Patrick Bade
Biblical Heroines in Art

Patrick Bade - Biblical Heroines in Art

- [Wendy] Thanks, Patrick. Welcome, everybody. And Patrick, when you’re ready, start, thanks.

• Thanks, Wendy and Lauren, and it’s great to be back again, I hope you’ve all had very good holidays. And tonight, I’m going to be talking about heroines and anti-heroines in the Bible, or I should say the Bibles because I’m talking about the Jewish Bible and I’m talking about the Christian Bible. And I’m talking about the way women have been represented in these books, and I’m going to oppose the question, you’ll probably give me the answer at the end, whether the way that women have been represented in the Jewish Bible and the Christian Bible have tended to establish negative stereotypes of women in Western culture. Whether they’ve encouraged misogyny. Two main images are two of these lovely art decor song sheets that, as you know, I collect and I love, both by Roger De Valerio. The one on the left is Delilah who, of course, is an anti-heroine in the Jewish Bible, and the one on the right is Salome who’s an anti-heroine in the Christian Bible. The middle image in between, it’s a pen and ink drawing I bought at flea market last Saturday, a week ago. It’s by a 19th century French illustrator called Louis-Maurice Boutet de Monvel. He was a leading illustrator in the late 19th century, and it’s actually just a page of the sketchbook, and it’s a sort of generic femme fatale and she could be either. She could be Delilah or she could be Salome.

Now as you know, the very first woman, Eve, was created by God from Adam’s rib and this is how that is represented by Michaelangelo in a fresco on the Sistine ceiling, and already Eve is someone who I suppose, I’m always amazed that anybody would name their child after Eve because she certainly has a rather negative image. It’s down to her, of course, that humanity was expelled from paradise and had to experience all the ills of the real world as we know it. She gets the blame. Of course, it’s the snake who tempts her and she falls first and then she tempts Adam. I’ve got two images of it here, the 16th century German artist, Lucas Cranach, on the left hand side, and you can see, she’s got a rather sort of wily half smiling expression on her face, he’s a real dummkopf, he’s scratching his head wondering what to do. And on the right hand side, we have a 17th century Italian painting, that’s a Domenichino, Bolognese artist, and here you’ve got Adam. God is reprimanding Adam and Eve and Adam’s saying, “Hey God, it’s not my fault, she made me do it.” We move on here to a late 19th century image of Eve. She’s very much the exquisite femme fatale with her gorgeous, sinuous under the hair. This is actually by Jewish artist, Lucien Levy-Dhurmer, who was a Jewish artist of Northern African origin, who specialised in these rather seductive images of femme fatale. So of course the snake plays a big role in this story. And this is an artist who, Franz Von Stuck.

He’s a Munich artist. He was a contemporary of Freud. He’s coming out very much in the same, I would say, cultural background as Freud. I’m not sure, I mean these paintings, this actually dates from before Freud’s more notable publications. The interpretation of Dreams 1919, these are dating from the 1890s, but there is this Freudian connection between the woman and the decidedly sinister phallic snake. The painting on the right hand side was called Die Sunde, Sin. And the one on left hand side Zenwish kind sensuality, these paintings cause an incredible sensation. They really hit the spot. And he actually painted 17 versions of the subject. He went through the German dictionary finding different words lust, Zinwish, Sundae but all variations on the same theme are of a very sexual combination of the woman and the snake. And in his studio, in his house, his palatial house in Munich, which I always visit when I take people there, he erected, a rather perversely one would think, an altar to sin with one of the versions of this painting crowning the altar that’s still there. And we see Edvard Munch, kind of riffing on the theme of the temptation and the fall of man. This is a very personal painting for Munch. And it’s about his affair with a very beautiful Norwegian woman, called Danny Jewel. She married the Polish poet Przybyszewski, we see on the right hand side. But she had an affair with Munch. And he has depicted, you can see, she is Eve and she’s dressed in Scarlet. She’s the scarlet woman and she is offering the fruit of knowledge to Munch.

