OnThisDay in 1942, Eric Ravilious became the first British war artist to die on active service in WW2, when the aircraft he was in was lost off the coast of Iceland. Frank Delaney re-visits the work of this understated, yet significant figure: https://publicdomainreview.org/essay/time-and-place-eric-ravilious-1903-1942 #otd

I know this is going to make me sound pretensions but I have to get it off my chest. I feel an unimaginable rage when someone posts a photo and is like "this picture looks like a renaissance painting lol" when the photo clearly has the lighting, colors and composition of a baroque or romantic painting. There are differences in these styles and those differences are important and labeling every "classical" looking painting as renaissance is annoying and upsetting to me. And anytime I come across one of those posts I have to put down my phone and go take a walk because they make me so mad

In case you're curious here's what I mean.

Renaissance(distinct lines, stability and the individual man):

Baroque (bold, chaotic, dramatic):

Romantic(romanticize the simple hard working life):

Do you see the difference?

Aziraphale in Art History

Source Xwitter

Miranda, painting by John William Waterhouse  (1849–1917), 1875

Yeah, no that’s not an Ancient Greek Dionysus and here’s why

My absolute proudest moment as an ancient art history TA in college was as a student in a class on Gender in the Ancient World (a for-fun class I took when I’d basically wrapped up all my other degree requirements) and it involved me catching my Classics professor royally messing up in his own lecture.

So this Classics teacher (poor guy) was going on about Dionysus and what the Greek god of wine could teach us about the morals of the time, specifically about over indulgence being anathema to Greeks (“all things in moderation”) and to prove his point he shared this statue of Dionysus:

Which just happens to be the picture of Dionysus on Wikipedia, uh oh, first mistake! (Some of you nerds may already spot all of the other problems.)

And it only gets worse, because he starts rattling on about what this statue in particular demonstrates to us about how the Ancient Greeks viewed Dionysus and the sins of excess associated with wine drinking- his body is slightly puffy from over-indulgence, his muscles not as sharply carved as an Apollo. He’s off-balance, leaning on a faun for support. His eyes are glassy. He’s raising a huge, margarita-bowl of a cup. Basically, from this, we can see a clear visual of why Dionysus and his associated lifestyle and sacred objects were looked down upon in ancient Greece.

Meanwhile, I’m vibrating out of my chair like Hermione in the front row because oh my god how are you a professor, this is all wrong, oh my god…

Finally, the professor calls on my shaking raised hand, thankfully before I blasted off into the stratosphere with my sheer need to Be Right. 

And, with a voice only slightly shaking from high-octane adrenaline I say, “Except that statue is from the Renaissance. It’s by Michelangelo.”

The professor freezes like a deer in the headlights. I mean actually freezes, his eyes widen and he just stops. Dumbstruck. I wondered how many times he’s given this lecture and used this statue of Dionysus to make his point. I think the number of times he’d used this picture in a lecture was flashing before his eyes too.

Because if you go back to the ancient world there’s no effing way Dionysus would be portrayed so disrespectfully! Even if he’s the god of wine he’s not the one who overindulges, that’s his followers. He’s a god. Anyone who knows anything about Ancient Greece knows you don’t disrespect a god with a statue like that. Actually, Dionysus statues from Ancient Greece tend to look more like this in the Archaic period:

And in a late Roman example (Hi, Antinuous!) like this:

Yeah. There’s no “over indulgent” puffiness, no margarita glass, no glassy eyes or tottering form. Because Dionysus is a god. What Michelangelo’s statue of Bacchus reveals is what Renaissance people believed about Dionysus, not Ancient Greeks. 

But let’s briefly touch on all the other alarm bells about that statue. Because I didn’t know it was Michelangelo’s right away in that class–I was frantically looking that up even as my hand was raised–I just knew it was Renaissance and not Ancient Greek. Because sure, in Ancient Greece, this kind of sculpture denouncing excess existed, but we’d be looking at Silenus the Satyr, or just a Satyr in general to make this commentary, not ever with Dionysus who partakes in such festivities but is ultimately stands above them and definitely doesn’t fall prey to them (others fall prey to him). So basically, Michelangelo’s Bacchus has a lot more in common with an ancient sculpture of Silenus, not of Dionysus, reflecting on how Italians in the Renaissance viewed this ancient pagan god.

