberius Rocks, Capri during a visit in 1828-29, again on paper.

Blechen’s late oil sketch of A Scaffold in a Storm was painted in about 1835, shortly before he succumbed to severe depression. This anticipates many elements of Impressionism: it appears to have been executed rapidly in front of the motif (although a view from his studio over Berlin and Brandenburg), with many brush-strokes plainly visible; details are composed of stylised marks; it is an everyday if not banal subject, with an informal composition.

However, the French Impressionists seldom if ever sketched in oils on paper, as their paintings made in front of the motif were intended to be sold to and viewed by the public, for which paper wasn’t considered suitable. Times had changed.

Readers respond to Michelle Cottle’s essay about her experience with her parents and the growing caregiver crisis.

Some stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron attained fame less in the original, more in their later retelling. A good example is the tragic tale of Lisabetta related by Filomena on the fourth day, when it was the fifth about those whose love ended unhappily.

In 1818, the British poet John Keats (1795-1821) wrote his version, titled Isabella, or the Pot of Basil, which was published two years later, shortly after the poet’s untimely death at the age of just twenty-five, and it quickly became one of his most popular works. Here I will tell Boccaccio’s original, using his version of the names, being mindful that Keats called his leading lady Isabella rather than Boccaccio’s Lisabetta. Her lover’s name, common to both accounts, is Lorenzo.

Following the death of a rich merchant of Messina, his three sons inherited his riches, while their sister remained unmarried despite her beauty and grace. Lisabetta and Lorenzo, a Pisan who directed operations in one of the family’s trading establishments, fell in love with one another, and their relationship was consummated.

The couple tried to keep their affair secret, but one night one of her brothers saw her making her way to Lorenzo’s bedroom, and Lisabetta remained unaware of her discovery. Her brother was distressed, but decided to keep quiet, and to discuss it with his brothers next morning.

The following day, the brothers decided that they would also keep quiet until the opportunity arose to end their sister’s relationship. Some time later they pretended they were going to the country for pleasure, and took Lorenzo with them. When they reached an isolated location, they murdered Lorenzo and buried his body. They then told their sister that they had sent him away on a trading mission.

Lisabetta was anxious for her lover’s return, and persistently asked her brothers for news of him. Eventually, one of them rebuked her for this nagging, so she stopped mentioning him altogether, but each night kept repeating his name and pining for him. One night, having finally fallen asleep in tears, she saw him in a dream, in which he said that her brothers had murdered him, and revealed where his body was buried.

In her grief, Lisabetta obtained the permission of her brothers to go to the country for pleasure. Once she had located where she thought Lorenzo was buried, she quickly found his corpse, which remarkably showed no signs of decay. As she couldn’t move his whole body for more appropriate burial, she cut off his head and concealed it in a towel.

When she returned home, Lisabetta cried greatly over Lorenzo’s head, washing it with her tears, then wrapped it in cloth and put it in a large pot. She covered it with soil and in that planted some sprigs of basil. These she watered daily with her tears, as she sat constantly beside the pot in between bouts of crying over it. As a result, the basil grew strong and lush, and richly fragrant.

William Holman Hunt’s Isabella and the Pot of Basil from 1867 is intricately detailed, with several references to the story, such as the relief of a skull on the side of the pot, a red rose on a tray by Lisabetta’s left foot, and a silver watering can at the bottom right. Behind her is the image of a bedroom, possibly showing Lorenzo coming to her in a flashback to their affair.

Joseph Severn’s Isabella, or the Pot of Basil from 1877 appears remarkably high in chroma, and shows Lisabetta fondly embracing the pot and crying over the basil. Severn had been a personal friend of John Keats, and painted this just a couple of years before his own death.

Edward Reginald Frampton’s Isabella, or the Pot of Basil was probably painted towards the end of the nineteenth century, or possibly in the early twentieth. Lisabetta is kneeling before her pot of basil at an altar, with a crucifix behind.

Ricciardo Meacci’s watercolour of Isabella and the Pot of Basil from 1890 shows Lisabetta embracing her pot of basil, as her three brothers watch with growing anger at her behaviour.

Her brothers began to suspect something, so had the pot removed from her room. This deepened their sister’s grief, and she kept asking after the pot.

John Melhuish Strudwick’s Isabella from about 1886 shows Lisabetta staring in grief at the stand on which her pot of basil had stood. Through the window, two of her brothers are seen making off with the pot, and looking back at her.

The brothers examined its contents and discovered Lorenzo’s head. Scared that his murder might cause them problems, they reburied the head, wound up their business, and left Messina for Naples. Lisabetta’s grief only grew deeper, and destroyed her health completely. Still asking for her pot of basil, she finally cried herself to death. Although the brothers had done everything to keep these events secret, eventually they became widely known, and were celebrated in folk verse.

The first and still greatest depiction of Keats’ retelling is John Everett Millais’ Isabella (Lorenzo and Isabella) from 1848-49, completed before he was twenty, and one of the earliest examples of Pre-Raphaelite art. This is a composite of references to Keats’ poem and Boccaccio’s story, set at an imaginary family meal which the three brothers, Lisabetta and Lorenzo are taking together.

Lorenzo is sharing a blood orange with Lisabetta, white roses and passion flowers climbing from behind their heads. The dog, acting as a surrogate for Lorenzo, is being petted by Lisabetta, but one of her brothers aims a kick at it. Other symbols are shown of the plot to kill Lorenzo: a brother staring at a glass of red wine, spilt salt on the table, and a hawk pecking at a white feather. The pot of basil is already on the balcony, awaiting Lorenzo’s head. When exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, it was accompanied by verses 1 and 21 of Keats’ poem.

Claude Monet had first visited London as he sought refuge from the Franco-Prussian War in 1870-71, when he painted one of the early impressions of the River Thames in mist, shown in yesterday’s article. He was to return just before the end of the century, when his fortunes had changed and he could afford to travel in search of motifs. Where better than the River Thames for the optical effects of mist, fog and smog?

Monet had started painting formal series during the 1880s, when he was enjoying commercial success at last. From about 1896, almost all his works were part of a series. He started travelling through Europe in search of suitable motifs for these, visiting Norway in 1895, and later Venice. When he returned to London in 1899, and in the following two years, Monet chose a different view of the Palace of Westminster, from a location at the opposite end of Westminster Bridge, for his series of 19 paintings. These were all started from the second floor of the Administrative Block at the northern end of the old Saint Thomas’s Hospital on the ‘south’ bank, and completed over the following three or four years.

His The Houses of Parliament, Sunlight Effect (1903) is more radical than his painting of thirty years earlier, showing little more than the Palace in silhouette, the sun low in the sky, and its broken reflections in the water.

The Houses of Parliament, Sunset (1903) shows the same view in better visibility, but with the sun setting and a small boat on the move in front of the Palace.

Monet’s Waterloo Bridge from 1903 is the ultimate conclusion of his paintings of fog, in which only the softest of forms resolve in its pale purple and blue vagueness, his common destination with the paintings of Turner over fifty years earlier.

In The Houses of Parliament, Stormy Sky (1904) the sun is higher and further to the south, allowing Monet to balance the silhouette of the Palace with its shadow cast on the water, and the brightness in the sky with its fragmented reflections.