And there is her husband, Przybyszewski, on the right hand side. So there is an equivalent to Eve in classical mythology, which is Pandora. And Eve, of course in the Bible is responsible for, you know everything bad in a way that’s ever happened to humanity. She’s the one who takes the first initiative of biting into the apple and then offering it to Adam. But in classical mythology, it’s Pandora. Pandora, one of the supposed, you could say, negative stereotypes about women is their insatiable curiosity. And as just as Eve is told not to taste the apple. Pandora is to told not to open the box. And when she does open the box, all these terrible nasty things come out, COVID or whatever, every disease, every aura, every difficult thing that man has to deal with, all the ills, the world pop out of the box. So here Adam and Eve post fall, this is Burn Jones, William Morris and the famous traditional rhyme. When Adam delved and Eve span, who was then the gentle man. So we move on in the Jewish Bible to Judith, although of course the book of Judith is I think not recognised by Orthodox Jews. It recognised actually by Protestants. It’s recognised by Catholics and it’s recognised by Orthodox Christians. But Judith is for them is she’s the female equivalent of David. She is a virtuous figure and a courageous figure. And she is right tramping over might and the way she saves the Jewish people in the book of Judith by seducing the Philistine general and getting him drunk. And then, you know, in a sort of wonderful drunken post coital stupor, he’s sort of lying back and saying, “How is it for you dear?” And she whips out his sword and she chops his head off and she takes it back to the Jewish people and the Philistines fully. So she is commonly represented in the 15th and 16th century, as I said, as a virtuous and a heroic figure.

It was quite common to paint or represent series of great courageous, virtuous women. And she was always number one. So we see her represented by Donatello on the left hand side, serving a little bit the same function as the Michelangelo David later that Florence liked it, see itself as triumphing over the more mighty neighbours of the Papacy and Milan. So in a way she’s there representing the heroism of the city of Florence. On the right hand side, is the same subject painted by Mantegna. Now what is interesting is that Judith is quite a common, quite a popular subject in western art from the 15th century right through to the end of the 19th century. And what I find fascinating is how she evolves. She changes in different periods. So in the 15th century, she’s entirely positive, you know, she’s a heroic, virtuous woman. When we get to the 17th century, this is Caravaggio and it’s a rather mixed image, we have here. She’s a beautiful young woman who’s seduced Helophinies. And in this, in a typically Barak of course juices, the high point of the drama, the actual moment that she saws his head off or chops it off, we see this strange expression on her face, a mixed face expression really, or I mean, there’s a certain sense of horror with what she’s doing.

So the Barak is a period that is very fascinated by sex and violence. There’s a lot of sex and violence in Barak art. And I think probably what attracted so many Barak artists to the subjects of Judith was this a sort of almost sadomasochistic element in the story. This is another Barak artist. This is a German artist working in Venice Johanna’s lis or Giovanni Lis. This is more sensational. Well, this is in the National Gallery in London. And you hear there’s an a look of wily triumph on her face. It’s a really an alarming painting. It’s an alarming painting to stand in front of because you’ve got this for shortened headless stump of, of Helophinies body that seems to be thrusting out of the picture into real space. You feel you have to take a step back or you’re going to be soaked by the blood spurting out of his severed neck. This has become a very famous picture, almost a cult picture. Again, we’re in the Barak period and this is Artemisia Gentileschi. This is her the most famous version she painted, as a subject she painted actually again and again, and she has become a kind of feminist heroin in the 20th century. She’s famous in her lifetime and then forgotten, but become very famous recently. And many people have interpreted her fascination with the subject of Judith beheading Helophinies as somehow coming out of a very terrible incident that happened in her life when she was very young, she was still a teenager, she was seduced, she lost her virginity to an artist who was working at her father’s studio called Edwards Augustino Tasso.

And she became a terrible victim actually, you could say, of the entire male sex. First of all, you know, she was a young girl who was seduced by by Tassie. And then when her father got wind of her loss of virginity, he was outraged and, or he accused Tassie of having raped her. So there was a trial for rape and, but, and in the 17th century it was normal to use torture to make sure that people were telling the truth. They used torture, not on the rapist, but on the victim. She was tortured to make sure that she was telling the truth. And at the trial, I mean, it was cause of travesty of justice. He was technically found guilty, but nothing very terrible happened to him. He had a period of months in exile and that was all. But she of course, her entire reputation in a way, her life was sort of almost ruined by this trial. So many people have the trial, got a lot of publicity, was very, very sensational. And the fact that she repeatedly painted this subject, people have seen it as her an expression of her anger towards the male sex. But it may not be that simple because in 17th century, artists didn’t paint pictures, usually not in Italy. Cause they wanted to, they painted pictures because they were commissioned to paint them. So again, it was probably men, it would’ve been men commissioning pictures, not women, who were coming to her and who liked the subject and who are asking her to paint the subject again and again in a particularly gory version here with the blood stained sack in which the head has been carried.

One thing I think is quite interesting to compare, I’m going to go back a minute to her, you see, Judith is often represented with a maid servant to help her. And Caravaggio, he paints also paints a subject several times. And he always paints the maid as a visioned old woman, rather a sinister looking character. And a difference between Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi is that she always shows the Judith and her maid servant as being of the same age and really looking quite alike. So there’s a sense of them being sisters and maybe an element of, you know, solidarity between women that’s being expressed, I think very much in this version. Again, Artemisia Gentileschi or Judith. Oh yes, here is the comparison. The Caravaggio’s on the right hand side, two versions with Judith and her maid and Artemisia on the left, whizzing through to late 19th century. You’ve got the cult of the femme fatale, which is very popular in the late 19th century, extremely misogynistic cult really, of the late 19th century. And by this time, Judith has been turned into a femme fatale.

