Well, this is bizarre. As I said when I started reposting this series, these captioned paintings were something I fooled around with one weekend over a decade ago. You know me, anything for a cheap laugh. But I just searched to see what this was before I got cute with it, and believe it or not, it’s Isabella and that damn pot of basil again, or to be more precise, pot of Lorenzo. This one is by “Ricciardo Meacci (5 December 1856 – 15 January 1938), an Italian (Sienese) painter who came under the influence of the “Pre-Raphaelite” movement” as per Wikipedia. I’m just gobsmacked it’s another Lorenzo-under-the-herb. And these (this week’s and last week’s) aren’t the only two, either, there are many many if you google. How a lover’s severed head in a pot of leafy greens became a great romantic motif is beyond me, let alone the fact that a poet as great as Keats wrote about it in a beautiful sixty-four page book (it’s here).
And now I really want to write a romcom with this in it. We’re doing art crime next year, I think. Possibly one of them will be about a painting of a pot of Basil.
34 Responses
I can totally imagine you and Bob writing a romcom with a lover’s severed head in a pot.
Zombie!
Hahahaha don’t get Bob started
Well, at least basil smells nice, if you are going to put your face into that pot every day. About ten years ago I saw a theatre performance called Decamerone by the now unfortunately defunct Dutch theatre group De Appel. You saw four of Boccaccio’s stories, each in a different space. I remember an uncomfortable walk through a decommisioned church with large, deep holes in the floor. They did the basil story in the cellar, and they’d put pots of basil everywhere (just the ordinary kind you buy in the supermarket). It was towards the end of the run, so the basil wasn’t exactly flourishing without light.
I think if I was one of those 3 guys I would be saying – uh hello – she has the severed head of a man who crossed her in that pot – I’m getting the hell out of here before she turns on me.
Those 3 guys are her brothers, and they’re the ones who killed her lover. If I remember correctly, they even took the pot of basil away from her.
The poem was part of the Keats selection I studied for A level; I preferred many others. Though it was reading Keats that made me see the point of poetry (I’ve always been more into novels). I seem to remember there was another about the Lamia(?) a sort of snake woman? But it is fifty years ago, and I can’t be bothered to hunt out my Keats.
Ha! I too vaguely remember the one about the snake woman, Lamia. There is a line in it “the purple-lined palace of sweet sin” which was one of those quotes that my college friends and I so used and abused over time that Keats’ original meaning is lost in the mists of time and only the much used and abused quote remains!
Christina, you and Jane had much more interesting things to read for school than I did!
I loved Ode to Autumn, but the only bit of his narrative poems I remember is ‘St Agnes Eve, ah bitter chill it was!’. It hasn’t come in handy.
You’ll be surprised to hear that “the purple lined palace of sweet sin” hasn’t come in too handy either.
Jenny, Have you ever read “Travels with my Aunt” by Grahame Green? Aunt (played by Maggie Smith in the movie) picks up namby pamby nephew and his box containing his mom’s ashes. That box and its contents have adventures.
Jane, I love Keats’ poetry and I loved teaching it. My students went from puzzled to checking each other out (Do you get what I just got?) when I asked them what happens in this stanza:
Beyond a mortal man impassion’d far
At these voluptuous accents, he arose
Ethereal, flush’d, and like a throbbing star
Seen mid the sapphire heaven’s deep repose;
Into her dream he melted, as the rose
Blendeth its odour with the violet,—
Solution sweet: meantime the frost-wind blows
Like Love’s alarum pattering the sharp sleet
Against the window-panes; St. Agnes’ moon hath set.
Only Jenny could make head in the basil pot funny. As a basil enthusiast I have a queasy feeling about eating the basil from that pot. But you never know.
It reminds me of a scene in a movie showing someone using a cow head to fish eels on the seashore. The eels swirled in the head.
I almost cast up my accounts!
Stuff of nightmares.
The dark haired dude with his hands out looks like he’s saying “We did what you wanted, why are you so upset?”
I like the way the Meacci signed the painting with an engraving at the base of a pillar. It gives it class. I’m also wondering how Isabella managed to get Lorenzo’s entire head, and enough soil to nurture a plant, into such a small pot. The hair alone, needs a large pot! In both paintings you have posted, the pot was barely big enough for the plant’s roots. Basil was supposedly a symbol of “tragic love” in Sicilian culture, according to one site. Maybe Lorenzo loved pesto?