Henri Le Sidaner also visited Britain on several occasions, and in 1906-07 painted this view of St. Paul’s from the River: Morning Sun in Winter, which may have been inspired by Monet’s series paintings of Rouen Cathedral, here expressed using his own distinctive marks.

Emile Claus’s Sunset over Waterloo Bridge (1916) was painted from a location on the north bank of the Thames slightly to the east of Waterloo Bridge, the north end of which is prominent, and looks south-west into the setting sun, up river. Claus painted several views of Waterloo Bridge while he was in London, but doesn’t appear to have attempted any formal series, such as Monet’s.

Claus isn’t formulaic in his treatment. He uses billowing clouds of steam and smoke to great effect, and his inclusion of the road, trees and terraces in the foreground, on the Embankment, provides useful contrast with the crisp arches of the bridge, and the vaguer silhouettes in the distance. Like Monet’s series, this was probably painted from a temporary studio inside a building.

Claus’s Morning Reflection on the Thames in London, from 1918, is a view over the Embankment and river that’s desaturated and made vaguer by fog.

My last example is another view over the River Thames, this time by Lesser Ury. London in Fog from 1926 doesn’t appear to be a nocturne, but looks at the effects of fog on both lights and their reflections.

On 4 December 1952, a high pressure system settled over London. The wind fell away, and fog and smoke were trapped under a temperature inversion. The following day the whole of the city and an area totalling over one thousand square miles were blanketed in smog that remained until 9 December. It’s estimated that directly caused over ten thousand deaths. A succession of laws and a major campaign to eliminate open coal fires in London resulted in great improvement, although a decade later there was another lesser smog, perhaps the event I remember from my childhood. The beauty of those paintings can also be deadly.

One of the enduring memories of my childhood, spent partly in London, is walking in smog, then commonly known as a pea-souper. The combination of dense fog and smoke was so thick I could barely make out street lights, and the streets were for once almost empty, as vehicles could only proceed at walking pace.

This weekend I present a selection of paintings of mist, fog and maybe even a touch of smog on the River Thames, in and near London. Today’s paintings come from the pioneers of the nineteenth century, and tomorrow’s from the twentieth.

Many of JMW Turner’s greatest paintings take advantage of the optical effects of mist and fog. Being a Londoner, he must have experienced these all too frequently.

These peaked in Turner’s famous painting of a Great Western Railway train crossing the River Thames at Maidenhead: Rain, Steam, and Speed, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1844. The whole image is fogbound and vague, and proved a precursor to the approach of the Impressionists after his death.

Less than thirty years later, when he was taking refuge from the Franco-Prussian War, Claude Monet’s The Thames below Westminster (1871) is less Impressionist. Painted from the Embankment to the north of Westminster Bridge, near what is now Whitehall, the three towers to the south are almost superimposed, and aerial perspective is exaggerated by the mist. The river is bustling with small paddleboat steamers. In the foreground a pier under construction is shown almost in silhouette. Small waves and reflections on the river are indicated with coarse brushstrokes, suggesting this is a rapid and spontaneous work.

A decade later, The Houses of Parliament is Winslow Homer’s faithful representation of the Palace of Westminster when viewed from the opposite bank of the Thames, to the north (downstream) of the end of Westminster Bridge. The tide is high under the arches of Westminster Bridge, and small boats are on the river. This classic watercolour makes an interesting contrast with Monet’s later oil paintings I show tomorrow: Homer provides little more detail, the Palace being shown largely in silhouette, but works with the texture of the paper and careful choice of pigment to add granularity. He provides just sufficient visual cues to fine detail, in the lamps and people on Westminster Bridge, and in the boats, to make this a masterly watercolour.

The following year, Jules Bastien-Lepage paid a return visit to the city, when he painted The Thames, London. This view of industrial docklands further downstream maintains detail into the far distance, except where it’s affected by the smoky and hazy atmosphere typical of the city at that time. It was this section of the river that was also painted on several occasions by James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

Tom Roberts’ Fog, Thames Embankment (1884) is painted from a similar location to Monet’s The Thames below Westminster above, on the Embankment to the north of Westminster Bridge, but is cropped more tightly, cutting off the tops of the Victoria and Elizabeth Towers. The Palace and first couple of arches of Westminster Bridge appear in misty silhouette, with moored barges and buildings on a pier shown closer and crisper. He renders the ruffled surface of the river with coarse brushstrokes, different from those of Monet.

Among six paintings that Camille Pissarro started work on during his visit to England in 1890 was this view of Charing Cross Bridge, London from Waterloo Bridge. For this he made a sketch in front of the motif, then following his return to his studio in Éragny he painted this in oils. This looks south-west, towards a skyline broken by the Palace of Westminster and the familiar tower of Big Ben.

In Frederick Childe Hassam’s Houses of Parliament, Early Evening (1898), the sun has already set, and he is viewing the Palace in the gathering dusk from a point on the opposite (‘south’) bank, perhaps not as far south as Lambeth Palace. The Victoria Tower is prominent in the left of the painting, the Central Tower is in the centre, and the most distant Elizabeth Tower is distinctive with its illuminated clock face. Moored boats in the foreground provide the only other detail. His rough facture gives a textured surface to the water.

In 1900, the Swiss painter and print-maker Félix Vallotton was granted French citizenship. He had cut back on his prints to paint more, and the paintings that he made were no longer Nabi, but explored themes and ideas that were to prove influential later in the twentieth century. He also broadened his interests: in the early years of the new century, he wrote eight plays and three novels, although none achieved much success.

In 1900, he followed his earlier mysterious interiors with The Laundress, Blue Room, set in the Vallotton apartment in Paris, with two of his step-children squatting on the folds of large fabric sheets, inside a bedroom with blue decor. Two women are sat working, one apparently on the sheets, the other on separate fabrics.

Vallotton’s view of the oldest of the great bridges of central Paris, in Le Pont Neuf from 1901, is strange. Like some of the unconventional views of bridges painted in the late nineteenth century, its emphasis is on unusual perspective form, but it manages to avoid showing Pissarro’s dense throng of people, or its place among prominent buildings, and is almost unrecognisable.

Woman Searching in a Cupboard from 1901 shuts out half its image with black screens and the doors to the cupboard, giving it a strongly geometric tone. The woman, in spite of a lamp by her side, is little more than a black silhouette too, who appears to absorb the light falling on her. The lamp itself is strange, with a shade showing some sailing ships at sea, its stand being a vertical statuette of Truth, perhaps?

Maybe we should read Vallotton’s lamps more carefully. For the following year (1902), he painted this quartet of gamblers in a Poker session. Tucked away in a plush back-room behind a club or bar, these four are in full evening dress, playing for stakes that could be breathtaking and bankrupting. In the centre foreground is another lamp with a patterned shade, showing sailing boats, I think.

Then in 1902-03, Vallotton painted one of the seminal records of the Nabis: Five Painters, showing Pierre Bonnard (seated, left), Félix Vallotton (standing, left), Édouard Vuillard (seated), Charles Cottet and Ker-Xavier Roussel (standing, right).

His next views of interiors I find quite cinematic, as if stills from a movie, perhaps reflecting his modern approach to composition and lighting, more akin to those developed by cinematographers of the future rather than painters of the past. They also appear to have been influences over the New Objectivity that developed in central Europe in the 1920s, and later American artists like Edward Hopper.

For his Interior, Woman in Blue Searching in a Cupboard from 1903, Vallotton painted his wife Gabrielle from the back as she stood searching in a cupboard of books.

