Hellelil and Hildebrand. The meeting on the turret stairs (1864) by Frederic William Burton (1816–1900), recently voted Ireland’s favorite painting-Frederic subscribed to the Pre-Raphaelite school-no chairoscuro here just tell the story-no holds barred.
Perhaps, this is a moment of epiphany, the discovery of illicit, impossible love. The story is taken from a medieval Danish ballad translated by Burton’s friend Whitley Stokes in 1855, which tells a tale of Hellelil, who fell in love with her personal guard Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. Of course she did, he was a Prince and he looks lovely in chain mail with that lovely Celtic sword covered in interlacing Celtic knots and the helmet with the nose guard. What’s not to like? Plus, look at the width of the turret. What did everyone think would happen? Notice the white rose that has dropped to her left, a symbol of…well, never mind. Her father wasn’t having it and ordered her seven brothers to kill the young prince.
Certainly, we know Shakespeare’s twist on young love and choleric cousins or Dante’s similar take on a real life story of the life story of Francesca da Rimini and Paolo Malatesta.
Dante Alighieri (1265-1321) writes his neighborhood into the “Divine Comedy.” One of his contemporaries was Francesca, who was forced into a political marriage to secure the peace between two feuding families. …Ahhh, yes, again, the feuding families and a woman used as a wedge. As it happens, Francesca falls in love with Paolo, her husband’s brother. Ooops, Paolo is married as well, but they nevertheless manage to carry on a concealed affair for at least ten years… in the tiny town Ravenna, in the 13th century. How did they get away with it? In the end, the lovers are discovered in Francesca’s bedroom and both are killed by her husband. I can not resist two versions in art:
This painting reads from left to right…Kissing, Observed by Virgil and Dante and Damned…Rossetti would know. He had the moral fiber of a Manx cat in a Maine spring but let’s save that one.
Rossetti (center) was so obsessed with Dante that he changed the order of his original name so that Dante came first, not third. On one occasion he even painted a picture of Giotto painting the real Dante, but that’s for another day.
George Frederic Watts: Paolo and Francesca (1872) This work inspired Rodin’s, The Kiss
Now, this is grist for the mill. We meet Francesca and Paolo in the first volume of Dante’s “Divine Comedy.” They are trapped in the second circle of hell, reserved for the lustful. Eternally confined, the couple is “doomed to be forever swept through the air just as they allowed themselves to be swept away by their passions.” Oh, delicious, painful tragedy with illusion and simile. They are never allowed to touch. They simply move around each other…in the wind. Oh, cruel fate!
In the Comedy, Dante and Francesca have a conversation, and she explains what led to her and Paolo’s damnation. Her story is so powerful that Dante faints out of pity. He wrote his master work and this sad tale as part of the Divine Comedy, in Ravenna.. during his exile.
When Dante met Paolo and Francesca in Hell, this is what he said:
“And I began: “Thine agonies, Francesca,
Sad and compassionate to weeping make me.
But tell me, at the time of those sweet sighs,
By what and in what manner Love conceded,
That you should know your dubious desires?”
And Francesca responds:
And she to me: “There is no greater sorrow
Than to be mindful of the happy time
In misery, and that thy Teacher knows.
But, if to recognise the earliest root
Of love in us thou hast so great desire,
I will do even as he who weeps and speaks.
One day we reading were for our delight
Of Launcelot, how Love did him enthral.
Alone we were and without any fear.
Full many a time our eyes together drew
That reading, and drove the colour from our faces;
But one point only was it that o’ercame us.
When as we read of the much-longed-for smile
Being by such a noble lover kissed,
This one, who ne’er from me shall be divided,
Kissed me upon the mouth all palpitating.
Even Byron had something to say about this situation…or maybe, especially Byron, another Manx cat. Click on his name to read more.
Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, Gianciotto Discovers Paolo and Francesca, 1819 She swoons and drops her book. he also has a lovely sword.
Michelangelo appreciated Dante’s Divine Comedy. After the fall of the Medici in 1494, his new patron Aldovrandi da Bologna often asked him to read Dante aloud to him.
