This article is for those who are interested in the decorative pictures of Norrisland. Before I start, I want you to note that the description won't be concentrated on the painting technics or art history, and if you know anything about those, please tell me. From here I'm going to say what the pictures are about and probably why I chose these pictures.
Previously, the main decorative theme of Norrisland is "The Tragic Life of Orpheus". However, by now only 2 figures remain but they are really my favorite ones among dozens of Orpheus pictures. The one below is called "Orpheus Leading Eurydice from the Underworld", by Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot. This picture captured the scene when Orpheus taking the hand of his young DEAD wife, Eurydice, walking away from The Underworld to the earth. What I appreciate most are the people shaded in the picture.
Here is a brief summary of Orpheus' story, with the redundant and irrelevant Odyssey epic omitted. Orpheus was born a musician cos his mom, Calliope, is one of the Muses. His father, was the pathetic god Apollo. Unfortunately, it seems to me Orpheus was never a god. For some reason he and Eurydice hooked up and got married. But in order to make the story tragically beautiful, the Greeks sent a snake who bites Eurydice and its venom took her life. After Eurydice's death, Orpheus did nothing but playing music with his lyre, and this was exactly the paramount of his music career. He enchanted tons of animals around him doing nothing but listening to the music. Even lions came from Africa into the woods in order to get sloppy in his music... Of course the music cast magic to the beautiful nymphs, too, if they were not in fact interested in his beauty.
Latter Orpheus got down to the underworld and played his lyre for Hades and that's why he got a chance to lead Eurydice back. However, there was a pact, Eurydice should not look back before she completely got out of the underworld. Although it's a long trip, they did have fun without Eurydice changing the direction of her head. Some artists tried to express how they could enjoy themselves with this constraint (in picture above). The God between was of course Hermes, the guide of the underground trip. You can find how bored by the loving birds he seemed to be. But of course, at last Eurydice looked back and returned to the underworld, or else, why is the hell there was that pact?
After this disappointed trip, Orpheus became almost hysterical. He was tortured by Thracian Maenads and was probably taken advantage of, too, I think -.-bb. The reason for torturing was that the crazy bastard women thought Orpheus did not show enough respect to Dionysus. In other words, these women were obviously winos and drank too much that day. They killed Orpheus, cut his head off and, what's more brutally SMly beautiful, they squeezed Orpheus head into his lyre and threw the combination into the river. The picture showed how he was tortured and took advantage of ... later or before.
His head floated on the River Hebrus and by some chance reached Lesbos shore. One thing I do not think of beauty is, that along the sailing Orpheus' head was still singing all the way. Some artist must believed me, so you can see when the nymphs found his head, he kept his mouth firmly shut. Now here is my favourite picture. It is called The head of Orpheus by Gustave Moreau (1865). The beautiful woman who was holding Orpheus' head was probably Calliope, i.e., Orpheus' mother. She looks so gorgeous and the beauty comes from her trying to hide all the sorrow seeing the head only of his child. Orpheus' face is pale and the frame of his lyre seems rather well decorated.
And that's the end of Orpheus' story.
There are other 2 pictures I wanted to introduce. The first is called Salome Dancing Before Herod(1874-1876), also by Moreau. After knowing Salome's story I tried a thousand times to get some pictures of the dancing "Dance of the 7 Veils". I won't repeat Salome's story that much but the detail of the dance. By "Dance of 7 Veils", Salome enthralled the soul of Herod, his step father. Herod promised Salome that she could get anything from him and Salome asked for the head of John the Baptist. In Oscar Wilde's script, Salome was complicated but not sophisticated. Compared with her mother, Salome was definitely childish in mind, or else she could have asked something more important. On the other hand, how can a simple girl dance the most beautiful dance on the earth? This is not easy to understand and that's why I said she was complicated but not sophisticated. In my point of view, the most gorgeous dance must be some Persian style. I've no idea whether it corresponds to the Bible but I do havefound some pictures like that.
The last picture was painted by John William Waterhouse (British, 1849-1917). You can guess who the woman is before I explain. It's not hard to guess out, is it? The picture is called "Pandora" and so was the woman inside. Like most of the myths, the first woman in the world must be troublesome, such as Eve who persuaded Adam to follow the snake. One thing I need to say is that, in Christian stories, Eve was not the first woman. The first woman was Lilith, who invented the "Woman above Position" for making love and so that enraged the Lord and Adam. Pandora was the first woman of Greek stories. She opened the box and set free all the misfortunes such as plague, sorrow, poverty, crime ... However, openning that box is not exactly the reason why Pandora was troublesome. The reason is that she left one thing inside the box cos she suddenly closed it after setting free the misfortunes. "The world remained extremely bleak for an unspecified interval, until Pandora "chanced" to revisit the box again, at which point Hope fluttered out." Yes, hope is exactly what Pandora left inside the box.
Umm, so much. Maybe I'll talk about Icarus next time ... Of course you can tell me if you like :)