Vallotton’s Interior with Woman in Red from 1903 develops the framing effect of multiple sets of doors, drawing the eye deeper towards a distant bedroom. The woman wearing a red dress looks away, her skirts swept back as if she has been moving towards the three steps dividing this interior into foreground and background. There are tantalising glimpses of detail on the way: discarded fabric on a settee, clothing on a chair in the next room, and half a double bed with a bedside lamp in the distance.

There’s dispute as to whether this painting shows a Woman Reading in an Interior, as given by its French title, or a woman writing, which appears to be its translation. Vallotton painted this in 1904, and charged it with rather less mystery, although I wonder if the lower of the paintings on the wall might be one of Degas’ works showing horseriding. As usual, the single figure doesn’t show her face as she sits at the small bureau, backlit by the window and its stained glass.

Interior, Bedroom with Two Figures from 1904 is one of the last of his series of mysterious interiors, and worthy of the sub-genre of the ‘problem picture’. This is another bedroom, in which the lady of the house is standing over her maid as the latter is sewing up an evening gown for her. The mistress stands with her back to the viewer, but her face is revealed in her reflection in the large mirror on the wardrobe at the back of the room. In that, the maid is all but invisible. These three figures appear in a perspective recession, and to the right of the wardrobe is a doorway, presumably leading through to the master’s bedroom.

In this period before the Great War, Vallotton also painted portraits, and several nudes. But the figurative painting from 1905 that I find most fascinating is this, of The Models’ Smoke Break. In an era when most adults smoked, rest periods for models, like those for other workers, were usually termed ‘smoke breaks’ even though neither woman is smoking.

Instead, one model is reclined in a pose (not a pose, as it’s a break) reminiscent of Manet’s Olympia (1863). Instead of her maid bringing her a bouquet, though, she holds a single wilted blue flower, and chats idly to another model who sits by her feet. I wish I could identify the paintings reflected in the mirror behind them, although I think the upper double portrait is that of Vallotton’s parents painted in 1886. That below looks like a coastal landscape, perhaps of Honfleur.

To follow these, Vallotton turned to classical myths.

A decade after the end of the one-child policy, China has over 30 million so-called surplus men. Can this dating boot camp help them find love?

The craft of the blacksmith goes back long before the Iron Age, but once our ancestors had learned to work cast iron (by turning it first into wrought iron), in about 1200 BCE, it became one of the key crafts in many societies. It’s also the only craft represented by a deity in the classical Greek pantheon, in the god Hephaistos, translated by the Romans to Vulcan.

He had the misfortune to have been born lame, as a result of which Hera tried to be rid of him, and threw him into the sea. He was there cared for by Thetis and others. He later assumes his role as the god of fire, volcanoes, and crafts allied to blacksmithing, including sculpture.

In paintings, Vulcan is characteristically seen in his forge, as in Tintoretto’s painterly Vulcan’s Forge (1578), one of four mythological paintings he made for the Atrio Quadrato in the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. Tintoretto was clearly familiar with the division of labour in a blacksmith’s workshop. The two well-muscled men wielding large hammers are strikers, whose brute force is more important. Vulcan is the older man at the left, who strikes the casting with his small hammer to tell them where theirs should strike.

Homer’s story of the adulterous affair of the wife of Hephaistos, Aphrodite (Venus), with Ares (Mars) is retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses, the likely source for Diego Velázquez’s The Forge of Vulcan from 1630. This shows Apollo, at the left, visiting Hephaistos (to the right of Apollo) in his forge, to tell him about this infidelity.

Homeric Laughter (1909) is one of Lovis Corinth’s most complex, even abstruse, paintings of classical myth. He provides a good clue as to its interpretation in his inscription (originally in German translation):
unquenchable laughter arose among the blessed gods as they saw the craft of wise Hephaistos
together with the reference to Homer’s Odyssey book 8 line 326.

In this first version, Corinth shows Aphrodite recumbent on the bed, shielding her eyes from the crowd around her. Ares struggles with the net securing the couple, looking frustrated. Hephaistos, clad in black with his tools slung around his waist, is talking to Poseidon (who wears a crown) with Dionysos/Bacchus behind him (clutching a champagne glass). At the right edge is Hermes/Mercury, with his winged helmet. Sundry putti are playing with Ares’ armour, and an arc of putti adorns the sky.

The blacksmith also features in some accounts of the origin of Pandora.

John Dixon Batten’s The Creation of Pandora was painted anachronistically in egg tempera on a fresco ground by 1913. Batten was one of the late adherents of the Pre-Raphaelite movement, and is now almost forgotten. This work had been put into storage in 1949 and wasn’t rediscovered until 1990.

Pandora is at the centre, having just been fashioned out of earth by Hephaestus, who stands at the left, his foot on his anvil. Behind them, other blacksmiths work metal in his forge. At the right, Athena is about to place her gift of a robe about Pandora’s figure, and other gods queue behind to offer their contributions.

There are several fine paintings of regular blacksmiths at work over the centuries. The earliest I have been able to locate is a disturbing detail in the central panel of Hieronymus Bosch’s triptych The Last Judgment from about 1495-1505.

Among the torments featured in the centre panel are painful punishments in the blacksmith’s at the top.

Francisco Goya’s Forge from 1817 is a superb depiction of the physically demanding work of the blacksmith. Its extensive use of black is also a herald of the Black Period to come in Goya’s paintings at the end of that decade.

Sisley’s Forge at Marly-le-Roi from 1875 shows the village blacksmiths still at work long after the Industrial Revolution brought steam-powered hammers.

Ernst Josephson’s Spanish Blacksmiths from 1882 shows a smith in the shredded remains of his white shirt, and his striker to the right in his black waistcoat, with a horseshoe hanging below the roof of their forge in Seville.

Döme Skuteczky’s painting In the Smithy from 1897 shows another smithy, this time in Slovakia.

These days, across much of Europe the traditional blacksmith earns their keep from forging horseshoes for the many horses ridden for pleasure.

Bret Stephens, Frank Bruni and Aaron Retica on the gap between the president’s interests and what matters to Americans.

Having a baby without any medical help is the logical outcome of a centuries-long medical freedom movement.

in the seventeenth century, series paintings such as the four seasons and five senses tend to be created by Flemish rather than Dutch masters. There’s at least one notable exception, which also includes some of the most overt visual humour of the Dutch Golden Age, painted by Jan Miense Molenaer (c 1610-1668).

Molenaer seems to have spent much of his life in Haarlem, where he’s thought to have been an apprentice of Frans Hals. Other than marrying a fellow apprentice, Judith Leyster, in 1836, and the couple moving their shared studio to Amsterdam for eleven years, little seems known about his life.

The Dentist, painted in 1630, is one of his earlier paintings, and declares his interest in everyday life. A small crowd has gathered outside a church, where a fashionably dressed man is pulling a tooth from a local. The victim is dressed in tatters, with large holes at both his knees and worn-out shoes. Most around him have their hands clasped in prayer, presumably that the victim doesn’t break free and hit his dentist.

Several of Molenaer’s surviving paintings show the making of music, including A Young Man playing a Theorbo and a Young Woman playing a Cittern from about 1630-32. This is set in the interior of an upper middle class home, with a maid serving a meal in the right background. A theorbo is a member of the lute family, and is plucked, while a cittern has metal strings and is more like an ancestor of the guitar.

