Edward Burne-Jones (British painter and designer) 1833 - 1898
Launcelot at the Chapel of the Holy Grail, 1895-96
oil on canvas
138 x 169 cm. (54.33 x 66.54 in.)
Southampton City Art Gallery, United Kingdom
Edward Coley Burne-Jones was a key figure in the Pre-Raphaelites and the Aesthetic Movement. He once defined a painting as ‘a beautiful romantic dream of something that never was, that will never be…’.
This painting is typical of Burne-Jones’s mature work with its dream-like quality, languid and androgynous figures, and Arthurian subject-matter. It depicts a scene from the search for the Holy Grail, the sacramental vessel used by Christ at the Last Supper. Here, an angel appears to the knight Launcelot in a dream. She tells him that he will never attain the Grail because of his destructive affair with Guinevere, wife of King Arthur.
Burne-Jones’s fascination with Arthurian legends was greatly inspired by Tennyson’s poetry and Malory’s medieval tale Morte d’ Arthur. By the late 19th century, King Arthur had become a potent national myth. This concern with a mythic past and chivalry, coupled with Christian virtues, was also part of a wider reaction against Victorian materialism and industrialisation.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario