Saturday, June 23, 2012
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio ...St John the Baptist at the Well ...1607-08
The Executioner of John the Baptist
MS 1 of the Scottish Collection
Askelon, the royal seat,
In which the great deed was done;
There, not lasting was the fame,
John the noble was slain.
'What evil woman among you
Will take in hand my beheading?
Not one from east or west,
Of the blood of Foreigners or Gaels.
'Thou handsome yellow-haired John,
Yonder is a Gael beyond all others;
His abode is far away in the west,
In the lands of the western men.'
'I ask a boon from Christ who loves me,'
Said John the noble,
'That no comely Gael may get
Food nor rainment in any case.'
Said Mogh Ruith without grace,
'Give to me even his rainment,
And I shall cut off his head
For the weal of the men of Ireland.'
Then was John beheaded,
The Gael will suffer therefrom;
Much silver and gold
Was put under the head east in Askelon.
In which the great deed was done;
There, not lasting was the fame,
John the noble was slain.
'What evil woman among you
Will take in hand my beheading?
Not one from east or west,
Of the blood of Foreigners or Gaels.
'Thou handsome yellow-haired John,
Yonder is a Gael beyond all others;
His abode is far away in the west,
In the lands of the western men.'
'I ask a boon from Christ who loves me,'
Said John the noble,
'That no comely Gael may get
Food nor rainment in any case.'
Said Mogh Ruith without grace,
'Give to me even his rainment,
And I shall cut off his head
For the weal of the men of Ireland.'
Then was John beheaded,
The Gael will suffer therefrom;
Much silver and gold
Was put under the head east in Askelon.
trans. by Prof. MacKinnon
Tuesday, June 19, 2012
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Tuesday, June 5, 2012
Monday, June 4, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
William Blake... A Devil or Satyr... c1810
click on image to enlarge
from the Robert H. Taylor art collection at the
Princeton University Library
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Chamunda, the Horrific Destroyer of Evil...India... 10th–11th century
This is a fragment of a full-length sculpture portraying the ferocious
Hindu goddess Kali in the form of Chamunda, an epithet derived from her
act of decapitating the demons Chanda and Munda. Chamunda embodies
bareness and decay. Her hair is piled up into a chignon decorated with a
tiara of skulls and a crescent moon. She scowls, baring her teeth, and
enormous eyeballs protrude menacingly from sunken sockets in her
skeletal face. As a necklace, she wears a snake whose coils echo the
rings of decaying flesh that sag beneath her collarbone. Just above her
navel on her emaciated torso is a scorpion, a symbol of sickness and
death. She presumably once held lethal objects in the hands of her
twelve missing arms.
Saturday, May 26, 2012
Alchemy: The Golden Art...
The alchemist who has achieved illumination.
From Andrea de Pascalis,
Alchemy: The Golden Art. The Secrets of the Oldest Enigma
Alchemy: The Golden Art. The Secrets of the Oldest Enigma
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