Calumny's Captive

This scene is a detail from the painting, The Calumny of Apelles by the great Florentine Renaissance artist, Sandro Botticelli (c1445 - 1510).

It features a Woman, named Calumny (or Slander), beautiful beyond measure, but full of malignant passion and excitement, evincing as she does fury and wrath by carrying in her left hand a blazing torch and with the other dragging a young man by his hair. His innocence is shown by his nakedness, signifying that he has nothing to hide. In vain has he folded his hands, so as to beseech his deliverance.

The last of Botticelli’s secular masterpieces, this magnificent work depicts the eternal conflict between Truth, Repentance, Slander and Envy. On viewing the whole canvas of the painting, the following is the full cast of allegorical figures that are portrayed from right to left.

King Midas is seated on a raised throne in an open hall decorated with reliefs and sculptures. He is flanked by the Female figures of Ignorance and Suspicion who are eagerly whispering rumours concerning the innocent youth in his donkey's ears, the latter to be understood as symbolizing the king’s rash and foolish nature.

Midas extends his right hand to a pale ugly man, Envy (or Jealousy), clothed in black, who has piercing eyes and looks as if he had wasted away in long illness. He, in turn, is leading Calumny who is accompanied by two Women, Fraud and Perfidy. They are studiously engaged in hypocritically braiding the hair of their Mistress with a white ribbon and strewing roses over her head and shoulders, thereby making insidious use of the symbols of purity and innocence to adorn the lies of Calumny.

Next to the captive young man is Repentance, an old woman dressed in deep mourning, with black clothes all in tatters. She is turning back with tears in her eyes and casting a stealthy glance, full of shame, at Truth, a naked classical Venus-like beauty, who is slowly encroaching on the scene. Truth’s expression and eloquent gestures are pointing up towards heaven, indicating that a higher justice will be meted out.

An apocryphal story is connected to Botticelli’s painting. Apelles of Kos, a renowned Greek painter of the Hellenistic Period, had himself been slandered, accused by a rival artist of fermenting revolt in Tyre. The gullible King Ptolemy 1 was on the verge of executing Apelles for the deed, so the story goes, when a friend revealed the truth and the slanderer was sold into slavery. Nevertheless, Apelles expressed his resentment for Ptolemy and the peril in which he found himself in his painting.

Though Apelles' work was not to survive, the historian Lucian recorded a fulsome description of it, which was the basis for inspiring Botticelli’s intriguing masterpiece.

Rome Triumphant

This striking painting, Allegory of Rome, 1629, was created by the seventeenth century French artist, Valentin de Boulogne.

The triumphant Female protagonist, Rome, wears an elaborate all’antica costume, embroidered with gold filament and a billowing red mantle. She is crowned with a tower and holds a lance in her right hand, while against her body is a shield with the papal coat of arms. The Woman stands on a cornucopia filled with abundant fruits and a sheaf of wheat symbolising the prosperity of Rome.

The accompanying males, in subjugated poses around her feet, are river gods indicated by the fact that they recline on overturned urns from which water gushes; the older figures are identified as the Tiber and Aniene Rivers, while the young figures are Romulus and Remus, the city’s founders.

Little is known of Valentin de Boulogne's short but influential career. Born in Coulommiers, France, into a family of artists, at a very young age Valentin de Boulogne moved to Rome where he lived and worked until his death. The main figure of the French "Caravaggisti", he was greatly influenced by the genre and naturalist paintings of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio.

De Boulogne's was known for the refinement and finesse of his painting technique, while his approach was personal and dramatic. He infused his pictures with melancholy, even sadness, and his characters were portrayed in subtle psychological expression and interplay.

His genre scenes captured that which he probably experienced in the rough melting pot that was Rome. Like his famous master, he was fond of carousing and fine wine. It is thought that Valentin de Boulogne died from a chill caught after bathing in a fountain following an evening of smoking and drinking.

Uplifted To Splendours

L’ange des Splendeurs (or The Angel of Splendours) is a stunningly evocative painting of great subtlety created by the esoteric Belgian Symbolist artist, writer and occultist, Jean Delville (1867-1953).

A male figure, with raised arms and eyes directed towards a Female angel, emerges out of the material realm which is represented by serpents and tangled thorny roses at the bottom right of the canvas. The luminous and almost bodiless Female figure rises upwards, with the fluid and transparent folds of her dress surrounding the man with a circle of light.

A vast landscape spreads out, far below the figures, filled with jagged hills, painted in luminous purples and golds, and rise out of a bright blue sea.

Delville’s 1894 painting of the angel guiding the male up from the abyss is a depiction of the soul’s spiritual evolution. The Female is man’s means to attain spiritual uplift and fulfilment.

With his mystical and philosophical interests, Delville considered the true artist to be an initiate who would present images that would teach and transform human nature.

A Feminine Mystique

For the American artist Manuel Nuñez (b. 1956), the incarnation of the indomitable human spirit is Woman.

Warrior Poet

His belief is powerfully portrayed in his wonderful paintings that are presented to us in a style rich and deep in symbolism. "My images are of strong women, beautiful, but not exploited; women who are sensual and virtuous; wrestling with the underlying conflict of what life is, versus what it should be."

The Cross Before Me

Raised in the arts, Nuñez regards his work as a profound expression and a gentle imparting of the tenets of his personal faith. He is primarily concerned with the dichotomies of life - “the ongoing struggle between good and evil, purity and decadence”. The use of his trademark 23-karat gold leaf is itself a dichotomy symbolizing decadence or indulgence and the righteous purity characteristic of Russian icon art.

Into the Night

In Nuñez's work, these disparate elements reign in conjunction with each other, as does the Feminine mystique which combines virtue and sensuality, love and lust, as they cohabit in the body and soul.

Edge of Glory

His unique visual tributes to the struggles of the human spirit, as portrayed in his gloriously strong Women, establish Nuñez as a definitive master of spiritual imagery.

Violet Serene

You can see more of the artist’s inspirational work at his website here.

Goddesses, Nymphs and Kisses

Cleopatra

Wilhelm Kotarbiński, alias Vasili Aleksandrovich Kotarbinsky (1949 - 1921), was a Polish painter who worked in various styles - academism, symbolism and modern.

Afternoon Silence

Educated in Warsaw, like many Polish artists he traveled extensively; initially to Italy, then to Belarus, and finally to Russia.

The Kiss of Medusa

In Kiev during the last decade of the nineteenth century, Kotarbiński produced his most creative and popular work. A prolific artist, he was commissioned to paint decorative murals in local churches and private palaces.

Nymphs

He painted mostly mythological and biblical compositions striking for their symbolic, mysterious and sometimes fantastic scenes.

Mused 

For a period, he was recognised as the leading Symbolist artist in Russia. In 1900, he staged a collective work, "Zachęta".

Unfortunately, many of Kotarbiński’s painting were destroyed during the First World War and the Polish-Soviet War of 1920.

The Kiss