To tick off a couple other warning signs: the patina (that color stone and level of dirt, but without traces of cleaning or paint, was a give away because Renaissance people didn’t paint their statues the way ancient people did). The beautiful curly hair and laurels were impossible before about 200 CE because the drill tips needed to make fine curls hadn’t been invented yet, before that you tended to have carved masses of hair or lines of hair suggested on the scalp, nothing so elaborate. Also the features are much too fine, almost girlish, with a receding chin. Again, something you might see on a hyper realistic Roman portrait, but not something you’d ever see on a god. The child is out of place too, you do see children in ancient sculptures (like the statue of Hermes and Dionysus) but not really with such “childish” facial expressions, for the lack of a better word. 

So when I talk about how with material archaeology and art history it becomes impossible to mistake when a certain artifact comes from, this is what I mean. The ways of carving this weren’t available to the Ancient Greeks until way into the Imperial Roman era, at least. The stone is wrong. The morals visible in the carving are wrong. You’ll often too see Renaissance or 19th century statues being passed off as ancient here on Tumblr, but things like fine features are often dead give aways that something isn’t ancient. Stone work is a language of its own, and once you see enough to decode it, it’s as unmistakable to the eye as clothing from 100 years ago looks obviously out of date to us today, even if you’re not versed in fashion.

(P.S. the professor made the point to thank me and said he would stop using this statue in future lectures. As you can see, I was proud of this shining moment of pedantry a totally normal about.) 

Let's talk costuming: Avaunt!

So I think we can all agree that Aziraphale looks his most traditionally angelic in the Job minisode, no? In fact, all of the angels' costuming increases in drama for this particular episode. This is, obviously, a very deliberate choice on the part of wardrobe, so let's discuss.

On a technical level, the biggest thing that stands out to me about this fabulous robe is the draping. Oh, the draping. It feels like a classic angel 'fit because on a very fundamental level, it is. A lot of what we think of as angelic draws on Renaissance artists' depictions, with flowing robes, fluffy wings, and glimmering halos. In art from this era, there is a strong attention to detail on the natural flow of fabrics that makes Renaissance sculpture so breathtaking, such as here: (The Ecstasy of St. Teresa, Bernini, 17th century CE)

It's this ability to make solid marble look like fine silk rippling with movement that leaves such a strong impression in my mind when I look at these kinds of works.

In painting, too, there is a similar effect. Something about the material culture of the Renaissance really lent itself to this style, perhaps fueled by the rise in new textile luxuries that occurred in vaguely the same period. This is seen especially strongly for angels, such as in the sculpture above, and in this painting: (The Annunciation to the Virgin, Botticelli, 15th century CE)

There's a stark contrast between the dress of the two figures. The virgin Mary is no less ornamentally or expensively dressed, but her style is rather minimalistic next to the angel's voluminous robing. It paints a very clear impression of angelic dress, and the designers for Good Omens would have been aware, in at least a small way, of the art history precedence for such a thing.

The poof of the sleeves, the tucks down the front, the little belt with the train tucked in, the gathers, the weight of the fabric, everything about this robe is constructed to carefully recreate the rather fantastical imagery of renaissance art. It's not necessarily an easy texture to nail down, given that the artists themselves had no concerns of gravity, comfort, or the way it would look in actual 3d motion, while our brave costumers were dealing with all three as well as a budget, time constraints, and the constant consideration that white fabric just gets dirty so easy.

Here's some of the other angels as well, so you can see how theirs reflect those same dramatic themes.

And then, of course, when costuming a show you have a second question: What does this mean for our character? Or rather, we know how, but WHY did they make him look so traditionally angelic?

Well, thematically, the Job minisode centers around Aziraphale's struggle with being a good angel and Crowley's struggle with being a good demon. Aziraphale is learning how to be an angel that follows along with heaven as far as we can, and he's so terribly torn up about it. He spends a lot of his time fretting about doing what's expected demanded of him, even if perhaps he doesn't believe it to be the right choice. Natural, then, that he should look the part of the perfect angel whilst sorting out these ethereal woes.

Crowley even draws attention to it himself, giggling a bit at the suggestion that Aziraphale, with his fluffy hair and flowing angelic garb, could possibly become a demon. And it is a rather silly mental image; the garment itself would be comically silly in really ANY other context at all. In the same manner, his performance of angelic archetype borders on excessive:

He's trying so desperately hard here to be the angel he wants to and is supposed to be. He's dressed the part, he's using his big scary angel voice, but deep down he's clinging to an identity that doesn't quite fit.