Several musical instruments also feature in his Allegory of Vanity from 1633, one of his vanitas paintings. An older woman is passing a fine-tooth comb through the long tresses of a younger woman, to check and remove parasites like lice. She is holding a mirror, and resting a foot on a human skull rather than a foot-warmer. The conventional lapdog is replaced by a golden statue, and the young boy in front of her is holding a device used to make bubbles. The woman’s jewellery is on display on a table at the right, and her make-up shown in a dressing table on the left.

Molenaer painted many scenes inside taverns and other places where drinking and gambling took place. His Card Players by Lamplight from about 1634 shows a card game in progress by the light of a lamp mounted on a stand in the foreground. The player looking directly at the viewer clearly thinks he holds the winning ace.

In about 1635, Molenaer painted his family playing music together. Judging by the portraits hanging behind them, the artist is at the extreme left, but his wife Judith Leyster only seems to be shown in her portrait.

Two years later, he painted The Five Senses, relatively small works on panels whose origins are obscure. Most series like these are commissioned, as the chances of finding a purchaser for the whole series are low. These appear to have been completed when he was in Amsterdam, and were only purchased for the Mauritshuis in 1893.

Sight is one of the more straightforward to read, with a man gazing wistfully into an empty flask by the light of the lamp on the table in front of him.

Hearing is more of an allusion, as three men carouse noisily over a mug of drink.

Taste stays in the same drinking room, as one man savours the last drop of drink, while another lights his pipe from the hot embers in a small earthenware container.

Touch is rich in ribald humour. The man on the left has thrust his left hand up to grope inside the woman’s skirts, for which she is about to bring her slipper down forcefully on his head.

Smell completes the series with the best of his visual jokes. The woman on the right is cleaning up the bum of the infant on her lap. This also shows severe fading on her skirt, which was painted using indigo with lead white. The original was far darker, as can be seen by the deeper blue at the edge of the panel, where the frame has shielded the pigment from light.

Although Molenaer continued to paint prolifically, this series marks his zenith, with fine examples of genre paintings during the Dutch Golden Age.

Oil paint has been applied to many different supports, of which the most popular and enduring have been wooden panels and stretched canvas. Panels have tended to become uncommon in recent centuries because of their weight and cost, but in the nineteenth century reappeared in novel form among those sketching in front of the motif, who took to using wood from cigar boxes.

Smoking cigars became popular during that century, particularly among the better-off living in cities. Made from chopped tobacco wrapped in a tobacco leaf, cigars are delicate and affected by humidity, so are sold in small wooden boxes often made from cedar wood. Their lids, particularly those of about 13 by 26 cm (5 x 10 inches) size, were repurposed as the support for many oil sketches. When reading their description, if they’re given as oil on panel with similar dimensions, you should suspect that they may well have been painted on a cigar-box.

The earliest artists who are known to have painted on cigar-boxes are the Italian painters known as the Macchiaioli, a breakaway movement centred on Tuscany in northern Italy from about 1850, that in many ways anticipated Impressionism.

Odoardo Borrani joined the Macchiaioli in 1855, and in about 1865 painted this Peasant Child at Castiglioncello on a wooden panel of 23.3 x 14.7 cm that had almost certainly originated in a cigar box. The unusual linear cracks seen here are characteristic of the thin cedar wood popular in cigar boxes, when used without an adequate ground.

Giovanni Fattori’s plein air paintings are characteristic of the Macchiaioli: using small panoramic wood panels, he painted in macchia (taches or patches), in a style not dissimilar to that of the Barbizon School in France. This panel showing The Rotonda at Palmieri (1866) is slightly wider at 12 x 35 cm.

Fattori’s Portrait of Silvestro Lega, Painting Beside the Sea from 1866-67 is on another panel of 12.5 x 28 cm. This also shows the underlying grain, and its lack of any substantial ground. The artist shown appears to be painting in a pochade box onto another panel that may well be a cigar box.

Later in the century others followed, among them James Abbott McNeill Whistler.

In the 1880s, Whistler painted small outdoor views on panels, such as Harmony in Blue and Pearl: The Sands, Dieppe from about 1885. Although its dimensions are slightly different at 14 x 22.9 cm, this is almost certainly on a cigar box. The vertical streaks seen here are probably the result of a thin ground underneath the surface paint layer.

The greatest European exponent of painting on these small wooden panels was Georges Seurat, who mostly used them for studies made in preparation for his larger paintings. When Seurat started work on his monumental painting Les Poseuses (Posers, or Models) in 1886, he made a series of figure studies that are now in the Musée d’Orsay.

Each was painted using Seurat’s Divisionist technique on the wooden lid of a cigar box of about 24 by 15 cm size, which the artist termed a croqueton, his favourite support for such sketches.

In the late 1880s, several artists started painting in the rural area of Heidelberg, east of Melbourne, adopting a style that later became known as Australian Impressionism. They came together in a momentous exhibition in the history of Australian art, the 9 by 5 Impression Exhibition, in Melbourne, in 1889, named from the dimensions in inches of the standard Australian cigar-box lid of 13 by 23 cm.

Its principal artists were Charles Conder, Tom Roberts, and Arthur Streeton, many of whose rough-worked and colourful plein air sketches were painted on cigar boxes.

Roberts’ Going Home from about 1889 has dimensions of 23.4 x 13.6 cm. Linear marks in the lower section appear to be the result of the grain in the wood.

His oil sketch of Hutt Valley from 1900 is slightly smaller at 10.3 x 19.1 cm.

Conder’s view of the Dandenongs from Heidelberg from about 1889 uses a more standard size of 11.5 x 23.5 cm.

His Ricketts Point, Beaumaris (1890) is 12 x 21.5 cm with rounded corners.

In the twentieth century, many smokers switched to cigarettes sold in cardboard packets, and the supply of cigar-boxes dried up.

Most problems with Spotlight are assumed to be the result of it failing to index correctly. I’ve recently detailed how you can diagnose those, and explained why blindly rebuilding its indexes is often a waste of time and effort. Problems that aren’t the result of failed indexing are harder to diagnose and fix. This article describes one approach that doesn’t appear to have been used previously: restarting Spotlight.

Relaunch Spotlight

It turns out that it’s quick and easy to restart Spotlight without having to log out and back in. Open the Finder’s Settings, select the Advanced tool and toggle Show all filename extensions off and on (or on and off). While you’re doing that, watch the Spotlight icon at the right end of the menu bar, and you’ll see it vanish and reappear as Spotlight is relaunched.

This may seem strange, but is clear from the log entries.
0.727612 Finder sendAction:
marks when the checkbox was toggled by the user. Within 0.01 second, Spotlight announces it’s relaunching
0.733710 com.apple.spotlight Relaunching Spotlight to respond to user show extensions change.

Then follow log entries detailing Spotlight being shut down
0.741258 gui/501/com.apple.Spotlight [1183] exited due to exit(255), ran for 60931ms
0.741307 gui/501 [100019] service inactive: com.apple.Spotlight
0.742190 com.apple.launchservices DEATH: Received pid death for 1183, found application App:"Spotlight" asn:0x0-39039 pid:1183 refs=5 @ 0x8d0ef9080 in session "LSSession:id=100019 @ 0x102a996e0 Apps:43 ", which was not a LS launched process, so removing it.

