Depictions of courts of law aren’t common, and fall into five main groups: those showing cases and events from legend and history, modern documentary records of trials, others purely fictional, some satirical accounts, and a few general views without narrative. This article covers the first three, leaving satire and general views to come tomorrow.

The first is an account of a corrupt judge in the Achaemenid Empire around 525 BCE, and the extreme penalty he paid.

The story given by Herodotus about the corruption of Sisamnes, known as the Judgement of Cambyses, is today obscure. However, in 1489 it formed the basis for two paintings by Gerard David now viewed as forming a diptych. Sisamnes was a notoriously corrupt judge under the rule of King Cambyses II of Persia, and accepted a bribe in return for delivering an unjust verdict.

In the left panel, Sisamnes is being arrested by the king and his men, as the judge sits in his official chair. Hand gestures indicate the bribery that had been at the root of Sisamnes’ crime.

King Cambyses sentences Sisamnes to be flayed alive, as shown in the foreground of the right panel. In the upper right, David uses multiplex narrative to show the judge’s skin then covering the official chair, as a reminder to all who sit in judgement of the fate that awaits them should they ever become corrupt or unfair.

David’s gruesome pair of paintings were a pointed reminder to the authorities in Bruges of the importance of an independent judiciary, and the penalty for any judge who was tempted by bribery or any other form of influence, cautions with contemporary value even now.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Phryne before the Areopagus from 1861 harks back to a classical legend of an unusual court case in Athens. Phryne had been a highly successful and very rich courtesan (hetaira) in ancient Greece, who was brought to trial for the serious crime of impiety. When it seemed inevitable that she would be found guilty, one of her lovers, the orator Hypereides, took on her defence. A key part of that was to unveil her naked in front of the court, in an attempt to surprise its members, impress them with the beauty of her body, and arouse a sense of pity. The legend claims that this ploy worked perfectly.

Gérôme shows a whole textbook of responses to surprise among the members of the court, although Phryne herself is covering not her body, but her eyes; each of the men in the court, of course, is looking straight at her. At the time that Gérôme painted this, France was well into its Second Empire, when Napoleon III had removed the gag from the French press, and was moving from his early authoritarian regime towards the more liberal. The legend of Phryne was a convenient vehicle for Gérôme to express his political opinion, and her nakedness suggests her role is that of Truth.

The other much better-known story of judgement is that of King Solomon, told in the Old Testament, and in a succession of marvellous paintings since the Renaissance. Two women each claimed to be the mother of the same healthy baby, alleging that the other was the mother of a dead child. Solomon’s wise judgement was to threaten to cut the living baby in two, which elicited the correct protective response from the real mother of that child.

Nicolas Poussin’s famous painting of 1649 uses a classical composition, the two disputing women and their actions preventing it from becoming too symmetrical. Timed slightly before the raising of the sword, the master of painted narrative depicts the body language with great clarity. Solomon’s hands indicate his role as the arbiter, in showing a fair balance between the two sides.

The true mother, on the left, holds her left hand up to tell the soldier to stop following the King’s instructions and spare the infant. Her right hand is extended towards the false mother, indicating that she has asked for the baby to go to her rather than die. The false mother points accusingly at the child, her expression full of hatred. Hands are also raised in the group at the right, perhaps indicating their reactions to Solomon’s judgement.

Coverage of prominent court cases came to dominate reporting in the press throughout Europe and North America. Several cases became so popular that they moved artists to depict them, and one, the Dreyfus Affair in France, had lasting influence on that nation’s history.

Frederick Sargent’s painting of The Tichborne Trial (1873-1899) shows one of the most prominent cases in England. In 1854, Roger Tichborne, heir to a title and family riches, was presumed to have died in a shipwreck. The following year, an Australian butcher came forward with the claim that he was that heir, which was tested in a civil court case, heard between 1871-72.

The outcome of that rejected the claim, and the Australian butcher then underwent criminal prosecution for perjury, in one of the longest criminal cases heard in an English court, during 188 days between 1872-73. Sargent’s painting shows that case in progress, with the accused sitting just below the centre and looking straight ahead of him. Standing to the right of him is his barrister, Edward Kenealy, with ‘mutton chop’ whiskers.

The Australian butcher was convicted, sentenced to fourteen years in prison, and eventually died destitute in 1898. His barrister’s career was also finished, and he was subsequently disbarred. He went on to be elected as a Member of Parliament for his own political party in 1875, but died shortly after losing that seat in 1880.