(You'll notice in this shot the distinct difference between his and Crowley's dress on the level of silhouette as well as color. We see this a lot from the two of them, but with the points I made above it felt worth pointing out in this particular scene)

Here at the end, as he's coming to terms with the cracks in his heaven-given identity, his robe is largely in shadow, blurring out its startling whiteness. We do not see him dressed this way again. (He continues to wear white, obviously, but from here on out his style of dress mimics the human trends of the time rather than that classical angelic imagery)

Here is a two-sided drawing featuring pillow studies and a self-portrait by Albrecht Dürer. Enjoy your weekend, but don't forget to sleep!

These images come from The Metropolitan Museum of Art's collection on JSTOR, which is free and open to all!

Albrecht Dürer says a big YES to bed rotting.

A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs)

Hi Tumblrs! My new book, A History of Painting (With Dinosaurs) has launched, and you should be able to buy on Amazon from just about anywhere in the world.

Ever wondered what it would have been like if famous painters of the past had the good sense to paint dinosaurs? Well now you can find out!

Here's some country-specific links, but search your own local Amazon if it's not listed: US, UK, Germany, Canada, Australia

Yesssss

I would like to add that I have now in fact bought this book and it is excellent! It's very tongue in cheek but the art is good (I really want a print of the Klimt dinosaur). It's like $20, please go buy it for anyone with a vague interest in art history and dinosaurs, or for yourself!

My book is fun! And cheap! And I get a good cut!

this looks delightful, perhaps a bit like Great Housewives of Art, which i enjoy.

The Book of Kells (détail)

The Secret Language of a Page of Chivalry: The Pre-Raphaelite Connection

Adapting Neil Gaiman’s Chivalry is a decades-long dream fulfilled. The story as text can be enjoyed on multiple levels, and so can the art. You look at the pages and see the pretty pictures, but the pictures also have meta-textual meaning. Knowing this secret language adds to the experience.

Some people pick up the references quickly, but I’ll share with you some more of what’s going on under the surface.

In Ye Olden Days of Art Making, most painters made pictures that contained visual narrative cues. Flowers in a picture might be heraldic signs that signaled political affiliations, or could indicate purity, anger, or love. Purple was the color of kings. A dog in a picture might represent faithfulness, and butterflies could represent the soul.

There are Pre-Raphaelite paintings with so many symbols and ideas in them that you need a deep working knowledge of Victorian and Edwardian social mores to understand what’s going on.

For example, Ford Madox Brown’s Work, a painting which took some 13 years to complete, was first exhibited in 1865 with a catalogue explaining all its symbols and elements. There is nothing in that picture that doesn’t mean something.

I brought some of that visual meta-textual sensibility to Chivalry, (and I’ve written about the symbolism and meanings in the work in other essays.)

I also brought into the work direct Pre-Raphaelite art references.

From 1868-1870, Sir Edward Coley Burne-Jones created four paintings illuminating the tale of Pygmalion and Galatea, entitled Pygmalion and the Image, and wrote a poem with each line titling one painting:

The heart desires

The hand refrains

The godhead fires

The soul attains.

A perfect little poem for Chivalry, and I think of it often when some people present me with what I think is a very strange question: why didn’t Galaad just take the Holy Grail from Mrs. Whitaker?

It kind of breaks my heart that people would even ask that.

Burne-Jones painted two versions of this series of which this is the second.

In the first panel of this page, Sir Galaad kneeling before the Grail is derived from the figure of Pygmalion kneeling before Galatea: The Soul Attains.

Sir Galaad’s restraint even in the face of his greatest desire makes him worthy of his prize.

There are two Pre-Raphalite references in this page, the most obvious being in panel 2: it’s Sir John Everett Millais’s 1857 work A Dream of the Past: Sir Isumbras at the Ford.

The painting was very poorly received on first exhibition, compelling Millais to redo significant portions of it. It was caricatured and ridiculed, and then ended up becoming influential and popular, and isn’t that the way it goes.

That’s an art career in a nutshell, really.

The Sir Isumbras image also influenced John Tenniel’s illustrations for the Lewis Carroll Alice in Wonderland novels.