This also takes out the StocksKit service, responsible for providing currency conversion rates and more
0.743045 pid/1183 [Spotlight] removing active service: com.apple.StocksKitService
and the Spotlight icon is removed from the menu bar
0.744222 com.apple.controlcenter Removing ephemeral displayable instance DisplayableId(4C3DBA87) from menu bar. No corresponding host (bid:com.apple.Spotlight-Item-0)

Almost immediately, a new Spotlight service is started up to replace that
0.751631 gui/501/com.apple.Spotlight [1185] service state: running
0.751651 gui/501/com.apple.Spotlight [1185] Successfully spawned Spotlight[1185] because semaphore
and its preferences are loaded ready
0.774661 Loading Preferences From User CFPrefsD
0.784283 com.apple.runningboard [osservice<com.apple.Spotlight(501)>:1185] reported to RB as running
following which there are many entries detailing Spotlight services being reinstated, and StocksKit reloading currency conversion rates.

Quite why Spotlight needs to be relaunched when you change the Show all filename extensions setting in the Finder is a mystery, but the same appears to happen in all versions of macOS from Ventura and probably earlier.

Errors

The reason I discovered this is that Adam Engst of TidBITS informed me that he sees an error message when that Finder setting is changed if Spotlight settings are also open. I’ve been unable to reproduce that, but think I can explain it, and why restarting Spotlight can be useful.

When Spotlight starts up again, it may encounter a problem with a Spotlight extension, something you’re unlikely to come across when logging in normally. That can be aided when Spotlight settings are open. If you see an error, open General settings, and Login Items & Extensions within that. At the foot of that, list Extensions By Category rather than By App, and you’ll see at the very end of the list the item named Spotlight.

Click on the ⓘ by that and review the Spotlight extensions your Mac can load. Turn off those you don’t need, click Done, then restart Spotlight again using the Finder’s Settings. That may help you to identify an extension that needs to be updated.

Summary

• You can restart Spotlight by toggling Show all filename extensions in the Finder’s Settings.
• This could resolve Spotlight problems that aren’t the result of indexing failure.
• This could also help you identify incompatible Spotlight extensions.

Let me know if you find this useful, or just a curious quirk.

Jack Conte, the chief executive of Patreon, a platform for creators to monetize their art and content, outlines his vision for an internet that puts people, not ad revenues, first.

The first story on the fourth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron was told by Fiammetta, and relates the tragedy of Ghismonda and her love for Guiscardo.

Ghismonda was the daughter of Prince Tancredi of Salerno, who was known for being a benevolent ruler, but in his later years became a possessive father. He refused to let her marry until she was older than was usual, and when she did, her husband died soon after. She returned to live with her doting father, who had no interest in seeing her married for a second time, so she decided to take a lover instead.

She fell in love with a young valet to her father named Guiscardo, and he fell in love with her. Ghismonda devised an ingenious way of passing him messages concealed inside a reed. They met in an old cavern underneath the palace: Ghismonda’s room had a long-disused door that opened into the cavern, and Guiscardo descended into it from a shaft outside the walls.

Before meeting in this cavern, Ghismonda dismissed all her ladies-in-waiting, telling them she wanted to sleep. She then locked herself in her room, opened the door to the cavern, and descended its staircase to meet her lover, who had roped down from the entrance to the shaft. The couple then spent much of the rest of the day making love in her room before Guiscardo departed.

One day when the couple had arranged to meet in this way, Prince Tancredi came looking for his daughter. Seeing her outside, he settled down in a corner of her room and fell asleep. She was unaware he was there, and proceeded with her lovemaking, during which her father awoke. He remained silent and was undiscovered, eventually climbing out of a window while the couple descended into the cavern to make their farewells.

Later that night, Guiscardo was arrested on the orders of the Prince, and confined to a room in the palace without Ghismonda’s knowledge. Tancredi went to his daughter’s room, where he told her of the dishonour she had brought upon herself. She showed no contrition, nor did she seek her father’s forgiveness, but told her father honestly of the love she shared with Guiscardo, of her youth, and amorous desires. She pleaded her lover’s virtues, and asked that she should bear the brunt of any punishment, rather than her lover.

Prince Tancredi decided to take revenge not on his daughter, but on her lover. He had two of his men strangle Guiscardo, then cut his heart out. The heart was placed inside a gold chalice, and presented to his daughter “to comfort her in the loss of her dearest possession, as she had comforted her father in the loss of his”.

Before she could be given this gruesome present, Ghismonda had called for poisonous herbs, which she turned into a highly toxic potion. When the servants delivered her the chalice, she removed its lid, saw her lover’s heart, and was given her father’s message. Ghismonda raised her lover’s heart to her lips and kissed it. She then thanked the servants for her father’s priceless gift to her, bade farewell to her lover’s heart, and cried profusely over it.

Francesco Bacchiacca’s early painting of Ghismonda with the Heart of Guiscardo from about 1525 shows the rather distant figure crying over the heart, with her apparently disinterested ladies-in-waiting around her. In the foreground is her father’s servant who brought the chalice.

Francesco Furini made at least two similar paintings of Ghismonda, here known by her alternative name of Sigismunda, crying profusely over the chalice. This version is thought to be from about 1620-30, and remains in Prato, Italy.

Thought to date from about 1640, this version known as Sigismunda with the Heart of Guiscardo is now in Birmingham, England. It had previously been attributed to Correggio, and was the inspiration for Hogarth’s much later painting shown below. It had only just been purchased at auction by Sir Thomas Sebright.

Interestingly, Furini’s painting of Mary Magdalene from about the same time is almost identical to the earlier version now in Prato, except that a chalice of myrrh had been substituted for that containing Guiscardo’s heart. All three works are notable for their dramatic chiaroscuro.

Mario Balassi’s Ghismonda with the Heart of Guiscardo from 1650 depicts Ghismonda being taken aback, although in Boccaccio’s account her response is strong and resolute despite the horrific cruelty of her father.

It is perhaps Bernardino Mei, in his Ghismunda from 1650-59, who captures her resolute response best of all, as she stands squeezing the heart in her hand, tears still on her face.

William Hogarth’s Sigismunda Mourning over the Heart of Guiscardo from 1759 may come as something of a surprise. Hogarth seemed determined to prove that the ‘modern’ English painter could compete with the “old Italian masters” in handling such heroic narratives. This was one of his last commissions, for Sir Richard Grosvenor, in 1758. He studied Furini’s version (that now in Birmingham), which had been much admired, but when this was completed in 1759, Grosvenor rejected it.

Hogarth then exhibited it with seven other paintings at the Society of Artists in 1761. It was there savaged by the critics, who were apparently repelled by the conflict between the beauty of Sigismunda and the gruesome heart she is touching. Hogarth replaced it in the exhibition, and appears to have made changes to try to assuage its detractors. Unable to sell it or have it engraved for prints, the artist was forced to abandon it, and almost ceased painting for the remaining three years of his life.

Her ladies-in-waiting asked her why she was crying so, as they had not understood what had happened. Ghismonda then poured the deadly potion over Guiscardo’s heart, drank it, and lay down on her bed to await death. Her father was summoned, and Ghismonda asked him a final favour that she should be laid to rest beside Guiscardo. The Prince realised his cruelty and repented for it, ensuring that the two bodies were buried together in honour.

