© Jason Andrew for The New York Times
Gates as a means of access through the walls of fortified cities have ancient origins, but it wasn’t until the Etruscans and the Romans that they acquired their own deity, notably in the Roman god Janus with his two faces. His association with gates, and the start and end of war, gave rise to an interesting tradition in classical Rome: the gates at each end of an open enclosure associated with the god were kept open in times of war, and closed when the city and empire was at peace. Opening the gates of the temple of Janus was therefore a mark of starting a war.
In Rubens’ Temple of Janus from 1634, those gates, here imagined to be those of a temple, are being opened to let a warrior through to battle. Above that doorway is a statue of Janus with his two faces.
In Biblical narratives, the prominent account involving gates, other than those of heaven or hell, occurs at the start of the Passion of Jesus, in his triumphal entry into Jerusalem riding a donkey, since celebrated by Palm Sunday. This has been depicted in two significant works in the late nineteenth century.
Gustave Doré painted several versions of Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem including this preparatory sketch, in preparation for his final huge version exhibited at the Salon in 1876, measuring 6 by 10 metres.
In 1897 Jean-Léon Gérôme painted his account of The Entry of Christ into Jerusalem. According to all four gospels, Jesus descended from the Mount of Olives, and as he proceeded towards Jerusalem, crowds laid their clothes on the ground to welcome his triumphal entry into the city. Aside from being one of the major events in the Passion to be shown in paintings, for Gérôme this may have had another reading. Just a few years earlier, his paintings were being welcomed by throngs at the Salon, and commanded huge sums when sold. A short time later, his work was largely ignored, and he may have seen himself as being prepared for crucifixion in public.
The gate of hell is featured in two of the major Christian literary works of the early modern period: Dante’s Divine Comedy (c 1308-1321) and John Milton’s Paradise Lost (1667).
At the start of Dante’s Inferno, the ghost of Virgil leads the author to the gate of Hell. Inscribed above it is a forbidding series of lines leaving the traveller in no doubt that they’re going to a place of everlasting pain and tortured souls. This culminates in the most famous line of the whole of the Divine Comedy:
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
traditionally translated as Abandon hope all ye who enter here, but perhaps more faithfully as Leave behind all hope, you who enter, and is seen written in William Blake’s own hand below.
It’s also William Blake who depicts Satan at the gates of hell in his paintings to accompany the second book of Milton’s epic.
Two versions, that from the Thomas set above, and below that from the Butts set, show Satan at the gate of hell, on his way out and heading for heaven.
Although the phrase pearly gates, derived from a description of the gate to heaven in the book of Revelation, has been in common use, few if any paintings have depicted them literally. However, in paintings of secular life they can have symbolic significance.
James Tissot painted The Farewells soon after his flight to London in the summer of 1871. This couple, separated by the iron rails of a closed gate, are in late eighteenth century dress. The man stares intently at the woman, his gloved left hand resting on the spikes along the top of the gate, and his ungloved right hand grasps her left. She plays idly with her clothing with her other hand, and looks down, towards their hands.
Reading her clothing, she is plainly dressed, implying she was a governess, perhaps. A pair of scissors suspended by string on her left side would fit with that, and they’re also symbols of the parting taking place. This is reinforced by the autumn season, and dead leaves at the lower edge of the canvas. However, there is some hope if the floral symbols are accurate: ivy in the lower left is indicative of fidelity and marriage, while holly at the right invokes hope and passion.
Edmund Blair Leighton’s Regency scene of The Elopement from 1893, shows a woman leaving home to run away with her lover, the oarsman in the boat. She closes the gate on her old life as she looks back and reflects, before boarding the boat in which she will start the journey of her new life.
In the long-distant past, our ancestors discovered that processing some natural products created glues. The raw materials either came from boiling animal bones, hide, and other offal, or from natural exudates of plants, and these came to be used as the binder for paints. Being ancient in origin, different combinations of binder, pigment, and other substances developed, and those have left a confusion of terms, including glue tempera, and distemper. These represent a spectrum of paints, ranging from those using only glue and pigment, to others also incorporating substantial amounts of powdered chalk or lime to increase their opacity, and related to whitewash.
Glue tempera was used in antiquity, and outside Europe remains in widespread use. It has several disadvantages for the painter, including:
Taken together these mean that what we see in glue tempera paintings today is often quite different from how they looked at the time they were painted.
In the early Renaissance, some artists used glue tempera extensively and with great success, although surviving works haven’t aged as well as those painted using egg tempera or oils.