Sir Isumbras derives from a 13th century Medieval romance poem about a good knight whose pride causes him to fail in his Christian duty. He is presented with a series of difficult challenges before he can find happiness again, reunite with his family, and be forgiven his sins. The painting by Millais is based less explicitly on the poem than it is on a later parody of the poem. (It’s complicated.)

My using Sir Isumbras as the base for the shot of Galaad with the children is obvious here. In the Millais painting, Sir Isumbras carries a woodcutter’s children across the ford. In Chivalry, Sir Galaad carries the children of Mrs. Whitaker’s neighborhood down the street.

While Sir Isumbras spent many years learning humility and Christian duty, Galaad has a long quest to fulfill before he can achieve his goal. And on the way to that goal, he’s humble and nice to children, too.

That the Millais painting was such a huge influence on many a depiction of knighthood over the years made it a perfect reference point here, and the story behind both the painting and the poem give it further layers of meaning.

The next panel has a far less obvious reference, but the source is Arthur Hughes’s painting The Rescue.

Arthur Hughes is one of the lesser-known Pre-Raphaelites, but his art is widely seen and influential. He’s certainly been a big influence on me, as many of his paintings appear again and again in Arthuriana references, as he was a prolific King Arthur picture tale teller.

The Rescue (1907-1908) was originally part of a diptych which was separated and sold back in the 1920’s. His style was becoming unpopular by the time Hughes painted the work, and little is known about this work except that one panel was in the collection of Andrew Lloyd Webber at some point. Maybe still is. Dunno.

Anyway, the diptych depicts a little child kneeling in prayer menaced by a dragon in one panel, and in the next, safely trotting away with a knight on horseback. I like that this is a diptych, a kind of proto-comic art form common in medieval religious art, so this was perfect to use here.

Another reference to Arthur Hughes is in this double page splash from later in the book as Galaad on his quest encounters the Hesperides.

I didn’t set out to reference this Arthur Hughes piece at first, but it’s one of my favorite paintings. When I realized my sketches for this scene kept echoing the Hughes composition, I went with it. The Hughes painting of Galahad is one of the most famous depictions of the character, so it makes me happy to have this referenced in Chivalry.

Kindly ask for CHIVALRY, published by Dark Horse Comics in the USA and by Headline Books in the UK at your local comic shops or bookstore. Written by Neil Gaiman. Adaptation and art by me.

For further reading on this project, go HERE.

HERE.

And HERE.

Thank you to my Patreon patrons for sponsoring my work and this post.

Colleen Doran Illustrates Neil Gaiman will be a solo exhibit at the Society of Illustrators in New York City this spring. Watch this pace for updates.

Have a wonderful holiday season.

I love this. I'm so proud that I get to work with Colleen.

Celebrate Women Artists     Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun 

A French painter born in 1755 and living for 87 years, Le Brun combined the very end of the Rococo style with the neo-classicism of Jacques-Louis David and the realism of Ingres.  The daughter of portraitist Louis Vigée and a hairdresser, she was considered a prodigy. In the early stages of her career she would owe a great deal to the connections she made in the art world through her father, even though he had died when she was only twelve, leaving her to be mostly self-taught as an artist.

Despite an extraordinary amount of paintings (over 600 portraits and 200 landscapes) she was unappreciated for many years, not only because of her association with the unpopular ancien regime, but also due to the fact that she competed in a field largely dominated by male artists and their patrons.

Elisabeth Vigee married art dealer Jean Baptiste Pierre Le Brun in 1776 and his connections also helped her gain commissions. 

The self-portrait above was considered good enough for her to be admitted into the French Academy when she was 28, only the fourth time a woman had been admitted. Some say her entry was the result of the intervention of Marie Antoinette whom she had painted. She was the first woman to be appointed as a court painter.

Vigée Le Brun was particularly praised for her sympathetic portraits of aristocratic women, deemed more natural than the works of her contemporaries.

Forced to flee Paris during the Revolution by disguising herself as a peasant woman, she took her daughter with her but her husband was left behind and briefly imprisoned. They were divorced in 1794; her husband had squandered most of her earnings that had been left behind.

Undaunted, the artist travelled throughout Europe, impressively obtaining commissions in Florence, Naples, Vienna, Saint Petersburg, and Berlin before returning to France, welcomed by Napoleon.