Courts in some jurisdictions have long been reticent about allowing parties, judges, or juries to be drawn, painted or photographed. Although American practice has long allowed artists as reporters, in 1925 Britain made it illegal to draw inside a courtroom during a trial. The thirst for images for publication has since been satisfied by artists who work entirely from memory.

Arnold Mesches’ Courtroom sketch of the US Navy’s court of inquiry about USS Pueblo’s capture by North Korea from 1969 is perhaps more of an illustrative record of a court in session, sketched from a square and conventional position. But other artists and cases are quite different.

Robert Clark Templeton’s Drawing for CBS Evening News of Bobby G. Seale and others (1971) shows the head and shoulders of the accused, who co-founded the Black Panther Party for Self-Defense and was here on trial in New Haven, CT, for the murder of Alex Rackley. The jury was unable to reach a verdict and the case was declared a mistrial.

Another fine example of courtroom art is Elizabeth Williams’ portrait of Faisal Shahzad, The “Times Square Bomber” Sentencing, Manhattan Federal Court: October 5, 2010 (2010). Shahzad had pleaded guilty to five counts of federal terrorism-related crimes committed when he planted a car bomb in Times Square, New York, on 5 May 2010, for which he was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.

There have also been a few paintings of fictional trials.

Abraham Solomon’s wonderful pair of paintings is set immediately outside a court. In the first, the father and family of the accused are seen Waiting for the Verdict (1859) at the end of a trial. The court appears in cameo up to the right, in that strange state of suspended animation as it awaits the decision.

Solomon’s pendant shows the elation when the verdict of Not Guilty (1859) is returned. The man, now freed from the dock, is embraced by his wife, who is kneeling in supplication, as their young child reaches out to touch father’s face. His father, eyes damp with tears of relief, is thanking their barrister earnestly.

In place of the view of the distant court, which is being symbolically dismissed as the barrister closes a door at the right edge, the left side of the painting now leads out to the warm light of the early dusk in the outside world, indicating freedom.

The melodrama of legal process is shown in William Frederick Yeames’ ‘problem picture’ Defendant and Counsel from 1895. An affluent married woman wearing an expensive fur coat sits with a popular newspaper open in front of her, as a team of three barristers and their clerk look at her intensely, presumably waiting for her to speak. As we’re told that she is the defendant, the viewer is encouraged to speculate what she is defending: a divorce claim, or a criminal charge?

Camels have continued to feature in paintings showing more recent times, from events at the end of the eighteenth century, when Napoleon was in Egypt.

Jean-Léon Gérôme made several paintings showing Napoleon in Egypt, including this highly detailed and intricate version of General Bonaparte and his Staff in Egypt from 1867. The French Campaign in Egypt and Syria had been in 1798-1801, so this was still relatively recent history, even when viewed from the distance of the final years of the Second Empire.

Dromedaries were introduced to Australia in the nineteenth century to carry people and loads through its arid regions. They came to prominence in the ill-fated Burke and Wills Expedition of 1860 to cross the continent of Australia from south (Melbourne) to north in the Gulf of Carpentaria.

Nicholas Chevalier painted this Memorandum of the Start of the Exploring Expedition to mark the occasion in 1860. The team left Royal Park, Melbourne on the afternoon of 20 August 1860 with nineteen men and about twenty tonnes of equipment and stores. Included were more than twenty-four camels, horses and wagons. Only one of the team survived to complete the crossing, and seven died, including both Burke and Wills.

David Roberts’ painting of the Isle of Graia, Gulf of Akabah (1839), shown here as a lithograph, is unusual for showing camels on the beach. We’re used to seeing dogs, horses, donkeys, even cows and sheep, but the ‘ship of the desert’ isn’t a common sight on the beach. The coastline of the Gulf of Aqaba (or Gulf of Eilat) is on the eastern side of the Sinai Peninsula, and before urbanisation, development, and the advent of tourists, had a wild desert beauty, as shown here.

As artists visited North Africa more during the latter half of the nineteenth century, paintings of camels in their natural habitat became more common.

Marià Fortuny’s Camels Reposing, Tangiers (1865) is a watercolour sketch made over a heavily-worked and now visible graphite drawing, showing a group of camels resting near the city of Tangier, not far from Tétouan, in northern Morocco.

Alberto Pasini’s painting of The Caravan of the Shah of Persia from 1867 is a superbly wide view of an extensive royal caravan crossing a desert plain, including a couple of elephants at the right.

