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.

yes, it really does! the book version works for the book, because it brings in the Them's imagination and creativity, and like how kids everywhere can improvise toys and props and they become real and powerful. but screen is a different medium, and as someone else said in their note, the flaming sword is a callback to Eden, and that threshold/beginning. it brings in choice, and agency, and so on. seeing it in the hands of the Them, using it to conquer life's ills, is visually very powerful.

Sorry you can tell I’m rewatching ASiP again in minute detail, but there’s something weird here. Apologies if others have seen this before.

First suicide - his wife says how could he have done this, he was happy etc., and we get a closeup of the woman he was having an affair with - except. When all the cameras are pointing at the wife, there’s one watching the affair woman, capturing all this. We see it twice. The implication, then, that these murders by Jeff Hope aren’t random, somebody knows more about the victims and is picking them out.

I’m reminded of this scene from The Eleventh Hour, the episode of Doctor Who Moffat was writing concurrently with this series. The Doctor figures out what’s going on because instead of filming the sun going out, Rory is filming a man with a dog, because he should be in a coma - the key to the whole mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDKW8gMhAvU

Hmmm. Any thoughts, regulars? @sarahthecoat @helloliriels @raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @devoursjohnlock @lukessense @therealsaintscully

While rewatching that scene the first thing that came to my mind was that it makes sense to point the camera at the love affair in this moment, but it surely is weird that we have a camera filming a camera filming the shot (I hope you get what I mean). This reminded me of Sherlock in TEH delivering his explanation of the fall to Anderson, again via a small camera. And then in TFP the cameras being turned off as Eurus and Moriarty speak. Cameras do seem to have an observational function within the show, the question is what it could imply in this perticular case. Somebody is watching - what I instantly connect to both Mycroft and society…and us (the audience). So I think that both an intratextual explanation and one reaching through the TV screen to us seem possible. Especially considering how in S4 the fictional universe of BBC Sherlock was, in a way, destroyed by blurring the lines between fiction and reality (or the fact that it’s all a TV show).

Uhm yeah, I hope this makes sense somehow @thewatsonbeekeepers. Somebody is definitely watching. And somebody else is crafting the story. Or maybe they’re the same person?

@lukessense I sort of replied to this in another post but yes! I think one of the things this show is super keen on, particularly in later series, is breaking down the fourth wall and trying to get its audience to understand it as a tv show and its characters to gain a meta awareness of that, not consciously but in an abstract sense. sorry I’m explaining badly but I think we’re saying the same thing!!! But I hadn’t thought about that in relation to Mycroft, actually, even though he is literally the camera man… and of course the author, so often, because of Gatiss and pens etc., right? So maybe we have a distinction between cinematographer and audience in terms of roles…

That’s amazing. Never even really registered that we are shown so many cameras like it’s natural … no other show. Proof of the show within a show aspect? All these scenes being ‘doctored’ versions of what happened? “That’s not how it happened?” “It is now”. And “if that was really how you’d done it - I’d be the LAST person you’d tell!!” (You’d also be the last person to fangirl over Sherlock Holmes, right Anderson??) This is genius.

@helloliriels and now think about all the talk about the media, newspapers, fairytales etc. on the show. I think what they’re doing is having the TV show reflect on itself (do you say it like that in English?) by creating the feeling of a story within the story. Although I personally think that the story within the story is the superficial plot of the show whereas the subtext (or metaphorical reading) is the actual story. And in S4 we see the deconstruction of the overlying plot (that‘s why it makes no sense) just as the deconstruction of the set. With every allegorical character (like Mary for example) that’s being deconstructed the overlying plot looses logic as those characters were the essance of this superficial and fabricated story (which is, to sum it up, the story of the sociopathic detective and his armydoctor sidekick bff).

Uhm hard to explain, I totally agree with you on this @thewatsonbeekeepers. And completely out of context but is there a difference between overlying and overlaying? Because I didn’t know which one to use. Sorry about that!