While in Germany she painted this portrait of  Prince Heinrich Lubomirski as the Genius  of Fame (1787–88).

This was quite remarkable because at the time, no woman artist was allowed to paint a nude male from life. 

She had a long life and we are fortunate that she found a publisher for her memoirs, written in 1830. Interestingly, it is still in print in the English translation.

What this actually is: Angus Og, God of Love and Courtesy, Putting a Spell of Summer Calm on the Sea (1908) by John Duncan, from the National Galleries of Scotland

What this looks like: Crowley before the Fall, presenting his design idea for corporate angelic daywear, and thus proving that yeah, it’s not just because he’s a demon, he was always Like This.

The Canning Jewel (1800-1860), because muscular tattooed beardy hipster mermen have been a thing for longer than you may have realized.

It has come to my attention that the Canning Jewel has a spiritual partner, and it’s known as the Gigantas Pendant.

Applause to the 19th century jeweller who found a couple of huge knobbly pearls and thought “this one’s clearly a muscular chest, and this one… ah yes, thighs and crotch, baby!”

So, I’ve finally finished uploading this thing to AO3. 

Summary: A collection of metas on the sculptures, paintings and tapestries the set designers used on the BBC show ‘Sherlock’.

P.S. So, what should I upload next? All my EMP metas? *wiggles eyebrows seductively* It’s just that there are sooo many of them, and they’re such an uncatalogued, untagged mess. Hm…

Big recommendation for the current Sophie Taeuber-Arp exhibition at Tate Modern. Packed with beautiful and inspiring art and design from a queen of modernism.

embroidery inspiration. quilting inspiration.

A Public Service Message (concerning art history, saints, and Good Omens)

I would like to share this please. I feel the need to point out. 

that Saint John the Apostle/Evangelist 

is generally depicted as a very very VERY androgynous redhead. 

with a snake. 

(i’m just saying)

androgyny of saint john is very big deal in art history. many papers. 

I can only assume cup is angled in such a way that we cannot see snake

black and red, nice

sometimes he cuts his hair short

okay sometimes also the snake is a dragon

this one’s by el greco, classy

and you all know who painted this one right? This *especially influential* Saint John? 

(yeah, of course you do)

and we *all know* who was hanging out with Leonardo back in the day.

Okay so that’s a bit weird. Because some of those look a lot like a combination of Crowley and Aziraphale and the stained glass window just looks like Aziraphale and I want to build on this idea.

What if, at some point Aziraphale and Crowley made a bet to see who could be depicted the most in religious artwork by famous artists but there was a fundamental misunderstanding of the terms of the bet, which resulted in a tie. 

One of them got included in more art, but the other got depicted by more artists. There was also no specification made about which religion and if snakes counted and all in all it was a complete mess. Now they’re content to just use art history as a sort of old photo album where they look at old pictures and make fun of each other’s hairstyles of the eons.

But Crowley still likes to point out he’s the only one who got to pose as of the more famous of the davids. 

“Now Crowley and Aziraphale are content to just use art history as a sort of old photo album where they look at old pictures and make fun of each other’s hairstyles of the eons.”

…so that’s why they keep meeting up at the British Museum 

lol, love it!

i have some completely uneducated ideas about the symbolism of cups and snakes in art, so would be interested in any Educated Discussion.

Gay or Dreaming? - The bust in ‘The Six Thatchers’

Remember that bust in TST?

No, not that one!

This one!

The one in the workshop in those Tbilissi scenes with Ajay.

Over the years, I have seen people in this fandom take a stab in the dark a few times, guessing vaguely that it might be some bust of Antinous, the lover of the Emperor Hadrian.

The problem with this guess is that it’s neither entirely correct nor entirely wrong because:

a) it is a very specific sculpture and 

b) the idea that it’s Antinous is…well, actually wrong, but also not quite…

It kind of is him, but it also really, really isn’t!

Let me explain.

It’s a very famous sculpture often referred to by art historians as the ‘Capitoline Antinous’ from the Capitoline Museums in Rome (originally found in the Villa Adriana at Tivoli)

Here’s what it looks like in the (reduced) form of a bust (as in the above screenshot):

The chap is usually very easy to recognise by the soft curve of his cheeks.

Here’s the thing, though:

Despite its commonly used, art-historical name, this sculpture IS NOT ANTINOUS!