Dieric Bouts’ The Entombment from about 1450 was painted using glue tempera on linen. As it’s now well over half a millennium old its colours have faded, but it remains worth seeking out when you next visit The National Gallery in London.
In the south of Europe, Andrea Mantegna was one of its great exponents, as shown in his marvellous glue tempera and gold painting of A Sibyl and a Prophet from about 1495. Because this is monochrome and uses gold as the pigment, this has neither changed colour nor faded.
Some artists, such as Joris Hoefnagel, continued to use these ancient techniques, as shown in this painting of Diana and Actaeon from 1597. This is finely executed in glue tempera and gold on vellum, and its colours have survived well.
With the widespread adoption of oil paint, glue tempera almost disappeared until it was revived at the end of the eighteenth century by William Blake.
Blake painted a series of major works in what he termed tempera, using glue as their binder. This Adoration of the Kings from 1799 shows the dulling of colour and fine cracking from his use of stretched canvas as its support.
Some of Blake’s glue tempera paintings have survived in better condition: The Christ Child Asleep on the Cross, or Our Lady Adoring the Infant Jesus Asleep on the Cross from 1799-1800 has fared better, retaining more of its original colour.
Paintings such as Blake’s Virgin and Child in Egypt from 1810 show the fine modelling he was able to achieve in its figures. Overall, though, the condition of his glue tempera paintings isn’t good. It has been suggested that some of their variation is attributable to different sources of glue, clearly of major importance. For a long time, glues provided for this and similar purposes in painting have been referred to as rabbit skin glue, but in reality the great majority have been derived from a wide range of animal products, often in uncontrolled conditions.
After Blake, the medium fell back into obscurity until later in the nineteenth century, when it was revived by movements attempting to return to techniques of the past, most prominently the Nabis in France.
Pierre Bonnard used glue tempera early in his career, when painting this exquisite three-panelled Japoniste screen of The Stork and Four Frogs in about 1889, as the Nabis were forming. Using more modern pigments, Bonnard has achieved high chroma, comparable to anything in oils, and quite unlike traditional glue tempera.
Odilon Redon experimented with glue tempera in his painting of Buddha from 1904.
Édouard Vuillard used glue tempera in many of his paintings both during his Nabi period and later, for example in this view Under the Trees of the Red House from about 1905.
Vuillard’s At The Pavillons in Cricqueboeuf. In Front of the House, from 1911, shows how effective the medium can be.
Vuillard continued to use glue tempera in his late realist paintings, such as Morning Concert, Place Vintimille from 1937-38, showing a trio of friends playing for the artist in his Paris apartment.
Glue tempera remains in use today by a very few artists, who at least have a wider range of lightfast pigments to choose from, and more consistent formulations of glue to act as binder.
After hearing Francesca’s story in the Second Circle of Hell, for those guilty of the sin of lust, Dante weeps for her and faints. When he comes to, he realises that he has already descended to the Third Circle, where it’s pouring with rain, with snow and huge hailstones falling down in sheets. This soaks the ground, turning it into stinking mud.
He sees Cerberus, the fearsome three-headed canine monster that guards this circle, also soaked by the unceasing rain.
Agostino Carracci’s portrait of Pluto from 1592 shows Cerberus alongside his master, and the god holding the key to his kingdom.
Its heads bare their fangs at Dante, but his guide Virgil scoops up three handfuls of mud and throws them into the mouths of Cerberus to assuage its hunger.
Dante and Virgil walk on the flat plain among the prostrate forms of the gluttons. One of them sits up and accosts Dante, reminding him that they knew one another. He is Ciacco (a nickname, literally ‘Hoggio’), who tells Dante of his suffering there, and the names of five other Florentines of noble rank who are to be found in the lower circles of Hell.
Ciacco then falls flat on his face in the stinking mud to await the Final Judgement.
As Virgil leads Dante down to the next circle, they talk of what will happen when the Apocalypse comes, until they reach the dreaded figure of Plutus.
Cerberus is a good example of the redeployment of pre-Christian mythology into Christian beliefs: it was originally the guardian of the Underworld, as depicted by Carracci, and prevented those within from escaping back to the earthly world. It even features in the twelve labours of Hercules, in which he captured Cerberus. With Virgil’s explicit involvement, Dante here incorporates it into his Christian concepts of the afterlife.
The artists
Giuseppe Arcimboldo (1527–1593) was a highly original and individualistic Italian painter now best known for his portraits consisting of assemblies of fruit, vegetables and other objects to form human images. He also painted more conventional works which are largely forgotten today, and was court painter to the Habsburgs in Vienna and Prague. You can see some of his portraits in this article.