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Bosch’s greatest masterpiece, and one of the greatest paintings in the world, presents an intriguing and intricate vision. Unique in its content, it remains a conversation piece half a millennium after it was painted. Having looked at the structure and higher-level reading of this extraordinarily complex triptych, this article completes my account by delving deeper into some of its details, and trying to put this together in a better understanding of its reading and purpose.

Garden of Eden

The Garden of Eden in the left panel is the most conventional part of the painting, and compares with other works showing similar scenes from Genesis, if you overlook Bosch’s idiosyncratic beasts and structures.

God, Adam, and Eve are fairly traditional in their depiction, and Bosch chooses a happy moment. At this stage, there is no danger from the serpent, and no warning of the Fall that is to come.

On the left, the prominent tree bears bunches of grapes, but others in this wood carry apples, one of which has fallen to the ground. At the right are two rabbits and a crow, two of the few recognisable rather than fanciful species; another is the cat carrying prey in its mouth in front of the tree.

The strange species seen by the small lake in the immediate foreground are portmanteaux, in that each is made up of a composite of parts from other species, with visual references made to peacocks, spoonbills, seals, ducks, unicorns, and others. One duck-fish in the lake is even reading a book, and a bird on the shore has three heads. Several other paintings by Bosch use the same technique to create strange creatures.

The other dominant object is the fountain tower in the middle of the panel, the centre where the Tree of Knowledge (of good and evil) might be expected. This fantastic structure is made up of elements derived from plants, a technique Bosch used in other and earlier paintings. Like the panels themselves, this tower has informal symmetry about its midline, which is placed along the midline of the whole panel.

The small rocky cliff at the right edge is arranged to look like the profile view of a human face, with its eye closed.

A mixture of real, legendary, and portmanteau creatures decorate this area as well. Recognisable species include the ox, deer, elephant, monkey, black bear, giraffe, porcupine, egret, duck, and rabbit, but the more fanciful includes a lizard with three heads. Coiled around the tree at the right is a black snake, the serpent that led to the Fall.

The distant spires are the domain of the birds. Swift-like birds swirl out of the rock at the left, the flock weaving its way through the upper parts of its spire, and off into the sky. Others flock on the ground by species. The more distant blue pinnacles are based on plant structure, incorporating forms from other objects too.

Overall these details make this panel a most explicit and detailed vision of Paradise before the Fall of Man, assembled from Bosch’s rich and inventive imagination.

Pleasure garden

The pleasure garden in the centre panel is all about people, their pleasures and pleasuring. In stark contrast to the left panel, which contains only three human figures, the centre panel contains many hundreds. Although other objects are also involved, one of the main themes associated with pleasure here is fruit.

With limited facilities to store or preserve soft fruit in particular, eating fruit and fruit itself was associated with sensual, even carnal, pleasure. Although Bosch’s innumerable figures are naked, almost without exception, strict convention forced him to allude to carnal pleasures indirectly, often here through the eating of fruit.

In the left foreground, men and women are seen playing with fruit, often of greatly exaggerated size, and feeding fruit to one another. One couple is touching one another inside a transparent sphere, placed on top of a fanciful fruit floating on the lake. Another couple, who have progressed further in their lovemaking, are discreetly tucked inside the part-closed shell of a blue mussel. Giant birds watch this from the left, and a huge small tortoiseshell butterfly investigates a blue thistle flower.

There are similar scenes in the right foreground, where just below the camel at the top there is a threesome taking place under a transparent dome, in which the woman to the right is clearly pregnant.

The procession of animals and riders in the middle distance still uses symbolic fruit extensively, but also alludes to riding, hunting, and other mounted sports, common pleasures among the nobility of the day. The central circular pond contains figures of women, while those riding animals appear to be exclusively men: this may allude to the hunting of partners and the division of roles in courtship.

Flying in the skies above are several strange objects, based sometimes on angels (right), sometimes on legendary or imaginary creatures, complete with more fruit and one tree.

The towers in the background form the stage for other activities, and in the single example seen in the porthole in the base of the central dark blue tower, almost show explicit sexual activity. As with other structures, Bosch bases these towers on largely vegetable forms, and gives them informal symmetry about the midline of the panel.

The centre panel thus gives a delicately non-explicit and figurative account of the many physical pleasures which the nobility would have engaged in. It matches what we know of Bosch’s likely patron, Count Henry III of Nassau-Breda, who had a vast bed onto which drunk guests would be placed, so that he could act as voyeur over what they got up to.

Garden of Hell

The ‘garden’ of Hell in the right panel is derived from the more restrained panels that Bosch had painted of Saint Anthony, such as that in his Hermit Saints triptych. This is here taken to its nightmare conclusion, in which its many figures are mutilated and tormented, in a landscape harking back to Bosch’s experience when, at the age of 13, he witnessed his home town almost burned to the ground. It moves from the mass of humanity in the centre panel to greater dominance of non-human creatures, and alarming objects.

In the foreground, a huge blue bird, wearing a cauldron on its head and swallowing a whole human, presides over the scene. That bird is sat on an elevated commode, defaecating blue bubbles containing the people it has been ingesting. Faces stare up from the foul brown waters of the cesspit underneath.

The two main groups of victims are clustered around objects associated with gaming and gambling, and those for making music. Placing the former on the road to hell isn’t surprising, but tormenting figures with a harp and other musical instruments may seem strange today. Various religious sects have viewed music as being sinful and the work of the devil, and some of its associated activities, particularly dancing, have attracted wider moral condemnation.

The instruments shown, at greatly exaggerated size, are (left) a lute, a harp, and a hurdy gurdy, a string instrument played by turning the crank shown at its top.

Another notable if not iconic feature in the foreground is the pig dressed partly as a nun, kissing a man, at the right lower corner.

On the near-black frozen surface of the river behind, there are skaters, one of whom has fallen through the ice. Another is tied to his ice craft. Above them is the Tree-Man, a unique structure to Bosch that appears in one of his drawings, presumably a study in preparation for this triptych.

At its top, on a circular disc, is another strange portmanteau object, which looks to be a cross between bagpipes and an alchemical vessel from an alembic. Further back is a pair of severed ears between which is the blade of a knife.

The background appears apocalyptic. Large armies are on the move: cavalry cross a bridge, and other battalions of infantry fill the roads and fields. A yacht, its sail lit, heads across the water in front of a city. Tiny figures are silhouetted against the light from fires within the large buildings there, apparently engaged in its capture and destruction. Other bodies fall spreadeagle through the air as they leap from the tops of buildings. The moon, hidden behind cloud, casts rays lighting broken clouds and the thick palls of smoke rising from the ruins.

The right panel builds a vivid picture of the torment and destruction of Hell.

Owls

There are some repeated objects shown across the triptych, of which I will consider owls. Several of Bosch’s earlier paintings, even those with little or no fanciful content, have incorporated owls, implying that he used them as a form of graphical signature. This triptych follows the pattern.

There are four obvious and prominent owls shown in the triptych. The first appears in the porthole cut out from the base of the central fountain tower of the left panel.

Another giant owl appears at the left edge of the centre panel, being embraced by one of its figures.

The second owl in the centre panel is perched on top of a couple towards the right edge. It’s being tempted by the offer of fruit, but doesn’t appear interested.

The third owl in the centre panel is perched on the ‘horn’ of one of Bosch’s fanciful creatures in the procession of animals and riders.