Most art-historians today agree that who we see depicted here is actually THE GREEK GOD HERMES. (Suffice it to say that the discrepancies between his facial features and the ones of known accurate depictions of Antinous are just too numerous to ignore.)

So, what am I trying to say here?

Three things:

1) A Sherlock mirror

On the show, this bust is almost certainly meant to be read as a mirror for Sherlock. And not just because of the pretty curls. Remember that this bust…is not actually a bust. The original in the Capitoline Museums is an entire statue!

The BBC show ‘Sherlock’ uses a copy that is reduced to a bust, like so:

The show has done this countless times before, and whenever it ‘cut off the head’ of some world-famous statue, it was meant to be read as Sherlock.

Remember the bust in Magnussen’s mind palace in series 3?

It is actually an entire statue: Antonio Canova’s ‘The Dancer’ (also known as ‘Erato – the Muse of the Dance of Love’). I had written about this one previously here: x.

The same was done to the famous ‘Apollo Belvedere’ statue. The show had simply cut off its head and used it in 1x02 ‘The Blind Banker’:

I had written about this previously here: x. (You have to scroll down a bit to paragraph 4.)

Presumably the show is ‘cutting off heads’ like this to show us what has happened to the iconic character of Sherlock Holmes over the past century: Sherlock has become (or rather has been forced to become) a head without a body, a mind without physical urges, a brain without sexual/romantic desires. 

It’s high time for Sherlock’s head to be re-united with his body!

Anyway, this is what the show did in ‘The Six Thatchers’, too. Sherlock, once again, is presented as the head without a body in the ‘Capitoline Antinous’ bust.

Also, keep in mind that, in the Georgian workshop in TST, we see three (!) copies of this bust. “My husband is three people,” comes to mind.:) So, it’s Sherlock, yeah?

 2) The Antinous aspect of the ‘Capitoline Antinous’

Obviously the sculpture is called Antinous. So, if the makers of ‘Sherlock’ just wanted any old Hermes statue to represent Sherlock, they could have used a different one. They specifically used this one, though. One that, despite actually being Hermes, has a centuries-old art-historical reading as Antinous attached to it.

So, if you want to read this bust in TST as Antinous, feel free to do so. 

This is also not the first time the show has used an Antinous sculpture. A statue of Antinous, the male (!) lover of the Emperor Hadrian, was used in ‘The Blind Banker’ (TBB) where it stood proudly between Sherlock and John:

Keep in mind that Antinous was deified by Hadrian. So, what we have here is quite literally a GAY GOD standing right between Sherlock and John. I had written about this sculpture in one of my first metas in the ‘Sherlock’ fandom a few years ago here: x.

So, once again, series 4 (‘The Six Thatchers’ to be precise) invokes a gay god, as part of this story. In TST, it also uses his bust as a Sherlock mirror. What might we deduce from that? Hm…Yep, Sherlock is gay, my friends. Tell me something new.:)

3) Hermes – ruler of the unconscious

Here comes the cool part, though. As I already mentioned, this sculpture in TST, is NOT actually Antinous. It’s the Greek god Hermes.

Now, I’m sure you’re all as adept at using wikipedia as I am, so I needn’t say that Hermes is the god of merchants, messengers, thieves, and tricksters, etc. You can read up on all of that yourself.

What I would like to point out, though, is that, in art history, Hermes has been used, for a very long time, as a symbol for something else, too.

Since Hermes is the guider of souls to the Underworld, he has long been seen as a symbol of the unconscious.

Do you see where I’m going with this?

Some of us read chunks of series 4 as something that’s happening in John’s mind (‘John’s Mind Bungalow’ theory). Others read parts of it (or even the whole of series 4) as something that’s happening in Sherlock’s mind (‘Sherlock’s Extended Mind Palace’ theory). 

Regardless which side of the debate you’re on, this bust is basically begging us to pay attention to the fact that SOMEBODY IS UNCONSCIOUS here.

What we’re seeing is most likely not real.

Hermes is the lord of dreams.

In other words, what is happening here is in someone’s head. It’s a dream!

What’s more, it’s not just any old dream. Hermes is the guider of souls to the underworld, the one who helps dying people get to the other side.

SOMEBODY IS DYING! What we’re seeing is the dream of a dying man.

This is how art history treats the god Hermes frequently, anyway.