Two versions of the subject by Franz Von Stuck with Judith wilding her sword, a bit like a cricket bat. And of course the two very famous versions of Judith by Gustav Klimt. And I think what becomes very clear with Klimt is that he’s painting a modern woman. He’s not trying to paint an ancient or a biblical heroin. And you can see in the middle here, you’ve got his, the woman in gold, Adele Bloch-Bauer, and I imagine many of you’ll seen the film or read the book about this notorious court case, when her descendants reclaimed this painting from the Austrian stage. It’s now, of course, in on display in New York. But Klimt’s believed to have had a long running affair with her. And it’s also been suggested by many art historians that his two versions of Judith were actually based on her. A similar heroine, not quite as popular or famous as Judith is Jile, this I think is a story that is in Judges. So this is officially in the Jewish Bible. And she murders a Canaanite general, that there’s a battle, the Canaanites defeated. He seeks refuge with her, she offers him food, she offers him a bowl of milk, and he settles down for a nice snooze and she whips out a mallet and a huge nail, and she wax him through the skull with it. Not a very nice story really, but she’s again, seen as a positively in many representations. Here two more representations of her. These are by Dutch artist called De Bray, 17th century Dutch artist. So she’s seen as a hero and positive figure.

Now, somebody who’s unmitigatedly negative, of course, is Delilah. And this is Ruben’s Samson Delilah. I haven’t seen it myself, but somebody’s told me that there is an article in the Observer today about this picture. That the whole controversy about whether it’s really from the hand of Ruben’s or not, has been revived. I’ve always thought it, although I don’t think it’s a very attractive painting, I’ve always been pretty convinced it was by Ruben’s himself, was Delilah that is also from the Book of Judges. And she is bribed by the Philistines to seduce Samson and to wheedle out of him the secret of his strength, which is of course his hair. And she has his hair cut and then he loses his strength. And this is a particularly gory and horrendous version of it by Rembrandt. It’s quite an early Rembrandt, from the 1630s, where he very, very explicitly shows the blinding of the dagger being thrust into the eyeball of Samson. But the most marvellous thing in this picture, I think is the way he’s painted, the facial expression is complex, facial expression of Delilah, rushing off clutching the severed hair and looking back with a mixture of triumphant on horror. And this brings me to of course, the most famous musical setting. Well, there are two very famous ones, actually.

There’s one by Handel, which is done quite frequently these days. But this is the French composer, And it’s Caruso very famous Samson, Margarita Matsina as Delilah. And she’s a wonderful operatic femme fatale, I’m going to play a little a musical episode before she even opens her mouth. We have an idea of just how sinister and dangerous and menacing she is. I love this, this music is sort of shimmering, you can sort of imagine her coming onto the stage and this is sort of very, very menacing sinister music at her first appearance. I can’t resist playing a little excerpt of Mae West. In one of her films, “Going to Town”, she plays a girl, a young woman who’s inherited a huge fortune. She decides to launch herself into New York society by staging an opera and that opera perhaps to be Samson Delilah.

And she plays Delilah. And in the film she sings Delilah’s most famous Aria “Mon c"ur s'ouvre à ta voix” And for the film they got the leading metropolitan tenor, Arman Taka Chan. He was a great Armenian tenor at the Met. He sings for Samson and you’ll hear her typical Mae West aside, you know, “Come over here, big boy,” she says. And he comes over and she picks up one of his rather phallic looking plats and with her wonderful nasal New York accent, she sings in French She says, “Respond to my caresses.” As she very suggestively strokes his plat. This is post covid, this filming. I don’t know how that she ever managed to get this past the Hollywood sensors of the mid 1930s.

• [Mae] Come here, Sam.

• Now if there’s anybody worse than Delilah, it’s of course Jezebel and her name. Again, I’m absolutely astonished that anybody ever calls their daughter Jezebel. ‘Cause Jezebel is really a synonym for female evil. She is in the Book of Kings and she is a queen who tries to reinstall the worship of the God bow. And that’s of course, as we know in the Jewish Bible, God is not a forgiving God. He’s pretty nasty, pretty vengeful. And she comes to a really horrible, sticky end. She’s defenestrated, she’s thrown out of her palace window and she’s ripped to pieces by dogs. Now this is a painting by Luca Giordano. I remember seeing it in a show of Neopolitan painting at the Royal Academy. It must have been in the early 1970s. People were really, I mean, Neopolitan Barak painting is so gory, it’s unbelievably stomach turning gory. And this was a one of a pair of paintings. The appendants. The other one is also quite gory. It’s Persius, the Wedding Feast of Persius, which is holding up the severed head of Medusa. And the two pictures were offered to the National Gallery and they bought the other one, they bought the Wedding Feast of Persius.