When Ivan Aivazovsky visited Tiflis, now Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia in 1868, his superb painting of this cosmopolitan city shows camels on its bustling streets.

Even in 1900-18, when Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani painted this Tatar Camel Driver, they would still have been a common sight in parts of Tbilisi visited by traders from the south, and the artist was clearly familiar with the animal. Tatar traders moved their goods on Bactrian camels as far as Crimea and other parts of southern Ukraine.

Eugen Bracht’s paintings of the Middle East avoid the crowded and bustling towns, preferring the barren desert where just a handful of people travel with their camels In the Arabian Desert (1882).

Bracht’s slightly later view From the Sinai Desert (1884) shows more groups on the move in the relentless heat. The ship of the desert indeed, but never argue with a half-ton camel, even if it’s an entry in a beauty pageant.

By 1880, Sir Edward Poynter (1836–1919) was well-established as one of the leading artists of the day. Although he had painted some spectacular panoramas and some scenes from popular classical narratives, many of his paintings were more typical of the Aesthetic movement, lacking the intricate narratives of Frederic, Lord Leighton’s earlier works. Poynter was also taking leading roles in art education, and was by this time principal of the predecessor to the Royal College of Art in London.

A Visit to Aesculapius (1880) is an unusual motif. Although this image makes it appear to be a nocturne, this is probably darkening from aged varnish and dirt: contemporary prints (below) suggest it’s actually set in normally-lit daytime. Aesculapius, the ancient Greek god of medicine and the healing arts, sits at the left, contemplating the left foot of Venus with a thorn in it. She’s attended by doves, with the three Graces as her handmaidens.

Poynter arrays the Graces in classical manner, with one turning her back to the viewer, and reaching her right arm out to the figure of Hygieia, daughter of Aesculapius and the goddess of health and sanitation, who is drawing water from the fountain at the right. Shown at the lower edge of the painting is the staff of Aesculapius, around which a snake is entwined. That isn’t to be confused with the caduceus of Hermes (Trismegistus), which has two snakes intertwined.

Psyche in the Temple of Love (1882) returns to the theme of the contemplative woman, here in the context of a simple classical story. Cupid has fallen in love with Psyche, and takes her to the Temple of Love, where he visits her each night, but never in daylight. Here Psyche is whiling away the daytime, holding a sprig out to attract a butterfly, her attribute. However, Psyche’s enemy Venus is not far away, as implied by the doves in the temple behind her.

Diadumenè (1883) is one of several paintings that Poynter made of the Esquiline Venus statue in Rome, which had only been discovered in 1874. He first saw the statue in about 1881, here ‘restoring’ its form into the figure of a beautiful young woman who is binding her hair with a strip of cloth in preparation for her bath. The title is a reference to Polyclitus’ Diadumenos, meaning ‘diadem bearer’, one of his two famous figural types, the other being Doryphoros, or ‘spear bearer’.

Light in narrative but a classical depiction of the female nude, this painting was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1884. It resulted in correspondence in The Times newspaper which condemned “the indecent pictures that disgrace our exhibitions”, to which Poynter responded with a defence of such classical works. The figure’s nudity may have been enhanced by the presence of her clothing next to her, just as in Thomas Eakins’s William Rush Carving His Allegorical Figure of the Schuylkill River (1876-77). Ten years later, Poynter painted another version in which his Venus is partially clad, although her right breast still shows proud.

Outward Bound (1886) shows two young boys playing in a small rock cave at the coast. They have a bamboo fishing rod with them, and have made a small boat, which appears to be floating out through the rock arch at the left towards the open sea. Although the phrase outward bound is now more usually associated with the movement started in around 1941 by Kurt Hahn, and Baden-Powell’s scouting movement wasn’t founded until 1910, there were contemporary advocates who promoted getting the poor out of cities to a healthier life in the country and at the coast.

Corner of the Marketplace (1887) might have been painted by Poynter’s close contemporary Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, but for its joyous celebration of motherhood. Apparently it shows a maker of wreaths and floral displays at work, while the baby plays with a flower. However, the mother sat on a marble bench has a more pensive and wistful stare.

The Corner of the Villa (1889) may have been painted as a pendant to the previous work. Its ornate classical setting is almost overpowering in fine detail, threatening to outdo both Alma-Tadema and Gérôme. The family here is more patrician, and feeding pigeons from a bowl of seed. One of the birds is bathing and splashing in the drinking fountain at the left, and ripe apples are scattered on the marble floor.