Here, have a painting by Jan Styka of the god Hermes leading souls into the Underworld:

(Just to give you an example…)

Conclusion: Gay or Dreaming? Antinous or Hermes?

So, in conclusion: What is it that we have in TST? A sculpture of Antinous or one of Hermes? 

And was it included in this Georgian workshop scene in TST to be read as yet another metaphor for Sherlock’s homosexuality or as a hint that these scenes aren’t real, that this is happening in somebody’s unconscious as that somebody is dying?

In short, is it gay or is it a case of dream-as-you’re-dying?

See, here’s the cool thing about art (not just about paintings and sculptures, but about films and TV shows, too): YOU DON’T HAVE TO CHOOSE.

I always feel slightly uncomfortable when people say, “Oh, you have to pick a meaning for yourself. You decide if it means A) or B).”

Because…Who says that you have to choose? It doesn’t have to be one or the other! In art, it can be BOTH THINGS AT THE SAME TIME! Both meanings can be true.

After all, if the makers of ‘Sherlock’ wanted to highlight the gay aspect only, they could have literally chosen any of the many, many other unambiguous depictions of the gay god Antinous.

Like the one they already chose to include in ‘The Blind Banker’, which we’ve discussed here: x.

If, on the other hand, the makers of ‘Sherlock’ had only the unconscious/dreaming/dying aspect in mind, why not choose an unambiguous depiction of the god Hermes? Like, say, this lovely chap by Ernst Gustav Herter from Vienna:

(Just to give you an example…)

No, Mofftiss specifically went with the famous, yet very ambiguous ‘Capitoline Antinous’. And so, we’re stuck with this double meaning of Antinous or AND Hermes:

Because, in art, two things can be true at the same time.

——

All screencaps were taken from: http://kissthemgoodbye.net/sherlock/

My Sherlock meta can (mostly) be found on my Master Meta Page here: x or (in more comprehensive form) under my Sherlock meta tag here: x.

Tagging a few people: @gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @sarahthecoat @possiblyimbiassed @thepersianslipper @tjlcisthenewsexy @sherlockshadow @spenglernot @88thparallel @fellshish @elldotsee @loveismyrevolution @inevitably-johnlocked @loudest-subtext-in-tv @the-7-percent-solution @monikakrasnorada @raggedyblue

This is a wonderful surprise, @sagestreet !  Thank you so much for replying to my sculpture-questions regarding the Tiblisi workshop. And don’t worry because of the time gone by since then. Better late than never! The most important thing is that you’re here again, writing your wonderful metas. :)))) 

It doesn’t come as a great surprise that there are two different variations to interpret the three Sherlock-like busts in that workshop. The ‘sign of two’ seems to be very closely connected to this story from ASIP to TFP … be it pairs, couples or twins. Even the way Ajay is hiding the AGRA memory stick inside one of the Thatcher busts is displayed in two different ways which normally are incompatible with one another …. meaning the differences in handling plaster and clay. The Thatcher busts are several times called plaster busts. Plaster gets poured into a mould, as explained throroughly in the Granada episode of the Six Napoleons. Ajay on the other hand, can be seen how he attaches a piece of clay to the bottom of such a plaster bust, to seal his memory stick inside. I wrote about that questionable incident here.

And I have the same feeling regarding those three identical Sherlock-like busts … the Hermes/Antonios … that they are most likely linked to the ‘three husbands’ in The Sign of Three. In Changing of the Guard I equate the three identical husbands to the three ‘guards’ (facades) that get stabbed in that episode. TST on the other hand is the episode in which the masks, the facades crumble and finally fall. It makes quite some sense to me that Sherlock is reflecting on the ‘three identical husbands’ here, if those ‘husbands’ actually represent the ‘guardians’ Sherlock created to protect himself aka his true feelings towards the ‘eternal’ friend. 

It would be really very interesting to learn about the identity of the single bust placed next to the triplets. That guy seems to be important. In ‘A visit to the Tiblisi Workshop’  I tried to take a closer look inside that place … and some more busts. :)

@raggedyblue  The addition of Mercury (here) is especially interesting because of the Mercury poisoning in TRF, which is one of those ‘neat’ but actually illogical cases in Sherlock BBC. I wrote about it in Max and Claudette .

And here are some interesting posts by longsnowsmoon5 about Mercury/Hermes: x  x  x  

RB for discussion