Sunday, April 3, 2011

A dead King

Edith Finding the Body of Harold (1828) by the French painter Horace Emile Jean Vernet (1789-1863).

Vernet depicts here the day after the battle of Hastings (1066) when the queen of the fallen Anglo-Saxon king Harold found the body of her husband. It’s dramatically illuminated and the gestures of the monks indicate grief and disaster.
But above all the painting illustrates the low level of historic knowledge in the early 19th century.

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