The Visit of the Queen of Sheba to King Solomon (1890) is another of Poynter’s spectacles that might have been worthy of Gérôme. Inspired by the growing collections of antiquities from Egypt and the Middle East that had been gathering in the British Museum and elsewhere, it presents a simple orientalist narrative of the Queen of Sheba visiting King Solomon. Poynter again fills the painting with extraordinary detail, which spills over into its heavy, ornate frame. Orientalism was becoming the new classicism.

In a Garden (1891) treats a sub-tropical garden to a similar level of detail, as a small figure sits reading in the shade of a large fan.

In 1894, Poynter became Director of London’s National Gallery, and remains the last practising artist to have run this major collection. During his period as Director, which lasted a decade, he oversaw the opening of the Tate Gallery.

The Ionian Dance: Motus doceri gaudet Ionicos, Matura virgo et fingitur artubus (1895) quotes the ‘Roman’ Odes of Horace, and describes the ‘corruption’ of a young woman who learns the ‘lascivious’ movements of this particular dance. The Latin text may be translated as it pleases the mature virgin to be taught the movements of the Ionian Dance, and shapes her limbs. However, artubus may be a double entendre, as it can also refer to the sexual organs.

Poynter’s painting shows a shapely young woman, wearing nothing but a diaphanous dress, dancing vigorously in front of an audience of eight other women, who seem critically engaged in her performance. This appears decidedly Aesthetic, as well as more than a little risqué.

In 1896, Poynter was elected President of the Royal Academy at a time of difficulty: its long-standing President, Frederic, Lord Leighton, had died unexpectedly in January, and his successor, John Everett Millais, died in August. Poynter was knighted in 1896, and made a Baronet in 1902.

Helena and Hermia (1901) shows two of the young lovers from William Shakespeare’s play A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Helena is an aristocrat from the court of Theseus, who was betrothed to Demetrius, to whom she remains devoted. Hermia is an Athenian who is caught in a romantic accident, in that she loves Lysander, but Demetrius loves her. Hermia is named after the Greek god of exchange and dreams, one of the central themes of the play.

Although caught in complex relationships, Helena and Hermia are good friends, and it’s their friendship that Poynter depicts, a popular theme for paintings in the nineteenth century. There is perhaps a little more symbolism buried in this work, though: a ball of red thread lies partly unwound on the ground at the lower right, possibly representing difficulties in the course of love.

At first sight, Cave of the Storm Nymphs (1903) might appear to be another excuse for three superb female nudes, but there is more complex narrative behind this scene. Its literary reference may be to the Naiads of Homer’s Odyssey, book 13, who live in a sea cave, updated to encompass more contemporary references to Wreckers, who lured ships onto the rocks in order to steal their precious cargos, sirens without the socially unacceptable habit of cannibalism.

Here the three Storm Nymphs are seen amid their rich takings, the more distant of them perched on a rock and holding a shell-based lyre, and a wrecked galleon breaking up in the huge sea beyond. The painting is rich in the beauty of the nymphs, the savage waves, and the evoked sounds and sensations associated with each.

Asterié (1904) returns to a thoroughly classical narrative, taken from Horace’s Odes, books 3 and 7. Asterié is a Greek wife, left behind in Athens while her husband is away in the service of the state. She is being stalked by the god Zeus, who lurks in human form down in the street below. She looks down at him, pondering what to do: whether to succumb to his desires, or to retain her virtue? Clutching a carnation (also adorning her hair), a symbol of marital fidelity, she looks to be standing by her absent husband, but the question is left open for the viewer to speculate.

This painting was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1904, but remaining unsold, was sent to New Zealand for the 1906 New Zealand International Exhibition in Christchurch, where it was finally sold.

Lesbia and Her Sparrow (1907) might these days be easily misread from its title. In fact, Lesbia was the literary pseudonym used by Gaius Valerius Catullus, the Roman poet, for his lover, who’s traditionally thought to have been another man’s wife. She came to dominate nearly a quarter of Catullus’ surviving poems, and appears in several contemporary paintings: Lawrence Alma-Tadema painted her at least twice, and several of those paintings show her with her devoted pet sparrow. For Poynter, it appears to be another Aesthetic work invoking the sparrow’s song, and the taste of grapes.