William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.
Agostino Carracci (1557-1602) was one of the Carracci trio, the others being his brother Annibale and cousin Ludovico, who were largely responsible for the reputation of the School of Bologna in Italy. After working as an engraver, he painted a series of major frescos showing the story of Jason and Medea, and the early history of Rome.
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still in use. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.
John Flaxman (1755–1826) was a British sculptor and draughtsman who occasionally painted. When he was in Rome between 1787-91, he produced drawings for book illustrations, including a set of 111 for an edition of The Divine Comedy. In 1810, he was appointed the Professor of Sculpture to the Royal Academy in London, and in 1817 made drawings to illustrate Hesiod, which were engraved by William Blake.
Joseph Anton Koch (1768-1839) was an Austrian landscape painter, who worked mainly in Neoclassical style. During his second stay in Rome, he was commissioned to paint frescos in the Villa Massimi on the walls of the Dante Room there, which remain one of the most florid visual accounts of Dante’s Inferno. He completed those between 1824-29.
Philippe Semeria is a young contemporary artist who is an enthusiast for comics and is an aspiring illustrator.
Jan van der Straet, also commonly known by his Italianised name of Giovanni Stradano (1523-1605), was a painter who started his career in Bruges and Antwerp in Belgium, but moved to Florence in 1550, where he worked for the remainder of his life. Mannerist in style, he worked with printmakers in Antwerp to produce collections of prints, including an extensive set for The Divine Comedy.
References
Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.
In the First Circle of Hell, Dante and his guide Virgil saw the souls caught in Limbo. From there they descend to the Second Circle, where they find those guilty of the sin of lust. They pass the figure of Minos, who extracts a confession from every sinner as they begin their descent, and directs them onward to the appropriate circle for their sins.
Here the light is dim, and there is an eternal storm blowing those in this circle, ensuring they never obtain any comfort or relief from its incessant blast. The first of those described by Virgil to Dante is Semiramis, who married her father and made such incestuous relationships legal. (This is now known to be a false legend recorded by Orosius, popular in Dante’s time.)
Then they see Cleopatra, Achilles, Paris and Tristan. Dante tells the story of Francesca in most detail, and possibly for the first time in literature. She appears, blown in the wind, with her lover Paolo, but it’s Francesca who speaks to Dante.
Francesca da Rimini was the aunt of Dante’s host when he lived his later years in Ravenna. In about 1275, she married Gianciotto of the ruling family in Rimini, for political reasons. There’s strong suspicion that she had been tricked into this: her husband turned out to be disfigured and uncouth, but pre-nuptial negotiations were conducted by his handsome and eloquent brother Paolo, suggesting she was duped.
Soon after the marriage, Paolo and Francesca became lovers, apparently inspired by the story of Lancelot and Guinevere. Gianciotto suspected the couple, and one day caught them together in his wife’s bedroom.
Paolo had become stuck when trying to escape through a trapdoor. Francesca was unaware of that, and let her husband in, who then attacked his brother with his sword. But Francesca stepped in between them to save her lover and was killed; Gianciotto then killed his brother, and after his own death had descended further into Hell for that double murder.
Dante’s story has inspired a succession of masterly paintings.
It was William Blake’s Whirlwind of Lovers that transformed these depictions.
This story is told in Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s watercolour triptych: at the left, the lovers are reading the legend of Lancelot and Guinevere. In the centre are Dante and Virgil, and at the right Paolo and Francesca are being blown in the storms of the Second Circle of Hell.
Dante faints at the tragic story that Francesca has told him, and collapses as if dead.
The artists
William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.
Umberto Boccioni (1882–1916) was an Italian painter and sculptor whose tragically short career was a major influence over the development of Futurism. Drafted into the Italian Army during the First World War, he was thrown from his horse and trampled to death when he was only thirty-three.
Alexandre Cabanel (1823–1889) was a major French painter of history in an academic style, and a precocious artist. He won the Prix de Rome in 1845, and was appointed a professor at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1864, teaching many successful pupils including Jules Bastien-Lepage. This article summarises his career and work.
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and still being used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso, and this painting was highly praised when shown at the Paris Salon in 1863. This article looks at his paintings.
Giuseppe Frascheri (1809–1886) was an Italian painter in fresco and oils who has been almost completely forgotten.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres (1780–1867) was a major French painter in Neoclassical style, best known for his history and other narrative paintings. He was a pupil of Jacques-Louis David, and continued much in his tradition, and in opposition to the more Romantic painting of Eugène Delacroix. His work extended from portraits to Orientalism.