Claims that Bosch’s owls are symbols of ignorance, false knowledge, or evil, lack support in his paintings. That one appears in the Garden of Eden, three in the garden of pleasure, and none in the garden of Hell, supports their association with more positive concepts rather than bad ones.

Synthesis

A plain grisaille painting starts the sequence off with its depiction of the creation, the perfect cover for an account in three images of the condition of mankind. We then see the first step in our history, when Adam and Eve were still secure in the Garden of Eden, surrounded by the wonders of God’s creation.

Some have suggested that the left panel, with its depiction of the emergence of animals from water, somehow hints at an evolutionary process. Viewed with a modern mind, this might appear attractive and imbue the painting with even greater meaning and magic. Half a millennium ago that would have been inconceivable: Bosch makes clear his literal belief in the Biblical account, throughout this and his other paintings. Without concepts of geological time or processes (key to the concept of evolution), such modern thinking is as alien as quantum physics.

After the Fall of Man and the expulsion from the Garden of Eden, men and women flourished and engaged in pleasures that were highly carnal and very earthly, detached from God, and outwith his commandments. These only too easily, through sins of gambling and lascivious activities associated with music, take humanity on the road to Hell, with its many torments and great suffering. Ultimately, the final panel may also refer specifically to Armageddon, the end of humanity and its world too.

Bosch takes us through this narrative with some of the richest imagery of any painting in the European canon. Its little scenes may be beautiful, puzzling, enticing, amusing, alarming, gruesome, but they are always fascinating, and the most elaborate conversation piece that you could want.

References

Wikipedia.

Falkenburg R (2011) The Land of Unlikeness: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, WBOOKS. ISBN 978 9 040 07767 8.
Fischer S (2013, 2016) Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works, Bibliotheca Universalis, Taschen. ISBN 978 3 8365 3850 3.
Matthijs Ilsink, Jos Koldeweij et al. (2016) pp 356-379 in Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Catalogue Raisonné, Yale UP and Mercatorfonds. ISBN 978 0 300 22014 8.
Schwartz G (2016) Jheronimus Bosch, The Road to Heaven and Hell, Overlook Duckworth. ISBNB 978 1 4683 1373 4.

This weekend I look at one of the greatest paintings in the world, Hieronymus Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, painted between about 1495-1505. Unique in its content, it remains a conversation piece half a millennium after it was completed. This article starts at the top level, and tomorrow’s sequel delves a little into its rich and intriguing details.

Most triptychs were intended for use in places of worship, particularly as altarpieces. This one appears to have been commissioned primarily as a conversation piece for the well-educated nobility, specifically Count Henry III of Nassau-Breda (1483-1538), in what is now Belgium. It’s also one of Bosch’s best documented paintings, first being recorded only a year after his death, and described by a succession of viewers ever since.

Ilsink and others consider that Bosch’s main inspiration and source for the material in this painting was Hartmann Schedel’s extensively illustrated Weltchronik (history of the world) published in Nuremberg in 1493. This uses the same Biblical quotation that appears on the exterior of this painting. Despite those descriptions, extensive research, and many published studies since, it remains one of the most enigmatic paintings, with many different interpretations. Being so detailed, and with details which are so unusual, it is all too easy to get lost among its hundreds of cavorting figures and weird portmanteau objects.

The exterior presents an understated grisaille showing the creation. The interior has three extraordinary panels showing fantastic landscapes which are quite densely covered with figures, real and fictional creatures, and bizarre structures. At first sight these may appear overwhelming, but on more careful examination each panel has a theme and its own pictorial structure. The themes (from the left) are based on creation (the Garden of Eden), pleasure (a pleasure garden), and destruction (the garden of Hell itself).

Exterior

The exterior features a grisaille painting of a portion of the earth within an orb. The surface of that earth is shown at the end of the third day of creation according to the account in Genesis: the land has been separated from water, and plants have started to develop and grow. At the top left is a miniature showing God the Father, apparently based on an engraving in Weltchronik (1493).

The inscription above the painting reads: (left) Ipse dixit et facta sunt (right) Ipse mandavit et creata sunt. This is verse 9 of Psalm 33 from the Latin Vulgate, and is translated into English as ‘For He spake and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast.’ Opening this restrained and modest cover brings a heady rush of bright colours, greens, reds, and blues, and its seething mass of detail.

Left panel, creation

The left panel shows an innovative view of the Garden of Eden, divided into tiers as it recedes into the background. The foreground is dominated by a scene from the account of the creation of man in Genesis, in which God has just created Eve, and introduces Eve to Adam. Adam is seated on the ground on the right hand of God. God holds Eve, on his left, by the right wrist. She appears to be kneeling on the grass on which they are stood. God wears red robes, Adam and Eve are of course naked.

Closer to the viewer is a small lake which is teeming with extraordinary fish, other aquatic creatures, birds, and land animals. In all about thirty are shown, few of which resemble earthly species. Behind this foreground is dense woodland, with one tree of strange form prominent at the left, similar to a type of palm.

The wood drops down to another lake, in the middle of which is a rocky outcrop containing gems, on which a strange red fountain tower stands. The base of that tower is a sphere with a porthole cut out, and an owl peering out from that hole. At the right is a small rock cliff, with an exotic tree growing at the top. This lake has various waterfowl on it, and at the upper left several mammals including a unicorn are drinking.

Further into the background the land is open grass with scattered trees, and a menagerie of animals including an elephant and a giraffe. At the far (top) left is a complex rock structure from which, and into which, a dense and long flock of swift-like birds are flying. In the far distance to the right is a low but rugged range of pale blue rock spires. The sky is clear, blue, and has many birds in flight.

Centre panel, pleasure

The centre panel shows a rolling deer park with lakes, overrun by a dense mass of naked men and women, and bizarre objects.

The foreground contains a dense group of people frolicking on grass with large fruit objects, including strawberries, blackcurrants, blackberries, apples, cherries, and others. Behind that on the left is a small lake, again densely packed with people and extremely large birds, including a kingfisher.

The middle distance is dominated by a central circular pond, in which there are more groups of people. Around them is a procession of people riding horses, camels, and other mammals, in an anticlockwise direction around the central pond. To the left and right are more groups of people interacting, apparently in playful ways, with bizarre objects, such as the tail of a massive lobster.

Further into the distance is a larger lake, fed by two rivers leading off into the central distance, and one at each side of the panel. Five fantastic tower structures are by or on the river. The central deep blue tower is based on a sphere, in and on which people are active. The other four towers alternate red and blue in colour, and feature various strange superstructures and ornaments. The two in the far distance, towards the top of the panel, are built over the river.

Far beyond is rolling, wooded countryside. The skies above are blue, cloudless, and contain several bizarre flying contraptions.

Right panel, destruction

The right panel is a complete contrast to the other two in showing a nighttime scene full of suffering, violence, and destruction. It is segregated into three tiers by dominant colour.

The foreground, based on mid-browns, shows two substantial groups of naked men and women apparently in torment or violence. The nearer group has playing cards, dice, a backgammon set, and the trappings of gaming and gambling. Behind them is a separate group apparently undergoing torment with large musical instruments including a lute, harp, and hurdy gurdy. These scenes, on the left, are being overseen by a large bird sitting on an elevated commode.