But in the 1970s at least, they felt that they couldn’t buy this picture 'cause it was just so unbelievably gory and awful that they just couldn’t show it. And just to, again, to make the point about how Jezebel has become a synonym for female wickedness. It was a 1938 film, Jezebel with Betty Davis. Now, let’s hear about a positive good heroin. This is Esther. And Esther, she married the Persian King Ahasuerus. This is the book of Esther. And he was persecuting, he had an evil advisor who was urging him to massacre and persecute the Jewish people. And she summoned all her courage and she went before Ahasuerus, the king to plead for the Jewish people. And she’s over so overcome with emotion that she faints. So this is another painting by Artemisia Gentileschi. And clearly she is, this is Gentileschi making a statement about the courage and the heroism of women. Here’s the detail. And other positive heroines. Well, cause Rebecca, the story of Rebecca, very tough. Rebecca was a toughie and she really won the admiration. And the husband, she won her husband with her efforts to carry water from a well to feed or to water camels here. This is a very popular subject. These are two, this one is Marial, 17th century. These are 18th century Venetian, Egrine, on the right Pietsetza the, on Egrine on the left. Pietesetza on the right. She’s got her dark side. I’ve always thought that the story of the blessing of Jacob where she deceives her husband to bless so that he blesses her favourite son. Hmm. This is the tough slightly manipulative side, I would say, of Jewish matriarchs. Now there’s certain biblical heroines and you think, why Susanna?

You know, this is a very odd story Again, it’s an apocryphal book. I don’t think it’s accepted, officially accepted in the Jewish Bible, a very, very popular subject. Susanna is a virtuous woman, but she’s spotted bathing naked in the garden by some dirty old men. And they lust after her. And they say if she won’t give them sexual favours, they’ll denounce her as an adulteress, which they do. But in the end, right triumphs, I don’t know quite what the theological or the religious significance of that story is. But I think for artists that the significance is that it allows the viewer to become the dirty old men. It’s actually an excuse for voyeurism. Although here again, this is a very personal take on the story by Artemisia Gentileschi. This is her first major picture, and it’s just around the time of her rape, if it was a rape and the trial of Tassie. And it’s also very lightly thought to be a self-portrait of her. So it really is a very personal take on the story. The other Biblical heroine, of course, who’s much represented, and again, is an excuse because it’s an excuse for nudity because this is Bath Shuber. And she was spied on by David in the Rubens. And if you can make it out, you can just see David on the terrace, top left hand side, spying on Bashbern. And he lust after her. I’m sure you’re familiar with that story. So there is a course, if something’s in the Bible, it’s an excuse. And it was that was settle be to Mill who managed to get past the Hollywood sensors.

He managed to do, get past the Hollywood code, getting more nudity, more sex into his movies than anybody else in the 1930s. And his excuse was, “Oh well, you know, it’s in the Bible.” So you can see this picture, the poster on the left hand side. This is the sign of the cross. So that’s all based on New Testament stuff. The audience were delighted with 60 Christians will be executed, hundred dancing girls, combat between dwarfs and Amazons, boxing with spike gloves, et cetera, et cetera. And chariot races and other wonders. You can get all sorts of wickedness and sensationalism in under the badge of doing something that was religious or Christian. Now we move on to, oh yes sir, it’s just time halfway through. So I’m moving on now to the Christian Bible, the New Testament. And this very beautiful painting by Vermeer is in the National Gallery in Scotland. And it’s Christ in the House of Mary and Martha, a very popular subject painted by many, many artists.

And I’ve always seen this story as being really a justification for keeping women down, keeping them in the kitchen, making sure that they were confined to a domestic role. And in this story, cause Christ goes to the house of Mary and Martha, and Mary sits at his feet to listen to his pearls of wisdom and his wonderful preaching. And Martha is stuck in the kitchen during the washing up and preparing the food. And eventually she complains to Jesus. And he says to her, “Those women who are in the kitchen and doing several things are serving me as well.” I remember once having a student at, at Christus who was an ex Church of England, England Vicar. And he disputed this interpretation. He said that was completely wrong. That this is not what Christ meant by what he said. But whether Christ meant it or not, it’s certainly an interpretation that has been made and has been used to subjugate women. I think it’s very clear here in this painting by Velasquez where it’s the title, this is kitchen scene with Christ in the House of Mary and Martha. So we have a rather silky, unhappy looking domestic servant. She’s preparing what looks like an wonderfully delicious meal with garlic and red peppers and eggs and fresh fish and olive oil.