Gaetano Previati (1852–1920) was an Italian painter who worked mainly in Divisionist style, but is now known for his Symbolism. He was most famous in the period 1880-1920, during which he was involved in the Venice Biennale and exhibitions in Italy and Paris.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828–1882) was of Italian descent but born in London. In 1848, he co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, and was a major figure in British painting until his early death in 1882. A published poet and author himself, many of his paintings were in response to literature, particularly the poems of John Keats. He had a succession of relationships with his models and muses, including Elizabeth Siddal, Fanny Cornforth, and William Morris’s wife Jane. The triptych shown here is the earliest of at least three paintings of his showing Paolo and Francesca, another similar triptych being from 1862.
Ary Scheffer (1795–1858) was a major narrative painter of the first half of the nineteenth century, born in the Netherlands but trained and working in Paris. Among his favourite literary themes were Goethe’s Faust, and the story of Paolo and Francesca. This article looks at his narrative work.
George Frederic Watts (1817–1904) was a major British painter and sculptor in the middle and late nineteenth century who was associated with several artistic circles and movements including the Pre-Raphaelites, but who worked independently in more Symbolist style. This article looks at his career and paintings.
References
Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.
Dante lost consciousness just before he was expecting to be ferried across the River Acheron in Charon’s boat, from Hell’s Gate to its First Circle.
Botticelli’s Map of Hell from 1480-90 shows these stages of their descent at the very top: highest are the woods through which Dante was wandering when he encountered the three wild beasts. At the left, Virgil led Dante down to the area in which the cowards are trapped, neither being allowed admittance to Heaven, nor to Hell. Charon’s boat then crosses the River Acheron, shown in blue, taking Dante and his guide Virgil to the First Circle of Limbo.
Dante is woken by thunder, and realises that he’s on the edge of the abyss that is Hell. Virgil leads him down into darkness, where there is no grief or pain, and explains that the multitude there never sinned at all, but none was baptised in faith as they had lived before the Christian era. This is where Virgil’s ghost now inhabits, for despite his merit and attainments, he never revered the Christian God.
Dante asks whether any of those in Limbo, as this circle is known, have ever been blessed and been able to leave. This allows Virgil to explain the Harrowing of Hell by Christ after his crucifixion. This occurred not long after Virgil’s death: following his crucifixion, Jesus Christ descended into Hell, where he reached the First Circle, blessed and liberated from it the many Old Testament figures who had been faithful to the God of the Jews, also known as Anastasis.
The descent of Christ into Limbo and his Harrowing of Hell was a popular theme in religious painting until the end of the Renaissance, and would have been familiar to Dante’s readers. Here is a small selection of some of the finest paintings of this, from 1530 to 1600.
Virgil then introduces the great classical writers: Homer, Horace the satirist, Ovid and Lucan. Together with Virgil, these five invite Dante to join them as the sixth among the ranks of great writers, in an ambitious piece of self-promotion.
The group walk on to the Dome of Light, and further to a castle surrounded by seven curtain walls and a moat. When they enter that they see many ancient heroes, including Electra, Hector, Aeneas, and other figures from classical history and legend. Next Dante notices a group of philosophers, including Socrates, Plato and others. Finally, he sees other learned figures from the past, including Euclid, Ptolemy and Hippocrates.
Here Dante and Virgil bid farewell to the spirits of those great figures as they move onward to the next circle.
The artists
Domenico di Pace Beccafumi (1486–1551) was one of the last of the Sienese School of Painting, which contrasted with the better-known Renaissance painting of Florence. He has been aptly summarised as “a mediaeval believer of miracles awaking in Renaissance reality.”
William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.
Sandro Botticelli (1445–1510) was one of the leading painters of the early Southern Renaissance, working in his native city of Florence. In addition to his huge egg tempera masterpieces of Primavera (c 1482) and The Birth of Venus (c 1485), he was a lifelong fan of Dante’s writings. He produced drawings that were engraved for the first printed edition of the Divine Comedy in 1481, but those weren’t successful, most copies only having two or three of the 19 that were engraved. He later began a manuscript illustrated edition on parchment, but few pages were ever fully illuminated.
Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568–1625) was the son of Pieter Brueghel the Elder, who specialised in floral still lifes. The painting shown above was made in collaboration with the figure painter Hans Rottenhammer, a relationship that lasted between 1595-1610. At the time of this painting, Brueghel had returned to Antwerp, and Rottenhammer was in Venice.