The middle distance changes to dark grey and black. There is a frozen river, and rising up from that is a weird shell similar to the upper torso of a man’s body, and head, with its arms formed from hollow tree trunks resting in small boats. People there are being tormented by bizarre portmanteau creatures.

The far distance, based on black with red fire and pale yellow shafts of light, is far darker and objects are only made out in silhouette. It shows strife, fire and destruction in the massive buildings of a city.

Composition

Each of the three panels shows a landscape receding into the background. The prominent features within each panel are composed with informal symmetry within that panel, and across the triptych as a whole.

In the left panel, the dominating passages are the foreground figures, centred on God who is in the midline, the red tower in the lake, which is in the midline, and in the distance four pinnacles spread across the skyline.

In the centre panel, the round pond in the middle distance is in the midline, and just above the centre of the panel. The five distant towers are arranged symmetrically about the midline, with the central dark blue tower in the midline.

The dominant feature of the right panel is the ‘man-tree’ structure, which is in the midline just above the centre of the panel.

There are no comparable paintings from the same era, or indeed any period prior to the twentieth century, against which this can reasonably be compared.

History

There has never been any serious doubt that this is an authentic work by Bosch’s hand, and its provenance has been traced back to 1517, when it was at the Nassau Palace in Brussels. Later that century it moved to Spain, and was presented to the Escorial by Philip II in 1593.

Various periods of conservation work have been undertaken, including some retouching and other work to address wear and deterioration in the paint surface. The last major work was undertaken in 1999-2000.

References

Wikipedia.

Falkenburg R (2011) The Land of Unlikeness: Hieronymus Bosch, The Garden of Earthly Delights, WBOOKS. ISBN 978 9 040 07767 8.
Fischer S (2013, 2016) Hieronymus Bosch, The Complete Works, Bibliotheca Universalis, Taschen. ISBN 978 3 8365 3850 3.
Matthijs Ilsink, Jos Koldeweij et al. (2016) pp 356-379 in Hieronymus Bosch, Painter and Draughtsman: Catalogue Raisonné, Yale UP and Mercatorfonds. ISBN 978 0 300 22014 8.
Schwartz G (2016) Jheronimus Bosch, The Road to Heaven and Hell, Overlook Duckworth. ISBNB 978 1 4683 1373 4.

Just after Christmas, on 29 December, we will commemorate the centenary of the death of one of the most curious French painters of the time. Félix Vallotton (1865–1925) followed the academic tradition, became one of the Nabis, painted a series of disturbing domestic interiors, and some of the finest landscapes of the early twentieth century. This brief series scratches the surface of his eclectic art.

Félix Édouard Vallotton was born in Lausanne in Switzerland, and moved to Paris in 1882 to study under Jules Joseph Lefebvre and Gustave Boulanger at the Académie Julian. His early influences included the paintings of JAD Ingres, and he started painting portraits following the academic tradition.

Among those early works is this Self-portrait at 20 from 1885.

In the late 1880s he learned to make prints, apparently through his friendship with the Polish artist in his painting of Félix Jasinski in his Printmaking Studio from 1887. Although Jasinski was successful at the time, his work now seems to have been largely forgotten. Vallotton soon became fascinated by Japanese woodcuts, including ukiyo-e that had become so popular in the late nineteenth century. He collected them, and in 1891 started making his own woodcuts.

The year that he left the Académie Julian, he started painting his long series of domestic interiors that could be read as ‘problem pictures’ with open narrative. He began gently with The Visit or The Top Hat, Interior (1887), the year that he also exhibited his first two paintings (both portraits) at the Salon. A top hat and walking stick are parked on a chair just inside an apartment, whose door is partly open. Everything looks in order, except for the painting hanging on the wall at the right, which is at an odd angle.

The Sick Girl from 1892 uses a theme that was popular with Naturalist painters throughout the 1880s and into the 1890s. His model was his muse and lover Hélène Chatenay, whom he had met in 1889. They remained a couple until the late 1890s, and in 1907 she was tragically killed by a car.

His detailed realism here extends to showpiece surface reflections from the glassware and polished wood, but he curiously obscures the face of the young woman in her sickbed by reversing the bed’s normal orientation. Many of his apparently humdrum interiors have unusual twists such as this, adding the strangeness later to be formally exploited in Surrealism. Another odd feature in this painting is that the maid who has just entered the room appears to be heading towards the viewer, and isn’t even looking towards her patient.

The Cook at the Stove, or simply The Cook, from 1892 is another domestic genre scene drawn from Naturalism, and features Hélène Chatenay again. She stands at the solid-top range in a kitchen strangely almost devoid of the one thing that kitchens are for: food. The only edible item visible is a bunch of onions suspended in mid-air. Everything – the chairs, pots and pans, and the range itself – is spotless as if they have never been used, and appear unnatural.

In 1892, Vallotton made lifelong friendships with key members of the Nabis, including Pierre Bonnard, Ker-Xavier Roussel, Maurice Denis, and Édouard Vuillard. Because of his Swiss origins, he was dubbed the Foreign Nabi.

His most overtly Nabi painting is Bathing on a Summer Evening from 1892-93. These flattened and stylised figures representing women of all ages have been applied like collage to a background reminiscent of some of Ferdinand Hodler’s alpine meadows.

In 1893, Vallotton painted his remarkable Waltz, on which he appears to have sprinkled thousands of multi-coloured dots to give its surface a fine sparkle. Couples sweep across an unseen dance floor, embraced in a lover’s waltz, with just one of their faces clearly visible.

Unlike Pierre Bonnard, Vallotton doesn’t appear to have painted many views of Paris, but this Street Scene in Paris from 1895 shows more Nabi style and some overlap with Bonnard’s contemporary motifs, even down to the dog wandering in the middle of the road.

Like the other Nabis, Vallotton became involved with the Natanson brothers, and their magazine Revue Blanche published a series of ten of his prints of interiors in 1898. He provides us with a glimpse into the private life of Misia Natanson, as she was at the time, in his Misia at Her Dressing Table (1898), again in Nabi style.

Vallotton remained under Nabi influence when he painted The Red Room in 1898 to the extent that he used distemper, a traditional medium the group had resurrected. A man and woman stand in a loose embrace in the doorway of a living room with brick red decor. Above the fireplace is what could be a mirror, or a painting, in which a person dressed in black is standing in the distance, apparently looking away from the couple.

A similar well-dressed couple embrace more closely in The Visit from 1899, also painted in distemper. Once again, Vallotton leaves the painting’s underlying narrative open.

As he moved on from his brief affair with the Nabis, and the group itself disintegrated, Vallotton experimented with unusual points of view, as in The Ball from 1899. A young girl is chasing her red ball, as two women talk in the distance. This is seen from mid-air above the girl, forming a simple but compelling motif with an air of mystery.

In the last year of the nineteenth century, he turned to painting landscapes on the north coast of France.

On Dieppe Beach from 1899 reduces this scene as only a printmaker could, to discrete forms filled with colour: the textured sand, sea, sky, and the simplified shapes of the three figures with a parasol.

He even painted one of the formative coastal landscapes of Impressionism, in his Seafront at Étretat (1899). Watching a gathering of fashionable ladies on the promenade is the cyclopean eye of the Manneporte.

In 1899, Vallotton married Gabrielle Rodrigues-Henriques, a rich young widow who already had three children. The following year, he was granted French citizenship. In the early years of the new century, he was to concentrate on painting further strange motifs.