Yes I totally agree! And your English is perfect as usual :) I wonder about overlying/overlaying - I’ve always said overlaying and underlying, but I don’t actually know if you can say it the other way around?!

But yes - I think I’ve mentioned this before, but one of my friends did a deep dive on Doctor Who separately to Sherlock, not being into our show, and came up with eerily similar results, that Moffat is really interested in deconstructing the myth of a character and trying to strip that myth away through self-awareness. So very interesting to see us find more and more evidence for this early on!

yes, all of this! i haven't watched as much dr who as some sherlock fans, but i was very interested by the moffat and gatiss episodes that showed the kinds of story telling that each of them is fond of. gothic and ghost themes, de-monstering the monster, bisexuality, etc. not to mention the whole thru-line in dr who, of this character who looks "normal/ordinary" but isn't, and when, where, and to whom, s/he shows the extraordinary self. *shrug asci*

so there's this layer of sherlock fandom where we are following along as mofftiss do their meta of ACD holmes and all other adaptations, through bbc sherlock, and then there's the layer where we also get to analyze mofftiss as the writers through their work, including but not limited to sherlock.

Sorry you can tell I’m rewatching ASiP again in minute detail, but there’s something weird here. Apologies if others have seen this before.

First suicide - his wife says how could he have done this, he was happy etc., and we get a closeup of the woman he was having an affair with - except. When all the cameras are pointing at the wife, there’s one watching the affair woman, capturing all this. We see it twice. The implication, then, that these murders by Jeff Hope aren’t random, somebody knows more about the victims and is picking them out.

I’m reminded of this scene from The Eleventh Hour, the episode of Doctor Who Moffat was writing concurrently with this series. The Doctor figures out what’s going on because instead of filming the sun going out, Rory is filming a man with a dog, because he should be in a coma - the key to the whole mystery.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDKW8gMhAvU

Hmmm. Any thoughts, regulars? @sarahthecoat @helloliriels @raggedyblue @ebaeschnbliah @devoursjohnlock @lukessense @therealsaintscully

oooh, good catch, and good discussion in the notes too. yeah, it’s on the one hand a beautifully artistic shot, with her tears morphing into the rain of the next scene, the two boys with the umbrella. (and her purple blouse which looks ahead to sherlock’s purple shirt, etc) but it also draws the audience into observing her through that camera’s screen. i so wish some of those s3 semester blogs were still around, i think it was thebisonwithheadphones or someone, who did a series of metas on cinematography and camera angles, and either they or someone else also about the use of images on screens in sherlock. the show is crawling with these shots where we’re looking at someone through a screen, or a window, or a mirror, etc. i think what the writers may be doing, is suggesting something about the interpretation of the original stories, a)having been done so many times and b)this show being an interpretation of both the original stories, and the other adaptations. The Show Is The Meta. hmm, might be time to re read @garkgatiss ’s metas on theater of the absurd, and how that’s intended to make the audience aware of watching a play, and to construct the “meaning”. hmm, and maybe also @heimishtheidealhusband ’s Ghost stories are gay stories, because something about this layering of images, is making me think about moffat’s penchant for de-monstering monsters by teasing apart those layers too. all these characters that are mirrors or aspects of sherlock, they are teasing Himself apart too.

apologies if this is veering off into my free association weeds!

@sarahthecoat no this is absolutely where my mind was heading too!

One of the most prominent shots in that first ep is when we see John alone in his flat, right? Really the establishing shot of the whole show, when we first hear a version of the theme tune way before the actual theme tune comes in. And it’s shot… through what I can only call a pass-through window, though I’m sure there’s a real name for it - the window you sometimes get between a living room and a kitchen to pass food through from one to the other. The effort that they go through to film the first establishing shot like that, in a frame, only to be followed by all of this… it’s pretty incredible.

yes, that's right! and isn't there also at least one shot in the bedsit that is in a mirror too? i forget. i do remember way back when i was a lurker, sharp eyed fans pointing out that some of the taxi scenes are shot in the rear view mirror. possibly suggesting the taxi driver as an observer, as well as the whole mirror effect. and loads of taxi scenes are thru the glass, with the reflections. it's like they go out of their way for these indirect, obscured, mediated images. doing in visual story telling what ACD could do only with words: conceal the queer story in subtext (mirror characters, etc) and with an unreliable narrator.