Pablo de Céspedes (1538–1608) was a Spanish polymath from Córdoba, who was an accomplished painter, poet and architect who worked for twenty years in Italy, largely because he fell foul of the Inquisition of Valladolid in Spain. He was also a linguist and theologian.
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, that were first published in 1857 and continue to be used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.
Hans Rottenhammer (1564–1625) was a German figure painter who worked in Italy from 1593-1606. Later during that period, when he was in Venice, he collaborated with Jan Brueghel the Elder on the work shown above. He was probably responsible for the early training of Adam Elsheimer, and for introducing him to the technique of painting on a small scale using oil on copper plate.
Jacopo Tintoretto (c 1518-1594) was one of the three grand masters working in Venice in the middle and late sixteenth century, alongside the more senior figure of Titian, and Paolo Veronese. Primarily a religious painter, I have looked in detail at his major works and biography. His painting shown above was made to accompany his Crucifixion for the church of San Cassiano in Venice.
References
Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.
Dante has been rescued from three wild beasts by the ghost of Virgil, who leads him along the only possible route, taking them to the gate of Hell. Inscribed above that gate is a forbidding series of lines leaving the traveller in no doubt that they’re going to a place of everlasting pain and tortured souls. This culminates in the most famous line of the whole of the Divine Comedy:
Lasciate ogne speranza, voi ch’intrate
traditionally translated as Abandon hope all ye who enter here, but perhaps more faithfully as Leave behind all hope, you who enter, and is seen written in William Blake’s own hand below.
Virgil explains its meaning to Dante before the two enter. Dante is then struck by the terrible sounds that he hears, those of tormented sinners in Hell mixed with the noise of the first group of dead: those who have been refused entry to Hell or to Heaven, because of their cowardice in failing to choose between God and the Devil. They form a river of naked bodies drawn by a banner, their faces constantly stung by wasps and hornets, streaking them with blood and tears.
Among them is one who has been identified as Pope Celestine V, who resigned from office in 1294, and another candidate is Pontius Pilate, who refused to pass judgement on Christ.
Then Charon, an irascible old man with white hair and coal-black eyes, appears in his boat. He tells Dante to get away from the dead, as he won’t be carried across by him with those souls, and will have to arrange another crossing. Virgil intercedes to ensure that they too will be ferried across the marshy River Acheron to Hell.
Those souls destined for Hell rush to board the boat, with Charon sweeping them in using his oar to hit those who are slow. The boat then carries them across, as another load gathers on the shore ready for its return.
There is then a violent gust of wind and a red bolt of lightning, and Dante loses consciousness.
Although Dante doesn’t describe his crossing of the Acheron in Charon’s boat, this has been imagined by several painters.
In 1822, the young Eugène Delacroix painted one of his finest narrative works, The Barque of Dante, showing the pair crossing a stormy river Acheron in a very small boat. He painted this quickly, over an intense period of a little over two and a half months, just in time for submission to the Salon. Dante, wearing his distinctive scarlet chaperon (hat), holds his hand up as he leans back onto the shoulder of Virgil his guide. This has been interpreted as showing how, when we encounter challenges from the modern we should look to tradition for support.
This is one of the most remarkable paintings of the Inferno, as an early experiment with colour. In the detail below, water droplets on the bodies of those surrounding the boat contain at least three different colours: their reflected highlights are pure white, the rest of the body of the droplet and its trail are the dark green of the water below, and the droplet itself has a shadow of the same pink that Delacroix uses to shade flesh. Their overall effect is of an unusually three-dimensional and realistic droplet.
The artists
José Benlliure y Gil (1855–1937) was a Spanish painter who was born in Valencia but spent much of his working life in Rome, where he became the director of the Spanish Academy there. After painting small genre works, he turned to classical narratives including the painting shown here.
William Blake (1757–1827) was a British visionary painter and illustrator whose last and incomplete work was an illustrated edition of the Divine Comedy for the painter John Linnell. Most of his works shown in this series were created for that, although he did draw and paint scenes during his earlier career. I have a major series on his work here.
Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was a major French painter whose Romantic and painterly style laid the groundwork for the Impressionists. In addition to many fine easel works, he painted murals and was an accomplished lithographer too. Many of his paintings are narrative, and among the most famous is Liberty Leading the People from 1830. This article introduces a series featuring his major works.
Gustave Doré (1832–1883) was the leading French illustrator of the nineteenth century, whose paintings are still relatively unknown. Early in his career, he produced a complete set of seventy illustrations for translations of the Inferno, first published in 1857 and continue to be used. These were followed in 1867 by more illustrations for Purgatorio and Paradiso. This article looks at his paintings.