Poynter appears to have largely retired by the start of the First World War, and died shortly after its end. He was so greatly respected that he was buried in St Paul’s Cathedral, London, just as Sir Joshua Reynolds had been. He had been a prolific, highly successful, and influential artist. His work includes classical narratives as sophisticated as Frederic, Lord Leighton’s, spectacles as good as the best of Gérôme, and some of the best paintings to emerge from the Aesthetic movement. Yet he has no catalogue raisonné, no monograph on his paintings, nor have his works been exhibited together since 1920, apart from a small exhibition in Brighton College’s Burstow Gallery in 1995.

References

Wikipedia.
Ten Lectures on Art (1880), by Sir Edward Poynter, at archive.org: an Aesthetic manifesto.

Since its domestication somewhere on the steppe of Ukraine and south-western Russia around five millennia ago, humans have been dependent on the horse as a means of transport and drawing wheeled vehicles of many kinds. By the late eighteenth century the work they’re capable of was used as the basis for the measurement of power, in the horsepower, that became most popular when they were being replaced first by steam engines, and then the noisy and smelly motor vehicles of the twentieth century.

These two articles look at horses of conventional design; those with wings have been covered here, and the story of the unicorn in this article.

In Greek and Roman myth, the sun is drawn across the heavens by Phoebus’ chariot, with four horses, usually named Eous, Aethon, Pyrois, and Phlegon, in harness.

They are shown in Gustave Moreau’s Chariot of Apollo, or Phoebus Apollo from about 1880, in a prelude to the myth of Phaethon, who lost control of it and set the world on fire when his adventure went wrong.

While several deities are drawn in their chariots by unusual creatures, Pluto opts for a pair of suitably black horses.

Walter Crane’s account of The Fate of Persephone (1878) shows her at the moment of her abduction, still holding her posy. Pluto has pulled up in his chariot, and is gripping her right arm, ready to make off with her into the dark cavern to the right, taking the couple down to Hades.

Chariots of mortals were conventionally drawn by a pair of horses. Franz von Matsch’s The Triumph of Achilles (1892) shows Achilles in his chariot driving at speed around the walls of Troy, towing the naked body of Hector and followed by celebrating Greeks.

Troy was also the site of the greatest deception using a horse, although in this case it was a huge wooden model containing a team of Greek commandos who were to open the city up for the rest of their army to enter.

Tiepolo’s Procession of the Trojan Horse in Troy (1773) is one of his series showing the construction and entry of the horse into the city. He follows accounts that refer to Troy’s women and children hauling the structure using lines, and some reporting that it was ostensibly an apology for the theft of the Palladium.

Subsequently, the term Trojan Horse has entered the languages of Europe, although that isn’t the case for the Roman hero Marcus Curtius, whose leap saved the city of Rome.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Leap of Marcus Curtius (c 1850-1855) depicts the brief legend of this hero of classical Rome. Following an earthquake (now dated to 362 BCE), a great bottomless chasm opened up in the middle of the Forum. Attempts to fill it were unsuccessful, so an augur was consulted, who responded that the gods demanded the most precious possession of the state. Marcus Curtius was a young soldier who proclaimed that arms and the courage of Romans were the state’s most precious possessions. In a moment of supreme self-sacrifice, he then rode into the pit in his finest armour, astride his charger, the moment shown here. As he and his horse fell into its abyss, the chasm closed over him, and the city was saved.

Horses feature in many other legends from around the world. Among the more curious is that of Lady Godiva, who is claimed to have ridden naked through the streets of Coventry, England, in protest at her husband’s swingeing taxes.

Jules Lefebvre’s first painting of Lady Godiva from 1891 shows her passing over deserted narrow cobbled streets, covering her breasts and appearing in some distress. Her horse is being led by a maid, and flying alongside are three white doves. She appears almost saintly in her mission, as if undergoing a form of psychological martyrdom.

Walter Crane’s Neptune’s Horses from 1892 is one of a series of paintings he made fusing the horses drawing Poseidon’s chariot with near-breaking waves, popularly known in English as white horses.

Another widespread legend is that of Saint George, a knightly Christian who slayed a dragon to save a princess. He is claimed by several countries across Europe as far as Georgia, and is patron saint of England.

Around 1553-55, Tintoretto retold his story in his small masterpiece of Saint George and the Dragon. The saint, the dragon and the Princess have escaped the confines of his earlier votive painting of this motif, and here run free in a rich green coastal landscape of the artist’s invention. George is locked in battle with the dragon and the Princess flees from the scene in terror. The dragon’s last victim still lies on the grass, his blue clothing in tatters. Above them and the massive walls of a distant fortress is the figure of God, in a brilliant mandorla in the heavens.

