Tea at Trianon: Art We Love: A Truly Luminous Pre-Raphaelite Christ

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, December 28, 2023

Art We Love: A Truly Luminous Pre-Raphaelite Christ

From ArtNet:

The work I’ve chosen is William Holman Hunt’s 1853 painting The Light of the World, which is hung in the side chapel of Keble College, Oxford. This feels like a potentially odd choice from an atheist because the painting is an allegorical depiction of Jesus taken from Revelation 3: Behold, I stand at the door and knock.

Jesus stands at a door, which is overgrown with ivy and which can only be opened from the inside as it has no handle. Almost-bare trees in the background and fallen fruit and leaves on the ground let us know that this is autumn. He’s holding a lit lantern and the warm glow that pours from it illuminates him from a deep, green, early dawn.

It’s said that it took Holman Hunt so long to complete the painting because he wanted to perfectly capture this moment, just before the sunrise. It’s classically Pre-Raphaelite in style. Jesus’s robe is heavily decorated and the lantern is ornate, with clear influence taken from Holman Hunt’s travels in the Middle East.

This artwork brings me joy because near to it in the chapel is a button that when you press it illuminates the painting, making the gold leaf shine. And I just think it’s a really fun idea. It is satisfying watching the painting change after you press the button, and I think that it shows that we can be creative in the way that we hang and display older artworks. It really brings this piece to life—almost in the same way that bringing a lit candle up close to paintings with gold leaf on them would have brought the colors to life in places of worship in the Middle Ages. (Read more.)