Alexander Dmitrievich Litovchenko (1835-1890) was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, but spent most of his career painting historical events in Russia. His painting of Charon won him a gold medal.
Paolo Vetri (1855–1937) was a precocious Italian painter who was born in Sicily. He was a pupil of the great narrative artist Domenico Morelli, and completed several major murals as well as many easel paintings.
References
Robin Kirkpatrick (trans) (2012) Dante, The Divine Comedy, Inferno, Purgatorio, Paradiso, Penguin Classics. ISBN 978 0 141 19749 4.
Richard Lansing (ed) (2000) The Dante Encyclopedia, Routledge. ISBN 978 0 415 87611 7.
Guy P Raffa (2009) The Complete Danteworlds, A Reader’s Guide to the Divine Comedy, Chicago UP. ISBN 978 0 2267 0270 4.
Prue Shaw (2014) Reading Dante, From Here to Eternity, Liveright. ISBN 978 1 63149 006 4.
Until the advent of chemistry in the eighteenth century, early in the Age of Enlightenment, the vast majority of pigments occurred in nature, even if the minerals or plant matter from which they were derived had to be specially processed. The first truly synthetic pigment was so ancient that it had been forgotten completely by the Middle Ages: Egyptian blue was originally made before about 3000 BCE by heating together powdered rocks and sand, but that was an exception. It wasn’t until the early years of the eighteenth century that a hydrated iron hexacyanoferrate complex soon known as Prussian blue was synthesized.
No one knows who first made Prussian blue, nor exactly when it was first synthesized. It seems to have appeared initially around 1704, and its origins have been attributed variously to Diesbach in Berlin, or Mak in Leipzig. For once its name is appropriate, as it was a product of the Prussian Empire. Its potential as a colourant was recognised by 1710 when it went on sale in Berlin, and by about 1724 it was being manufactured across Europe.
Among the earliest surviving oil paintings to use Prussian Blue is that by Adriaen van der Werff and Henrik van Limborch, of Jacob Blessing the Sons of Joseph. This was started by van der Werff before he died in 1722, and the paint containing Prussian blue pigment is thought to have been applied by him to the curtain at the upper left. After van der Werff’s death, his pupil Henrik van Limborch finished the painting between 1727-28.
Another early example of the proven use of Prussian blue is Antoine Watteau’s The Italian Comedians from about 1720.
Canaletto is one of the first Masters to have used the new pigment extensively. Grand Canal from Palazzo Balbi toward the Rialto from 1720-23 has been attributed to him as one of his earliest surviving works, and its blues have been found to contain Prussian blue.
Canaletto was quick to adopt the pigment for use in almost all his paintings, including this view of the Rio dei Mendicanti from 1723-24, above, and his famous The Stonemason’s Yard (c 1725), below.
As experience was gained in using this pigment, it became controversial. Some artists were confident that its colour was stable and didn’t change or fade, but others experienced problems as bad as or even worse than those of the notoriously fugitive indigo blue, which it had generally replaced. It has gradually become understood that adverse results of lightfastness testing (and experience in paintings) have depended on the mixture of Prussian blue with other colours, particularly with white paint, and the presence of impurities in the pigment.
By the middle of the eighteenth century, Prussian blue was widely used with a range of binding media, with the notable exception of fresco and other alkaline media with which it proved incompatible.
William Hogarth’s paintings in his Marriage A-la-Mode series have been found to contain both smalt and Prussian blues. In The Tête à Tête (c 1743), smalt has been found in the ornate carpet, and I suspect that the ornamental pillars behind the woman rely on Prussian blue, at least in part. Hogarth trained as Prussian blue came to the ascendant, and wouldn’t have painted much before it had become widely available.
Jean-Baptiste Perronneau’s A Girl with a Kitten from about 1743 is a fine example of the use of Prussian blue in pastels: the girl’s blue dress and the background have both been found to contain the pigment.
Prussian blue also became popular in water-based media. William Blake’s Lucia Carrying Dante in his Sleep, from his series depicting Dante’s Divine Comedy painted in watercolour between 1824-27, is a good example. In this and several other of his paintings, Blake used the pigment on its own and mixed with gamboge yellow in what was known as Prussian green.
Prussian blue pigment has been found in the blue passages in Whistler’s The Princess from the Land of Porcelain (1863-65), from his Peacock Room, shown above and in the detail below.