Michelangelo had to read from the first printed editions crammed with commentary. Later, he wrote sonnets about Dante in which he indicates his respect for him by stating: “all that should be said of him cannot be said, for too brightly did his splendor burn for our blind eyes” (Sonnet 250)
The Last Judgment, by Michelangelo (1536-1541)
In his Last Judgment above, we see Mino with his tail wrapped around himself twice — a reference to the Second Circle of Hell. It is here where Dante finds a pair of lovers
Francesca da Rimini by Ary Scheffer (1835) May I mention where the eyes of Vergil and Dante fall?
Here is another slightly different version of this story….
Francesca, a contemporary of Dante, was married, as was the custom at the time, through an arrangement. Unfortunately, the groom was lame. His brother Paolo handled the negotiations, and Francesca was led to believe that Paolo was the groom. Dante framed one of the most famous incidents in his epic poem—the tragic story of real-life lovers, a true story against succumbing to sin. I think this is the version that Francesca told Dante…it absolves her but is too late.
Giovanni Malatesta, finds out, he kills them both. He is clearly not that lame — the tragedy is believed to have taken place at the Two Tower Castle in Torriana (near Rimini).
Didn’t this happen to Jacob in the Old Testament with Rachel and Leah with less theater and ageda?
Michelangelo also knew of someone who had gone through a “bait-and-switch” experience, as he counsels his nephew Lionardo in 1552 to “take care, since between the two [ladies] you saw together you aren’t sure which is the one they are talking about, that you aren’t given the one in place of the other, as was done to a friend of mine once”. Poor Lionardo-I wonder what else Michelangelo had to say to his less talented nephew. Where was he when he passed on this wisdom?…over a meager meal on the steps of the Vatican or while he was painting the very subjects of his warning…
What of the very similar story of Tristan and Isolde? Click on the ill-fated couple’s names to hear Leopold Stokowski conducting the Philadelphia Orchestra in Wagner’s Liebestraum.
Tristan and Isolde by John William Waterhouse
The Celtic myth speaks of an injured Tristan being healed by a potion gifted to him by Isolde. She is the daughter of the King of Ireland. Tristan is bringing her to his brother, Mark. They fall in love on the loooong journey and later wished to marry but unfortunately the Irish Princess was forced to carry out her duties and marry King Mark instead. Tristan and Isolde would continue to meet up in secret. The all too familiar story would later be re-figured by Malory into the Morte d’Arthur. Why do kings send young, virile knights to escort their espoused?
To the left on a table is a round glass which contains the remaining potion. It is a red color, perhaps suggesting that this is a gift of love. In the background we see a sprawling cliff face, with a castle to the left hand side, the fate of Isolde.
This setting outlines the problems of their relationship, often meeting in secret and traveling by ship in order to spend time with each other. They would famously communicate via the colors of flags on each visiting ship. It was likely painted during one of the artist’s visits to Devon or Somerset. The model was probably the artist’s wife, Esther Kenworthy Waterhouse. My, she certainly has a forthright jaw line.
Tristan is dressed in traditional armor, yet again, whilst Isolde wears a stunning long red dress which includes embroidered white trim across the bottom and vertically down the sides. She also has an elegant, translucent green cloak over the top which waves around in the wind. The setting is the deck of a ship, out at sea. The couple are defying all convention, taking extraordinary risks. This theme was the meat and drink of Pre-Raphaelism so determined to leave the Victorian mores behind them. The more I look into Pre-Raphaelites, the more I realize that there is no Bloomsbury without them
A closing question for this episode might be, Why oh, why does the king send his handsomest, most virile, ardent knight to pick up his espoused? We leave the love sick/sea sick couple here….till next time.
Great writing and descriptions! My favorite: "the moral fiber of a Manx cat in a Maine spring". I literally laughed out loud.
Another mistaken lover story in Orhan Pamuk's brilliant and seldom cited A Strangeness in My Mind, wherein our hero, in love with one village maiden, elopes with her under cover of darkness only to discover that the beloved is. . . her sister!