Also, Jenny did you see my comment yesterday that BookBub’s post of Rocky Start said it was available for a short time, until August 1???
It’s a beautiful painting, though I don’t want it hanging in my home. Why would someone with that level of talent paint that, I wonder?
Maybe the reason for all the paintings on the subject and why this person painted this particular subject matter, was that it was an assignment for class.
Apparently this was a popular example of tragic love… And the pre-Raphaelites would develop subjects together (e.g. one might paint the beginning of the story and another might paint the tragic ending) so you find lots of paintings of various parts of the story. Hard to fathom…
Re: repeated subjects among the pre-Raphaelites, I think of them as the 19th-c. artistic Rat Pack. Just like Frank, Sammy, and Dean, they probably did their own versions of certain topics (art subjects instead of songs) in a sense of friendly competition. 🙂
As to the tragic love motifs, that was most of art in the 19th c. Look at the classical ballets (or don’t. Some of those stories are UGH).
Off topic, there’s a great column with discussion about good sex scenes on SBTB today: https://smartbitchestrashybooks.com/2024/07/what-makes-a-good-sex-scene/
Pre-Raphaelites as Rat Pack: a satisfying insight.
In one sense, I think the story was popular among the Pre-Raphaelites because Boccaccio himself medieval. In the other, if they were anything like the artists I know, maybe they found the whole thing as squicky and funny as we do. 😀
Maybe a series entitled Where’s Lorenzo? I feel like Daisy would have painted this story.
Off topic: I won’t comment on anything specific more from Rocky Start until a spoiler-allowed topic is set up, but I figure the Nice Funerals sample is fair game, both because it’s explicitly not the final version and because it’s too early in the book for spoilers.
Early on, Rose says, “You’ve dragged her off to the woods every morning,” so Maggs has been accompanying Max on his conditioning hikes. But every day Max has been crossing a rope bridge that could not plausibly suit a dog, who can’t use the handhold ropes even if the bottom rope should be wide enough for her and the stream below has a fast current and rocks. Not to mention that Maggs has a paw that has been healing, and getting it dirty and wet does not seem a good idea. So I don’t see how she could be swimming across there. I think we need an explanation (possibly following the sample rather than as part of it) on what Maggs has been doing while Max crossed the rope bridge. Crossing at an earlier point and waiting for him?
This legend about a pot of basil is mentioned in Bujold’s A Civil Campaign. That’s why I’m familiar with it. I googled it after I read about it. In the book, Mark (Miles’s clone brother) is in love with Kareen, and he is afraid her relatives would cut his head off and put it in a pot of Basil. Figuratively, of course, but still…
I’ve read that novel multiple times but I hadn’t remembered that at all! Congrats on recalling it.
Imagine these guys going for drinks and betting they can make anything romantic. Then someone betting them they couldn’t sell paintings of someone’s severed head in a pot under romantic art. Obviously challenge was accepted
“Here, hold my basil.”
Yes, I was astounded, too. I went down quite a rabbit hole looking at all of them after your last Lorenzo post, LOL.
I REALLY love art crime stories. Happy news for this reader!
Why did a weird story about a severed head inspire so many artists to paint it? I’m thinking: horror.
Horrified at the notion they too might end with their head in a pot, herbs sprouting from their eye sockets, and a woman WEEPING and chattering at them day and night while they are forced to hover in some weird hellish limbo until she forgot them, the artists attempted to transform their revulsion into art.
Or maybe it’s just narcissism. Look! She’d love me even if I were just a dead head in a pot because I’m so awesome. She’ll never be with another man. She’ll DIE pining over me.
(Okay back to my own work in progress. This short story isn’t gonna write itself.)
Bought ROCKY START yesterday, too!
OT: My five-star, entirely positive Kindle review of Rocky Start (written shortly after I finished reading) seems to have ended up in curation (if not bagged entirely) for no obvious reason. This has happened to me sometimes with other authors. In one (and I think several) cases, the reviews finally showed up several days later (and I got emails from Amazon indicating that they had appeared). Has this happened to others? Any idea what is going on?
Amazon banned me from reviewing long ago, presumably because I wrote my honest opinion of certain goods and services. I thought I was at least polite…
They tell me I haven’t spent enough money yet. Which totally makes me want to spend more there.