The use of different blue pigments varied markedly among the French Impressionists and their successors. Paul Cézanne and Georges Seurat appear to have used Prussian blue seldom if at all, but it’s well known in the work of Edgar Degas, Claude Monet and Vincent van Gogh.
Although Monet’s Bathers at la Grenouillère (1869) contains cobalt blue in the brighter mid-blues of the water surface and details in the boats, darker blues towards the left, and in the clothing of some of the figures and their reflections, are almost certainly Prussian blue.
Vincent van Gogh’s portrait of La Mousmé from 1888 illustrates some of the difficulties of identifying pigment use. Its unusual title is derived from the Japanese word musume, meaning girl; at the time the French word was understood to mean an ‘easy’ girl.
Infra-red images demonstrate van Gogh’s use of at least two different blues, one of which has been identified as Prussian blue. The two (or more) blue pigments aren’t distributed evenly: on the girl’s jacket, the three blue stripes to the left of the row of buttons contain the most Prussian blue, while the three under her right armpit, which look darker, contain little or no Prussian blue. Van Gogh also mixed yellow with Prussian blue to form the green of the flowers she holds in her hand.
Prussian blue remained a popular pigment in oil and watercolour paints well into the twentieth century, and is still offered in commercial ranges. For many artists, though, it has been replaced by much more recent synthetic blue pigments, such as phthalocyanine (‘phthalo’) blue, introduced around 1970, and is seldom used in Prussian green.
Reference
Barbara H Berrie (1997) Artists’ Pigments, vol 3, ed Elisabeth West Fitzhugh, Archetype. ISBN 978 1 904982 76 0.
在今年的 Bilibili World 活动上，英特尔宣布了全新的「AI 高静游戏本」概念，对游戏本这种品类提出了一种新的规范，试图解决高性能和低能耗二者不可得兼的问题。
「高静」可以简单理解为「高性能+安静」，英特尔从六个维度，设定了相当具体的标准：
具体来说，就是一批搭载「Arrow Lake」酷睿 Ultra 200HX 系列处理器的高性能游戏本，试图打破这个品类长久以来续航差、发热强、噪音大的不良体验。
「高静」乍一看有点反常识，但英特尔认为，行业以往都太过极端追求了「性能」这一端，但实际上，牺牲部分性能不会造成游戏或工作体验的直线下滑，反而能很好地改善游戏本的续航和发热问题。
也就是说，英特尔找到了性能和能耗的「甜蜜点」，笔记本不会过度发热，但却能实现极限性能的九成，再往前走，只能用巨大的能耗，换取较少的性能收益，并不算划得来。
针对网游更吃 CPU、3A 大作更吃 GPU 的差异，英特尔还开发了需单独适配游戏的「应用优化器（APO）」，以及能在总功耗不变时，动态调整 CPU 和 GPU 功耗的「动态电源调优（DTT）」，两者都直接预装在设备中，默认启用。
个人认为英特尔做得很好的是，将「高静」做成了一种选择，作为「高性能静音模式」出现在各个 OEM 厂商的具体产品之中。它更多是一种介于均衡模式和极限性能模式之间的中间点，而用户随时都能选择让笔记本在高功耗下释放出 100% 的性能。
「高静」是这类新物种高性能本的重要特征，但并非全部，AI 能力也是英特尔重视的维度。
AI PC 的概念并不新鲜，很多 OEM 厂商也开始为产品预装自家的 AI 助手，但英特尔主动入局推动适配，依然具有重要意义。
在活动中，英特尔主要介绍了两种 SDK，分别用于 AI 语音助手和 AI 游戏助手，让它们能进一步利用处理器的本地算力。
除此之外英特尔也在持续与更多 AI 应用开发者合作，让更多应用能进一步利用英特尔处理器的算力和模型，实现响应更快、更隐私的端测 AI 能力。
作为一种新的产品定义，目前能称得上属于「AI 高静游戏本」的产品其实只有五款：
但活动现场英特尔拉来了 9 家著名游戏本 OEM 品牌，包括联想拯救者、戴尔外星人、华硕天选在内，就是想推广这种理念，并预告接下来会有更多产品问世。
这几年英特尔并不算好过，ARM 阵营的高通和苹果持续在能耗方面施压，而同为 x86 的 AMD 则屡屡实现超越。
「AI 高静游戏本」这个概念可以说抓得比较精准，吃上了芯片制程进步的红利，迎合了这几年笔记本市场开始重视能耗的趋势，想卡在一个更独特的生态位：不追求最极限的性能或者最极致的能耗表现，而是想更均衡发展，以退为进。
重要的是，英特尔提出了一个相对具体，但又并不会过于复杂的标准，既不打击厂商的积极性，也能尽量确保各家产品能提供一致性的体验。
当然就目前来看，「AI 高静本」这个概念相对比较理想化，毕竟传统游戏本风扇噪声在 50 分贝以下算安静，机身 50 度以下算温和，而条件更苛刻的「高静本」还能发挥出 90% 的极限性能，看起来多少有点难以置信，因而更需要后续实际的评测和体验进行验证。
国内的消费者在初期也或许会很难接受，一台游戏本需要去牺牲性能，来换取更好的能耗表现。
不过，朝着低能耗 + 高性能这个方向努力，总归是不会错的。
#欢迎关注爱范儿官方微信公众号：爱范儿（微信号：ifanr），更多精彩内容第一时间为您奉上。
Once the god Aesculapius is ensconced in his temple on Tiber Island in the city of Rome, Ovid is ready to round off his Metamorphoses with salient points from the life of Julius Caesar, and links to the contemporary Emperor Augustus. These are politically charged topics, and merit inoffensive coverage and language. In his whirlwind summary of some of Julius Caesar’s achievements, Ovid is obliged to write that it was Augustus who was the greater, before tackling the thorny issue of Caesar’s assassination.