That leads us to tomorrow’s sequel, which starts with horses in chivalry.

There can be few cities in the world as exciting as Istanbul, as it straddles the Bosporus Strait joining Europe to Asia, and connecting the Black Sea with the Mediterranean. This weekend I invite you to join me in seeing that city, and a little of the country around it, in the paintings of great artists.

Founded as the Greek city of Byzantium at around the time of Homer, it grew into the capital of Constantine the Great’s Roman Empire in 330 CE, and was soon renamed Constantinople. It then served as the capital of a succession of Byzantine and Ottoman Empires, and was finally renamed Istanbul in 1930.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s 1885 painting of The Great Bath of Bursa is an intricate orientalist fantasy set in this large city in north-western Turkey, which for a period during the fourteenth century was the country’s capital. This is to the south of Istanbul, close to the Sea of Marmara.

Legends about Charlemagne and his travels are often colourful, but usually unsupported by evidence. This miniature showing Charlemagne in Constantinople from about 1450 appears entirely fictitious, and another fantasy.

Eugène Delacroix’s major entry for the Salon of 1841 was The Entry of the Crusaders into Constantinople (1840), destined for display in the Salle de Croisades in Versailles. This shows an episode from the fourth crusade in 1204, in which the crusaders took Constantinople. French forces were under the command of Baldwin, Count of Flanders, and had attacked from the land, while Venetians attacked the port from the sea. Its reception was as muted as its colours.

In the middle of the nineteenth century, European artists started travelling to Turkey to paint its exotic sights.

Richard Dadd’s Caravanserai at Mylasa in Asia Minor (1845) is a fairly conventional ‘orientalist’ view of a group of travellers at what had been the ancient Greek city of Mylasa, now Milas in south-western Turkey, well to the south of Istanbul and on the Mediterranean coast.

View of Constantinople and the Bosphorus (1856) is one of many views that Ivan Aivazovsky made of this great city, which he visited on many occasions. The artist kept his studio in Crimea, on the northern shore of the Black Sea.

During the latter half of the nineteenth century, the Italian painter Alberto Pasini lived in Constantinople for periods of up to nine months, and painted the city and its surroundings frequently.

Pasini’s great forte, if his surviving paintings are anything to go by, was the marketplace. He became very familiar with the often ad hoc markets set up wherever trading vessels came alongside. Market in Istanbul (Constantinople) from 1868 captures the cosmopolitan nature of these markets, and the whole city, mixing cultures, beliefs, eras, and technologies so gloriously.

Despite their apparent detail, Pasini’s paintings are relatively small, none here exceeding 90 cm (36 inches) in either dimension. The Met’s painting of A Mosque from 1872 is one of his larger works, and appears a more formal composition. A high-ranking person has just arrived in their decorated carriage to attend this mosque (see detail below), where they are greeted by a very casually turned-out guard, at the left. In the right foreground is one of Pasini’s signature melon sellers, who appear in so many of his paintings.

At The Golden Horn from about 1876 shows a dockside not far from the bustling city of Istanbul. The Golden Horn (in Modern Turkish, Haliç) is a horn-shaped estuary emptying into the Bosporus Strait at ‘Old Istanbul’. As a stretch of sheltered water so close to the city, it had long been a popular port for smaller traders, such as the mixed steam and sailing ship seen shrouded in coal smoke.

Market Day in Constantinople (1877) is one of Pasini’s finest paintings of the city’s waterfront, and one of several which have made their way to the US. Although its cultural fusion is less overt than his earlier painting of a market there, this is another ‘big’ view as its quay sweeps gently away into the distance. The detail below shows how meticulous Pasini is in his closer figures and produce, including the inevitable melon sellers with their great green globes glistening in the sunshine.

If you find geese daunting, then what about swans? Although usually seen as graceful if not regal, fully grown adults can weight over 15 kg (33 pounds), and can put up a real fight. They feature in one well-known myth that must have seemed incredible even to the ancients, that of Leda and the swan.

Leda, wife of Tyndareus, King of Sparta, was impregnated by Zeus in the form of a swan, at about the same time that she was also impregnated by her husband. Her twin pregnancies thus resulted in two eggs: one hatched into Castor, who was human because his father was Tyndareus; the other hatched into Polydeuces (Latin Pollux), who was divine as his father was Zeus, and the twins were known as the Dioskuroi.

