Nov 30, 2025
Processional
Artist: Bernard Hall (English, 1859-1935)
Date: c. 1921
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
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Processional
Artist: Bernard Hall (English, 1859-1935)
Date: c. 1921
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
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Boccaccio Reading the Decameron to Joanna of Naples
Artist: Egide Charles Gustave, Baron Wappers (Belgian, 1803-1874)
Date: 1849
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Private Collection
Description
In this impressive work, de Wappers depicts Boccaccio reading the Decameron to Joanna of Naples. Joanna, Countess of Provence and Queen of Naples (1343-82), was the beautiful and intelligent patron of poets and scholars, who defended the claim of the house of Anjou to the throne of Naples following the death of her grandfather Robert, King of Naples, in 1343. Under King Robert, Naples had enjoyed a period of prosperity and had become a centre for literature and art.
Boccaccio's name and the title of his most famous work, the Decameron, can be see on the pages of parchment in his lap. Completed between 1348 and 1353, the Decameron, had an enormous impact on the history of European literature, serving as the inspiration for the whole genre of the 'novella' and as the model for other framed story collections, such as Chaucer's Canterbury Tales.
Home Again
Artist: Frederick McCubbin (Australian, 1855-1917)
Date: 1884
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, Australia
Berengaria's Alarm for the Safety of her Husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, Awakened by the Sight
Artist: Charles Allston Collins (British, 1828-1873)
Date: 1850
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester, England
Description
Collins exhibited this painting at the Royal Academy in 1850, no. 535, accompanied by these words in the catalogue:
Berengaria's alarm for the safety of her husband, Richard Coeur de Lion, awakened by the sight of his girdle offered for sale at Rome. "The Provencal traditions, declare that here Berengaria first took the alarm that some disaster had happened to her lord, from seeing a belt of jewels offered for sale which she knew had been in his possession when she parted from him." The Queen was accompanied by Joanna (sister of Richard I) and the Princess of Cyprus.
Queen Berengaria had sailed separately from her husband when she departed from Acre on her own return from the Holy Land. She spent the winter of 1192-93 in Rome because of her fear of the Holy Roman Emperor.
Following Richard's participation in the Third Crusade he left to sail for home on 9 October 1192. His ship was wrecked near Aquileia in northern Italy, which forced Richard, disguised as a Templar, to take a perilous overland route through central Europe in order to get back to England. He was captured near Vienna by Leopold of Austria, whom Richard had made an enemy of during the crusade. Richard was kept a prisoner at Dürnstein Castle. His captivity eventually became known in England but not his exact whereabouts. Pope Celestine III subsequently excommunicated King Leopold because detention of a crusader was contrary to public law. On 28 March 1193 Richard was handed over to Henry IV, the Holy Roman Emperor, who imprisoned him in Trifels Castle in the Palatinate region of southwestern Germany. The Emperor demanded 150,000 marks for Richard's release and finally on 4 February 1194, following payment of the ransom, Richard was freed. Berengaria was not reunited with her husband, however, until the end of 1195.
Collins's treatment of this subject is based on the passage that was included in the Royal Academy exhibition catalogue that was taken from Volume One, page 308, of Agnes Strickland's Lives of the Queens of England, published in three volumes from 1840-48. Strickland makes no mention, however, of a pedlar showing the girdle to Berengaria as shown in Collin's painting so this was obviously his own invention.
Commentary by Dennis T. Lanigan
Dr. Samuel A. Bemis
Artist: Chester Harding (American, 1792-1866)
Date: 1842
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit, MI, United States
Samuel Bemis
Dr. Samuel A. Bemis (1793–1881) was one of the earliest photographers in the United States. A small number of his daguerreotypes have survived.
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The Frog Princess
Artist: Viktor Vasnetsov (Russian, 1848–1926)
Date: 1918
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Vasnetsov Memorial Museum Moscow
Description
"The Frog Princess" can be compared to the similar European fairy tale "The Frog Prince".
The king (or an old peasant woman, in Lang's version) wants his three sons to marry. To accomplish this, he creates a test to help them find brides. The king tells each prince to shoot an arrow. According to the King's rules, each prince will find his bride where the arrow lands. The youngest son's arrow is picked up by a frog. The king assigns his three prospective daughters-in-law various tasks, such as spinning cloth and baking bread. In every task, the frog far outperforms the two other lazy brides-to-be. In some versions, the frog uses magic to accomplish the tasks, and though the other brides attempt to emulate the frog, they cannot perform the magic. Still, the young prince is ashamed of his frog bride until she is magically transformed into a human princess.
Minerva
Artist: Hendrick Goltzius (Dutch, 1558-1617) Date: c. 1611 Medium: Oil on canvas Collection: The Mauritshuis, The Hague, Netherlands
Allegory of the Five Senses
Artist: Theodoor Rombouts (Flemish, 1597-1637)
Date: ca. 1632
Medium: Oil on canvas
Collection: Museum of Fine Arts, Ghent, Belgium
Description
Each man in this painting symbolizes one of the five senses. The old man with glasses and a mirror represents Sight. The chitarrone, a type of bass lute, stands for Sound. The blind man is symbolic of the sense of Touch. The jolly man with a glass of wine in his hand portrays Taste, and the elegant young man with a pipe and garlic, Smell.