When swords were taken into the Senate House in preparation, Venus pleaded Caesar’s case, and Jupiter responded that the emperor’s life was already complete, and it was time for him to join the gods. Venus then descended quickly and rescued Caesar’s soul as he lay dying on the floor of the Senate. Julius Caesar therefore underwent transformation into a star (catasterisation) as his apotheosis, on his assassination.
Caesar’s assassins were senators of Rome, a group of more than thirty led by three conspirators including his former friend and ally Marcus Junius Brutus. Several of Caesar’s closest aides had warned him not to attend the Senate on the Ides of March, and he had to be brought by one of the conspirators. As he arrived at the Senate, Caesar was presented with a petition, and the conspirators crowded around him.
Karl von Piloty’s The Murder of Caesar from 1865 shows this moment, with Julius Caesar sat on a throne in the portico of the Senate. Immediately behind him, one of the conspirators has raised his dagger above his head, ready to strike the first blow.
Casca, one of the conspirators, produced his dagger and struck the dictator a glancing wound in his neck. The whole group closed in and stabbed Caesar repeatedly.
This is the stage shown by Vincenzo Camuccini in The Assassination of Julius Caesar from 1804-05, although this isn’t taking place on the steps in the portico, and Caesar has already moved forward from his seat.
Blinded by his blood, Caesar then tripped over and fell, and was stabbed further on the lower steps of the portico of the Senate. The conspirators made off, leaving Caesar dead where he lay, with around twenty-three knife wounds.
In Jean-Léon Gérôme’s The Death of Caesar from 1859-67, Caesar’s corpse lies abandoned on the floor, as his assassins make their way out of the Senate, brandishing their daggers above their heads.
None of those paintings shows the goddess Venus or Caesar’s apotheosis.
It’s Virgil Solis’s engraving of The Deification of Julius Caesar (before 1562) that shows simultaneously the assassination of the dictator at the left, and Venus taking him up to the gods, above, where Jupiter is addressing the other gods (upper right).
Shakespeare’s play develops subsequent events in more detail, and contains two most memorable lines: Et tu Brutus? (“you too, Brutus?”), said when Brutus stabs Caesar, and Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears as the opening words of Brutus’ oration over Caesar’s corpse.
Later, as Brutus and Cassius prepare to wage war against a triumvirate of Mark Antony, Octavius (later granted the honorific name Augustus) and Lepidus, Caesar’s ghost appears to Brutus to warn of his imminent defeat.
This engraving of Richard Westall’s painting Brutus and the Ghost of Caesar, from about 1802, shows Brutus in his role of general, sat at a writing desk, as Caesar’s ghost fills the upper left of the painting, warning Brutus of his imminent death with the portentous words Thou shalt see me at Philippi.
William Blake painted a similar scene in his Brutus and Caesar’s Ghost from 1806, for an illustrated folio edition of Shakespeare from 1632. This series of illustrations for this play are not well-known among Blake’s work, and were made early in his career.
Edwin Austin Abbey, in his painting Within the Tent of Brutus: Enter the Ghost of Caesar from 1905, spatters the white robe of the ghost with the blood from multiple stab wounds.
With Julius Caesar dead, it’s time for Ovid to draw his Metamorphoses to a close by praising the Emperor Augustus.
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