This interpreted copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Leda and the Swan, probably painted in the early 1500s and now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art, summarises a later account involving Helen’s unique birth, with two eggs and a fourth baby, Clytemnestra. Later paintings, perhaps wisely, concentrated on Leda and Zeus, and skipped the incredible egg phase altogether.

Tintoretto and his workshop painted Leda and the Swan in about 1578-83, and wittily include two caged birds, a duck and what appears to be a parrot, with a cat taunting the duck.

Gustave Moreau started his early Leda in 1865 but abandoned it incomplete in 1875.

Moreau’s later watercolour of Leda and the Swan (c 1882) revisits this myth as another static display of female beauty, with the added twist of a large, dark aquiline bird by Leda’s feet. Although this could be an eagle, the bright red at its base suggests the flames of a phoenix just starting to self-combust. This is a curious combination of symbols of self-renewal through cyclical combustion, and a woman who laid eggs.

Joseph Stella’s Leda and the Swan (1922) follows a more modern tradition.

Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Leda and the Swan is drawn not from Ovid’s Metamorphoses, but direct from older Greek mythology. He shows over twenty young children, some of them winged amorini, bringing the swan to Leda as she wades into a river.

Swans appear in the supporting cast of some other myths.

After the scorched remains of Phaëthon were buried by Naiads in a distant tomb, his mother Clymene was left to mourn his death. Phaëthon’s lamenting sisters were then transformed into poplar trees, and their tears into amber (electrum). Phaëthon’s beloved friend Cycnus was transformed into a swan who shuns the heat by taking to the water that extinguishes fire. His name lives on in the genus to which swans belong, Cygnus.

Santi di Tito’s fresco of The Sisters of Phaethon Transformed into Poplars, from about 1570, shows the four young women with leaves sprouting from their hands and heads, as they lament the death of their brother. A swan makes a cameo appearance in the foreground, referring to the transformation of Cycnus.

The chariot of Venus is sometimes described as being drawn by white swans, as shown in Antoine Coypel’s painting of The Alliance of Bacchus and Cupid from about 1702, below.

Swans have also made the occasional transfer into modern legend, including that of King Arthur.

N. C. Wyeth’s illustration from 1922 accompanies the text “And when they came to the sword that the hand held, King Arthur took it up.” As three swans fly low behind them, Arthur and Merlin approach the hand in the lake that is presenting Arthur with his sword.

Other mythical themes have been attended by swans.

The association between Pegasus and the Muses was revived in one of Gustave Moreau’s ‘new’ history paintings, of Hesiod and the Muses in 1860. This is the first of a series of works showing Hesiod, generally considered to be the first written poet in the Western tradition to exist as a real person. He is shown to the left of centre, as a young man holding a laurel staff in his right hand. The Muses are squeezed in together, and one is on her knee to present Hesiod with a laurel wreath. There are four swans on the ground, and one in flight above Hesiod, a winged Cupid sat on the left wing of Pegasus, and a brilliant white star directly above the winged horse.

In 1896, Mikhail Vrubel met the operatic soprano Nadezhda Zabela, and they married shortly afterwards. His patron invited her to perform in his theatre, and in 1900 she sang in the role of Tsarevna Swan-Bird, or The Swan Princess (1900), in the world première of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Tale of Tsar Saltan, based on the poem of the same name by Pushkin.

Unfortunately, swans have also been consumed by royalty and nobles, in the infamous dish Swan Pie.

Jan Brueghel the Elder’s Taste (or Allegory of Taste) (1618), with figures painted by Rubens, is an extensive catalogue of what was then considered to be edible, including a well-prepared swan.

Frans Wouters’ Allegory of Taste was painted in 1635–59, and clearly inspired by Brueghel’s painting. Instead of the lavish jam-packed collation in that earlier work, Wouters seems to have had a smaller budget, or perhaps wished to avoid the sin of gluttony. There is still the infamous Swan Pie on the table.

There are even a few paintings where swans are just swans, including this wonderfully painterly watercolour by Marià Fortuny.

His Masquerade (1868) shows an open-air masked ball, presumably held in Italy in the autumn, which is arousing the interest or bemusement of two swans. Dress is liberal to say the least, with the woman in the centre baring her breasts while holding a parasol, but she has none of the grace of those swans.