My Faith In The Gods Comes In Waves. There Are Times When I Feel So Dedicated, So Full Of Love That I

signed-author -> beloved-martyr

Illustration by Ernst Stohr, from 'Ver Sacrum' Magazine, 1899

Satan as the Fallen Angel

Painted by Sir Thomas Lawrence (1769-1830) in red, white, and black chalk, this creation of phenomenal artistic mastery is a part of a larger group of art pieces. The full collection consists of six different paintings depicting scenes and characters from Milton's Paradise Lost. One is currently at the Royal Academy of Arts, one at Louvre, one in Private Collection, and two are lost.

Satan in this depiction stands in his full humanised glory - imagery typical of the late 18th century Romanticism when the fallen angel lost his beastly, animalistic appearance in art. His features here remind one more of David or Apollo Belvedere in his majestic, heavenly beauty caught right before the fall.

Gerrit van Honthorst - An Allegory of Taste, 1622 (detail), oil on canvas

Goddess of the harvest

You want to fall on your knees.

You want to scream and beg about everything, that's wrong. Everything that's right and still wrong. What you should be. What you want to be. How your whole body hurts and the pain seems to go beyond. How it makes the whole world hurt. You plead for death or life or anything but this. You are chocking on your words as you realize... This is not how it works.

And your deity takes your hand. They hold you tight as they say

Do not kneel.

I walk with you. Help you. Teach you all I can. I care for you. But do not kneel in front of me and plead.

You have to stand so I can walk with you.

Hecate design!

angel in the haar

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St. Michael and the dragon

While this took me a whole lot of time to finish, I am very pleased with the end result, both compositionally and in regard to the colour scheme.

The idea for the ornate, white armour in particular came from an illustration of St. Michael in the book of hours of Henry IV of France, which looks like this:

Also, fun-fact: my hometown celebrates an annual little festival, which as its centre piece features a moving mechanical figure of St. Michael slaying the devil, the colour-scheme of which I also referenced for this painting.

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Close-ups:

Aphrodite and the golden apple