Most religions centre their ceremonies and worship around a raised horizontal surface, a stone slab, table or platform referred to as an altar. In some pre-Christian religions altars are used for libations, the pouring out of liquid as an offering, and sacrifice. Most Christian churches use them for a collection of symbolic objects such as candles and crucifixes, and the vessels used to celebrate the Eucharist. They can be a modest alcove in a home, or the focus of a grand cathedral. In this and tomorrow’s sequel I offer some examples that are significant in the reading of paintings.

Alfred-Henri Bramtot’s painting of The Death of Demosthenes from 1879 shows the suicide by poisoning of this Greek statesman and orator. His limp body is supported from falling in front of an altar to the god Neptune. At the left edge is the characteristic altar tripod, and the orator’s pen and writing materials are behind it. He charged his pen with poison, and used that to administer it to himself.

This surviving version of Angelica Kauffmann’s Acontius and Cydippe Before the Altar of Diana shows Cydippe in front of an altar to the goddess Diana, with Acontius behind. He holds his ingeniously inscribed apple high above her, apparently waiting for the perfect moment to drop it in front of her. Instead of the altar flame burning at the top of a tripod, it’s here shown in a carved stone slab, at the left. Behind the statue of Diana are two of her priestesses.

In the seventeenth century, Domenicus van Wijnen explored the theme of witchcraft in The Witches’ Sabbath by Moonlight, set in a moonlit Italian landscape. This combines many of the now-classical symbols associated with ‘the dark arts’, and takes place at an outdoor altar set up at the foot of the gallows, on which a dead body hangs. Clustered in front of the altar at the right is a soldier in armour, who is looking in a mirror at the image of another, and a woman who is kneeling and holding a snake in her right hand. The surface of the altar has been prepared with bread and wine, and there is a small chimera by it.

The young prophet Daniel (of lions’ den fame) was King Cyrus the Great’s confidant, according to the book of Daniel. When Cyrus asked Daniel why he didn’t worship the Persian god Bel (Baal), Daniel responded by saying that he worshipped a living god, not a mere idol. Cyrus then claimed that Bel too was a living god, and pointed to the offerings of food and wine that were placed before his statue, and were consumed each night. Daniel remarked cautiously that bronze statues do not eat, which for a moment threw Cyrus. But Daniel had exposed the deception of Bel’s priests.

In this painting of Daniel and Cyrus before the Idol Bel of 1633, Rembrandt has captured Cyrus, standing in the centre, pointing at the food and wine placed on the altar to Bel, whose huge idol is seen rather murkily at the upper right. Behind the modest figure of Daniel are some of the priests who maintained this deception.

Many artists associated with German Romantic and Symbolist movements painted groups of worshippers within ancient trees, often under similar titles to Arnold Böcklin’s Sacred Grove, from 1882. The nine figures here are shrouded in white habits indicating their religious association. On top of a stone altar is a bright flame, at which three of them are bent low and kneeling in obeisance.

Charles William Mitchell’s best-known painting is that of Hypatia, completed and exhibited in 1885. It shows a naked woman, her long tresses clasped to her right breast, leaning back against a carved stone altar, on which there is a crucifix and a bowl, on an altar cloth. She holds her left arm up, her hand open and gesturing towards a mosaic on the wall behind her, and looks anxious.

On either side of the altar are burning candles, long on tall floor-standing candlesticks. The flame of that at the left is being blown towards the altar, implying that a door to the left, in the direction of the woman’s gaze, is open.

The walls are decorated with mosaics; although the images of them shown are only fragmentary, they appear to be of religious motifs. That behind the woman shows a right foot that could be from an image of Christ crucified. A curtained door leads to a room behind the altar. Scattered on the floor are a white robe (presumably removed from the woman), a candlestick holder, and other debris.

A Greek mathematician in Alexandria, Hypatia was a pagan philosopher who headed the Neoplatonic school there. Known for her dignity and virtue, she became embroiled in a bitter feud between Orestes, Roman governor of Alexandria, and Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria, over local Jewish dancing exhibitions. A fanatical Christian mob kidnapped Hypatia, took her to a Christian church, where she was stripped, tortured to death, and her body mutilated and burned.

Although Mitchell may well have been aware of the historical origin of this story, he was probably most influenced by Charles Kingsley’s novel Hypatia, or New Foes with an Old Face, published in 1853. In that version, Hypatia is on the verge of being converted to Christianity when she is attacked by the Christian mob. She is then dragged to a Christian church, stripped naked by the mob, and torn apart under a large image of Christ. Modern criticism of the novel stresses its anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.