I’m sure that’s going to be a wonderful tapas meal that she’s preparing. But she’s not very happy of the thought that she’s going to spend the rest of her life doing this. So you have an old woman who has spent her life doing it, telling her the story of Christ in the House of Mary and Martha to try and justify this situation. Now we move on to the Virgin Mary. And she is of course is very often well in Christian culture used as a role model for women. And we should know so little about her actually from the Bible itself that in the Middle ages, enormous sort of fantasies were dreamed up about. And new whole texts were written about her childhood. And you can see her, she’s doing what women should do. She’s learning all her domestic virtues. She’s praying and sewing. That’s what women should do. But the Virgin Mary, of course, it’s such a huge, huge cult in Catholic Europe. And there are so many different ways of representing her. She seems to be a sort of, have a multiple persona.

The enunciation, one of the most popular subjects in Christian art, or atleast in Catholic Christian art. This is Crivelli, dates from 1486. He’s an artist from Ferrara. So here is the Angel Gabriel coming to announce to the Virgin. And you can see a kind of ray coming down from God and the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove. This is the moment of her impregnation. So I mean, these are paintings by Zurbaran, by the way, Spanish 17th century artist. And although she seems to be quite, from a prosperous background, as it’s quite modest. Crivelli, my goodness. This Madonna is definitely a material girl. She’s living in a palatial house, which is the absolute ultimate in Renaissance fashion and luxury. You know, if there’d been such a thing as, you know, homes and gardens or interiors magazine in the 1480s, this would’ve been an illustration for which you can see, she’s living in the most unbelievably sumptuous luxury. Now, in the Middle Ages, and then in the Counter Reformation and continuing the cult of the Virgin was always being renewed and developed.

And a myth or element in the cult of Virgin, which was first broached in the late Middle Ages, but it continues, it actually didn’t become dogma of the Catholic church till the 19th century. And that is the dogma of the immaculate conception. Most people who are even Catholics, I think, don’t know exactly what is involved in this. It’s not that Jesus was conceived immaculately, that’s a given, of course. It’s it, that she herself, the Virgin herself was also conceived without the sex act. She was conceived immaculately. And there is a kind of standard way of representing this. You see her standing on a crescent moon, which going back to classical mythology, cause it’s a symbol of Diana and of virginity, and you see her standing on a snake, which is stamping out, stamping out any kind of in or heresy, particularly protestantism. So it’s a theme that is very important in the time of the reformation, I once took a group of vics around the cortal gallery. And this is Diablo by the way, and there was another version by Diablo of this where she’s standing on a snake. And one of the Vics said to me, what’s the snake? So I said to him, it’s you, you are a Protestant, you are a heretic and she is stamping on you. One of my favourite myths associated with the Virgin Mary. Remember, of course, the Virgin Mary is, she’s a young, she’s a Jewish woman. Isn’t it astonishing really so that this is so often kind of ignored or or forgotten that both Jesus and Mary were Jews.

But there is this myth that grew up in the Middle Ages, that wonderful house where the Virgin Mary spent her childhood was airlifted to safety by a hit squad of angels, sent in by God in the 13th century in order to save it from falling into the hands of the Muslim Saras. According to that myth, the house was airlifted across the Mediterranean. Here you see this subject being depicted by Diablo on the left hand side had a stop over in Zagreb, and then it plunked down in Loreto in northern Italy. And a huge cult developed around it. So the Virgin, the Madonna of Loreto, our Lady of Loreto, this is of course a worldwide cult that the actual house, or supposed house, is inside this sumptuous 16th century screen that you can see top right hand side and bottom right is inside the supposed house where the virgin spent her childhood and copies of imitations were built all over Europe in the 16th and 17th century. Now, I think, in some ways, the Virgin Mary, it takes on the role of classical goddesses of Greek and Roman mythology, including even Venus. And I think it’s interesting in the Catholic world how the image of the Virgin Mary has been sexualized. On the screen at the moment you can see in the middle at the top is the artist. He’s a 15th century artist, Fillipo Lippi, who was a monk, but he went to a convent where he was commissioned to paint a picture of the Virgin.

And he asked for one of the beautiful young nun called the Lucrezia Buti to pose for the Virgin. And he seduced her and he abducted her. And she lived with him for several years and had a couple of children by him. And she is supposed to be the model of the painting or the Virgin you see on the left. But she’s also supposed to have modelled for the painting of Salome, the feast of her that he painted on the right. I think one of the most extraordinary, really, really jaw dropping examples of the sexualization of the Virgin is this painting by another 15th century artist, French artist Nicolas Fouquet, who painted this Virgin and child for King Charles, the VIIth, of France, using as a model, the king’s mistress, who was a young woman called Agnes Sorel, who was famous for the incredible perfection and beauty of her breasts. And caused a scandal by appearing at a court in very low cut dresses that exposed even the nipples of her breasts. So there is a portrait of Agnes Sorel on the right hand side. And then you can see this Virgin and child, and rather extraordinary, the idea of going to mass on Sunday and kneeling and praying to the Virgin, to this I would say almost blasphemous image.