So, he’s just realized that the man that he’s been in in love with for some time now (without realizing it) has been in love with him for the entire duration of their friendship, but he’s now unable to do a thing about it and is instead obligated to play the music for the first dance of said man’s wedding to someone else.

If only there were a way to visually express just how much hell Sherlock is actually in during this scene. Oh, wait—

[in reference to this post in reply to @dinner--starving]

I replied:

Time to elaborate, CHOO CHOO!

Let's take a look at the script for TLD.

(note that the morgue scene is intercut with John and Lestrade seeing the newscast about it; I'll paste here just the morgue beats)

1) John's abrupt violence is: unwarranted, over the top, and out of character

It's not believable that John "I can break your bones while naming them" Watson - who disarmed Wiggins of a knife by just spraining his arm with surgical precision - can't disarm a drugged up Sherlock of a fucking scalpel without beating him up.

And John certainly has anger issues, but him totally losing control like this because his grieving self believes that Sherlock has "killed his wife" is, frankly, ridiculous. It goes against his core nature: John Watson saves lives.

2) This script is incredibly DRY of writer's/director's notes.

It reads almost like a transcription of what's on screen.

Just imagine for a moment Martin reading *this* script and thinking, "yep it makes sense, let's shoot it".

The point being - I think that he and Ben have either been given a different version of the script or, at least, a thourough explanation of what it all *really* means (most likely, an exaggerated rendition of what's playing in Sherlock's or John's mind - a Theatre of the Absurd play, if you will, as I mentioned here about TFP).

... and while we're at it, let's ask Moffat what the fuck is up with the sluglines: a DAY to NIGHT transition between beats that are supposedly continuous and happening in the span of... a minute?

i only watched s4 once, and don't have the dvd, so i don't have much to add. but i do go with the "it doesn't make sense cos it's not real" maxim, whether we're in sherlock's or john's head. and in a five act structure, it is generally in act 4 where things hit rock bottom, they break up, it seems like all is lost, etc etc. that's very common story structure, and it's suggested by the many many sets of five that can be correlated to the series so far.

the day/night transition also suggests a metaphorical reading, going into the darkness, maybe the "darkest before the dawn" or "dark night of the soul". there are some anomalous day/night scenes in earlier episodes too, like meeting outside 221b in broad daylight when the time sherlock had suggested they meet is well past full dark in late january in london. i'm not sure whether anyone has done a list and analysis to see whether there is a consistent use of day/night, not in terms of the surface reading, but the metaphorical or emotional thread of the story.

great catch @sarahthecoat about the day/night inconsistency. Yeah I should rewatch S4 too (TLD and TFP in particular) but, you know, there's only so much pain I can take in one sitting

yeah, i hear you, there's a reason i don't have the s4 dvd. but to uncover a pattern, you'd start with s1, and see if or how it develops. especially watch out for lines in the text that refer to the time of day or night (ie, the phone=heart #confirmed moment in ASIB, when sherlock says to irene/himself, "this is your heart") and also unexplained sudden transitions or where it doesn't line up with the surface reading. light and dark are such rich metaphors, "in the dark" =not knowing something, "see the light"=have a sudden realization, etc. They could be doing something that simple, stock visual story telling language, or they could be doing their own coding, and we'd need lots of consistent examples to see the pattern.

MY GIFTOBER 2019

Having just re read some of @bug-catcher-in-viridian-forest 's excellent metas about visual metaphors for sex & romance in film making, really changes how i see this scene. A john-mirror aims and "fires" a "gun" at sherlock, but "mary" interposes herself by unnatural means, and catches the "bullet" instead, except the "blood" spatter also suggests it was "fired" from a different "direction".

Just describing what's on the screen, we didn't write this show, we just observe.