As I said the image of the Virgin becomes. I think, you know, for Protestants, for Jews, for non-Catholics, these images are really kind of hard to comprehend. This is a 17th century Spanish painting, I think how prudish Spain was. We got the Inquisition and so on, of the subject is the miracle of the lactation and the stories of St. Bernard who prays to a statue of the Virgin. And it comes to life. And she opens up her blouse and her breast lactates and squirts a jet of milk directly into his mouth. On a slightly less kinky level. There is the image of the Virgin as a kind of yummy mummy. And the great master of this, of course, is Raphael. And this is Granduca Madonna on right hand side. Raphael’s Madonna’s, immensely popular at the time. Incredibly, incredibly popular ever since copied, imitated countless, countless times, you almost set any sale room in the Western world when they have, you know, a sale of minor old master paintings. You’re going to find dozens of copies of Raphael Madonnas’. This is Ingres on the right hand side, painting a picture Ingres great hero was Raphael. He was obsessed with Raphael and he later in life said, this went back to the point where he was 11 years old, so just to the point of puberty. And he saw a reproduction of Raphael’s painting the Madonna della Sedia, which you see on the left.

And it became a lifelong, total, total obsession with him. And the painting on the right by Ingres shows Rafael in his studio with his mistress, a woman who was nicknamed Lafuna Rita, the baker’s daughter. And she’s sitting on Rafael’s lap and he’s painting the picture, you see in the middle, which is his portrait opera. But in Ingres painting, you can see that she is the Madonna della Sedia, she’s in the head, is at the same angle, she’s got the same headrest. And I said, he became so obsessed with this image of Madonna della Sedia, the Madonna of the chair, that he slips it in secretly to lots of his paintings. Two paintings by Ingres here, the one on the left portrait of Riviere dating from 1806. And the print with a circular image on the table, just by his arm is a print of the Madonna della Sedia And you probably can’t see it very well, but in his portrait in Napoleon enthroned, he’s actually woven, painted the image of the Madonna della Sedia woven into the carpet at Napoleon’s feet. There you can see rather better, the details of how he puts it in as a kind of secret message.

And all his I think his most erotic nudes like the Grande Odalisque and the I’m quite sure that in Ingres’ mind, all these paintings were actually fantasies of Raphael’s Madonna without her clothes on in a hurry. So you might think that’s blasphemous but this is very consciously blasphemous. This is Max Ed and it’s a painting of the 1920s. And the title is, “The Young Virgin Spanking the Infant Jesus.” And I think here, of course it’s a double blasphemy cause it’s a religious blasphemy, but it’s also I would say, an art historical blasphemy against Raphael. Now I’ve got the image also of the suffering Virgin, the mourning Virgin, one of the most famous versions of that, of course. Well, the subject of the Piata, of the Virgin mourning the dead Christ. And this is probably the most famous version of all Michelangelos in St. Peter. And the pain, the suffering of the Virgin and so on. Great theme in Catholic Europe. You’re at the bleeding heart, the wounded heart of the Virgin. And this brings me to, I mean, I said there are so many different specialised cults of the virgin.

And one that intrigues me is the confraternity of the sacred heart of the Virgin. And this was founded in Paris in a church, which is actually five minutes walk from my favourite restaurant, the church of the Virgin of the Madonna des Victoires and here is the church. And it was in the 1830s that the local priest, he had a vision in the middle he was celebrating mass and God, all the virgin came to him and said, “Look, I want you to set up this special cult to the virgin of the bleeding, suffering heart of the virgin.” And he did that. And it really took off and it became a worldwide phenomenon. It’s an extraordinary place to visit I think the particular, it’s probably the only church in Paris, which is always packed with people. It’s always full of pilgrim, it’s always full of worshipers. And I think the great attraction is that according to this cult, you go to the Virgin, you ask for something, she gives it to you. And the church claims to have 37,000 ex voters. These are called commemorative blacks, you know, this is, you can see here it says reconnaissance, Notre Dame Des Victoires, the name of the church for a worldly favour, I don’t know what that was winning the lottery or whatever. And then it says, obtained from the good mother, I charge you with all my interests. Well, that’s wonderful, isn’t it? To be able to do that. And then you can see every inch of the wall inside this church has these little ex voters. Extraordinary, really. This one you can see gratitude for something that’s been granted to me, gratitude for an unexpected reconciliation.

There’s a bottom right, there’s a student who, she prayed for when she was a student, she passed their exams and now she’s a magistrate and so on. Well, last Saturday, a week ago yesterday, I had great pleasure for the first time of meeting a couple of lockdown students. They were from Canada, Vivian and Saul. And we had a nice lunch together at La Ques. And then we did a walk and I took them into this church and I explained all this to them and I think they were kind of gobsmacked by it. And I said to Vivian, “What would you ask for if if you can ask a special favour of the virgin. I hope you won’t remind you telling this cause it’s quite personal.” She said, “Oh, I think I’m going to ask for a wife for my son.” So I said, “Hey Vivian, give it a whirl.” You know, the Virgin was a nice Jewish girl, why wouldn’t she want to do you a favour? So I don’t know whether she did or not, but I’ll move out, find out in time. And so my last heroine, actually an anti-heroin. This is Salome. And it’s extraordinary how this figure of Salome has become such an important one in Western culture.

She’s mentioned in two of the gospels, I think it’s Mark and Matthew, but she’s not mentioned by name. It’s Josephus. It’s the Jewish historian who gives us her name. And in the two gospels, she’s only mentioned in a couple of lines. And the story is that she’s the daughter of Herodias, who was married to Herod. And that she danced a very sexy dance and he was so impressed by it. He said, you can have anything you want. And she asked for the head of John the Baptist. It’s a subject which crops up from time to time. It wasn’t really a frequent subject, I’d say till the 19th century. There’s Donatello, the Feast of Herod. You can see her dancing on the right hand side and Krank again where she seems to be a very fashionably dressed German house frock with a nice hat. And Rubens in the 17th century. Sometimes, of course the story, you could say, the villainess here is really Herodias, the mother. So she is also depicted by a number of artists, 17th century artist, Francesco del Cairo on the right hand side, and Aubrey Beardsley on the left. But it’s Salome who herself, who really caught artist’s imagination, particularly in the late 19th and early 20th century.

And the artist who really, really sets things going is Gustave Moreau. He’s normally classified as a symbolist artist, and I think him was really as the kind of Norman Bates of the 19th century. He lived as a recluse with his aged deaf mother in their rather sinister house, which is now the Gustave Moreau Museum. And they’re in that museum. There are over 90 representations of the subject of Salome. He was clearly, absolutely obsessed. So amazing place to go, very claustrophobic rooms. This is his bedroom. On the right hand side, there is Gustave Moreau on the left be fascinating to get him on the analyst couch and find out what’s going on in his mind. Here is his studio full of these images of Salome, watercolours, oil paintings and so on. The one on the right is called Salome in the Garden. And he wrote the clearest glimpse we get into his motivation for his obsession with Salome is a letter that he wrote about this watercolour on the right hand side, he says that Salome is strolling through the garden with a severed head of John the Baptist. In the background, you can see the execution running off. And he says that she, he says like women in real life, she is too best chill and too stupid to understand the unbelievable horror of what she has caused.

And so, it’s certainly an extremely, extremely misogynistic attitude to women that is expressed in these paintings. And he as far as Gustave Moreau is concerned, all women are really femme fatale. Even the Virgin Mary. You can see the Virgin Mary in the right-hand side by Gustave Morreau sitting on top of a kind of phallic lotus plant with heaped up bodies of young male martyrs bleeding at her feet. So all very, very Freudian, but I’m running out of time. This is Oscar Wilde, of course, who wrote the play Salome. And on the right hand side, a photograph of Oscar Wilde actually in drag, dressed up as Salome. And I’m going to finish with a little musical excerpt. This is from the final scene of Strauss’s opera, Salome, which is based very directly on Oscar Wilde’s play. And in this play of course Salome, she lasses on John the Baptist. He won’t kiss her and she, he rejects her. And she demands the head so that she can kiss the head. And this is what she does in the final scene. And this is a performance dating from 1944 with the great Bulgarian soprano, Ljuba Welitsch sounding alarmingly youthful and she’s alarmingly convincing as well in her perverse intensity.

I think I better come out now of the PowerPoint and let’s see if we have some questions and comments.

Q&A and Comments:

Somebody, is this Arlene Goldberg, he was not made from Adam’s rib. This was a mistaken interpretation and the translation word should be helped make not rib. There many, many mistranslations as you know, in the standard Bible, like Moses’ horns and so on.

Q: Who’s the Jewish?

A: Levy Dome. Levy Dome If that’s L-E-V-Y. Actually I don’t need to spell it. You’ve got the list. It’s on the list that you were sent this morning.

The palatial house. Yes, it’s the Stuck villa in Munich. It’s quite staggering. It’s really, really worth a visit. I recommend it strongly.

This is Esther Blackman saying, “Eve was a wise woman who saw that the fruit was good and dared to take a risk. Expulsion from paradise led to the knowledge of good and evil and life of wisdom and morality. In Judaism, there is no original sin, much to be said about fault actually being the rise of humans to freedom.” That’s a positive interpretation.

Yes, I know the apple is also, I think it’s, isn’t it Milton? That’s Joanna saying that, I think it’s Milton, who’s the first person to actually say it’s an apple and it’s sort of become accepted since that it was an apple. But in the Bible it is a fruit. It’s not an apple. Adam and Eve incorrectly depicted.

They have belly buttons, but neither was born with an- Yep, good point. Neither was born with an umbilical cord.

Cheryl saying, “Welcome back.” Thank you.

Yes, you’re quite right. The book of Judith is not part of the Hebrew Bible. In the Hebrew Bible, Eve hava is the mother of all human life. In Hebrew, her name reflects life, Haim. This is Saul saying, “Disagreeing regarding Judith. The essay in the Jewish reminds us why she went to save just Judith.” No, I didn’t say that. No, she did it in order to save the Jewish people. Yeah, so in fact we don’t disagree.

Q: Will you talk about Cindy Sherman’s Judith Helophinies?

A: I don’t know it. I’ll find out about it. She’s a very interesting artist. There’s a lack of facial fury among the women in the paintings. Is that an issue artistically? I’m not sure. I think I would say that there is actually, I mean especially the Caravaggio and actually the famous Artemisia, I would say that there is quite an element of facial fury. Yeah. Other people talking about, let’s see, Alina Garrantia, yes.

Very beautiful Delilah and met production.

Somebody said, “Never thought of braided hair as a phallic symbol.” Well it isn’t usually it’s just the very naughty way that Mae West handles it.

Are you familiar with the book of Ruth by Tobiasa, series of 15 paintings contained… No, I’m not. I will look that up.

Yes. There was a opera based on says, well, I think there’s a handle Oratoria, but there was, I can’t remember the name of the American composer who wrote a very successful opera story of Susanna in the 20th century. Marion cult was developed. Well, it goes back to the Middle Ages, the Marion cult. But it’s true, it became a very important weapon of the counter reformation. Yeah. Isn’t isn’t that story of the airlifting the house. It’s wonderful. And you know, there you’re all over the world. I mean, just again in Paris, very close to me, it’s about a 10 minute walk. There is the church of Notre Dame . And I’ll tell you a very naughty kind of consequence of that. I mean, it was a, an area of Paris with lots of working class girls. And in the late 19th century, there were girls who were not strictly speaking prostitutes, but they could be, they would sell themselves for a good meal or a drink. And those girls sort of semi-prostitute girls became known as Loretz after the Church of Notre Dame of Loreto. So I find that really an extraordinary kind of development, weird development of the story.

Yes, right. Yes. Karl Floyd was the art composer who wrote Susanna. The opera, Susanna.

Q: What happened to the book of Ruth?

A: Yes, and I should have talked about Ruth. Did I not talk about her in the last lecture? I can’t remember why I didn’t include that.

Yes, as a church. All over the world, there are churches of Notre Dame des Victoires and also Notre Dame of Loreto. Thanks for your nice comments.

My favourite restaurant, I think I mentioned it so many times, is La Ques. There’s a fabulous new restaurant, very close, I must recommend to you, although it’s not very closer, but it’s unbelievably good. Just near the know what called the cafe. Incidentally, I will be back. I’ve got two trips to Paris, two with Martin Randall. One, I think one in December is sold out. The one in November still has places, if anybody’s interested.

Let me see. Hedwig Lachmann, who translated Wilde’s play for Straus was the grandmother of the great movie director Mike Deckle. That Mike Nichols. That is such a weird, fascinating piece of information. Thank you. I don’t know where I’m going to squeeze that in, but I must find a place to put that in a lecture sooner or later.

Yeah. Somebody told me you’ve got the lecture listed twice, but not the PowerPoint. But I’m sure if you write, if you email Lauren, she will send it to you if you want it. The Susanna’s Secret, the secret of Susanna is a delicious opera, but it’s not actually about the Biblical Heroines. It’s actually a completely different story about, her secret is, of course, that she’s a secret smoker and her husband smells cigarette smoke on her clothes and thinks she’s having an affair. And thank you Edward. It’s great to be back and I really enjoyed doing these lectures and preparing them for you. And that seems to be it. And my next talk is about Shanna Olof. And I know there are going to be hundreds of people writing and saying no, she’s Hannah Olof, that she called herself Shanna Olof. She has a wonderful, wonderful sculptor, great favourite of mine and a great favourite of Wendy’s. So I’m looking forward to talking about her with you. And that will be, I think a week today.

Thank you everybody. Bye-bye.