Signe Maene

Picture of 'God' in a church, extending his hand. Then, another picture of a cat doing the same thing, but then with beautiful toebeans.

When art imitates reality.

Painting of Mirabai in orange sari, blue background.

‘Do not mention the name of love,
O my simple-minded companion.
Strange is the path
When you offer your love…
If you want to offer love
Be prepared to cut off your head
And sit on it.
Be like the moth,
Which circles the lamp and offers its body.’ ~ Mirabai for #InternationalWomensDay

“A hound it was, an enormous coal-black hound, but not such a hound as mortal eyes have ever seen.”

(Arthur Conan Doyle “The Hound of the Baskervilles”)

🎨 Sidney Paget (1901)

#bookwormsat #booksky #bookillustration

Illustration for Marie, Queen of Romania's story, Dreamer of Dreams. The night sky is strewn with stars, a magical woman in sparkling white clothes stands barefoot in the snow. Either side of her stands a white bear. Her outstretched hand has blood on it. The text tells us she is holding three tiny broken hearts - 'and drops of blood stained the white fingers of the snow-maiden.'

"I am the queen of these vast regions of snow
- my home is yonder, where none dare dwell -
and on nights when the moon shines bright I come out of my
castle of ice and wander over this desert of white..."

The Ice Maiden and her bears for #BookWormSat

🖋️ Marie of Romania
🎨 Edmund Dulac

But the Badger’s fort was dug when the whole land was one oak.
His face is his ancient coat of arms, and he wears the same grey cloak.

Ted Hughes

CF Tunnicliffe #BookWormSat

Fresco of Sappho holding writing equipment.

‘Glittering-Minded deathless Aphrodite,
I beg you, Zeus’s daughter, weaver of snares,
Don’t shatter my heart with fierce
Pain, goddess’ ~ Sappho for #InternationalWomensDay

“The dog, whom Fate had granted to behold
His lord, when twenty tedious years had roll’d,
Takes a last look, and having seen him, dies;
So closed for ever faithful Argus’ eyes!”

(Homer “Odyssey”)

🎨 John Flaxman

#bookwormsat #booksky #bookillustration

Photo of statue of Leona Florentino.

‘My fate is dim, my stars so low
perhaps nothing to it can compare,
for truly I do not doubt
for presently I suffer so.’ ~ Leona Florentino for #InternationalWomensDay

The Albanian Alps go by the rather auspicious name of "Accursed Mountains" and, naturally, such a place is populated with all kinds of spirits in local lore.

We meet one in our 8th #darkspringtide tale today, a Vila Planinka, and, oh boy, can she hold a grudge!

Read her story below!

🎨 Nielsen

Portrait of Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz in nun’s habit with books behind her.

‘Love opened a mortal wound.
In agony, I worked the blade
to make it deeper. Please,
I begged, let death come quick.

Wild, distracted, sick,
I counted, counted
all the ways love hurt me.
One life, I thought—a thousand deaths’ ~ Sor Juana Inés de la Cruz for #InternationalWomensDay

🤎🦁🤎

‘Often when I imagine you,
your wholeness cascades into many shapes.
You run like a herd of luminous deer,
and I am dark;
I am forest.’ ~ Rainer Maria Rilke. #BookWormSat

Yes, it is. And it can be read here: sites.pitt.edu/~dash/grimm0...

Yup. All's well that ends with the tiger and lady being happy.

Illustration of a woman walking beside a lion. Two more lions walk behind them.

'There was great joy when she arrived, for they all believed that she had been torn to pieces by the lion, and was no longer alive. But she told them what a handsome husband she had, and how well off she was.'
-The Singing, Springing Lark, Brothers Grimm.

🎨Arthur Rackham
#BookWormSat

Painting title: A Distinguished Member of the Humane Society. Painting of a dog. Birds and sea in the far background.

'A snarl! A scruffle round the room!
A sense that Death is drawing near!'
-To a Lady with an Unruly and Ill-mannered Dog Who Bit several Persons of Importance, Sir Walter Raleigh.

@signemaene.com and unruly dogs everywhere welcome you to #BookWormSat.

🎨Edwin Landseer

“Don Giovanni a cenar teco
m'invitasti e son venuto!”

(Don Giovanni, you invited me to dinner
and I have come!)

(Lorenzo Da Ponte / Mozart)

🎨 Otto Fikentscher (1880)

#phantomsfriday

🌷❤️‍🔥🌷"Wrong will be right, when Aslan comes in sight,
At the sound of his roar, sorrows will be no more,
When he bares his teeth, winter meets its death,
And when he shakes his mane, we shall have spring again."

📖C.S. Lewis - The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.
#BookWormSat

Moor Hawk is a watercolour painting by Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775–1851), created around 1816. It is part of The Farnley Book of Birds, a series of ornithological studies Turner produced while visiting his friend Walter Fawkes

The sun is behind me.
Nothing has changed since I began.
My eye has permitted no change.
I am going to keep things like this.

Hawk Roosting
Ted Hughes 1960

🖼️ Turner
#BookWormSat

An old, old being amidst beeches, beasts and barrows in the New Forest...

Our 7th #darkspringtide tale brings us to Hampshire during the Wars of the Roses where we meet our Lady of the Stags, which makes this a proper #bookwormsat story today!

Read it below.

🎨 Warwick Goble

A white cat playing with a coloured ball with a long red string. A black cat lies nearby. Background is silver.

'Playing cats' - Takahashi Hiroaki, ca. 1930.
#Caturday #JapaneseArt

Damme! But, unfortunately, the folktale doesn't mention where exactly.

Painting of a woman with red hair seated. She wears a green dress on which are red roses. Dark background with more roses and yellowish sky.

'The breezes pause and die,
Letting the rose-leaves fall:
But the solemn oak-tree sigheth,
Thick-leaved, ambrosial,
With an ancient melody
Of an inward agony'
- Lord Tennyson

🎨Thomas Edwin Mostyn

“I am unbody’d by thy books, and thee,
and in thy papers finde my extasie.”

Henry Cornelius Agrippa (1531)

🎨 Giuseppe Arcimboldo “The Librarian” (c 1570)

#WorldBookDay #booksky

Painting of a woman with black hair and wearing a purple dress stroking a leopard between the grass and purple flowers. More big cats behind her.

The Enchantress, Arthur Wardle (1864–1949).

Painting of a swamp

According to a Flemish folktale, a creek is haunted by a water devil who drowns people. There's also the ghost of an enchantress, and it was whispered that if she raised her hand above the water, all the animals in the area would die.

🎨Gustav Klimt
#PhantomsFriday

“Mythic Uther's deeply-wounded son”

(Illustration for "The Palace of Art" in “Tennyson's Poems”, New York, 1903)

🎨 after Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1857)

#booksky #bookillustration

🖤

In 2013 archaeologists uncovered the skeleton of a large dog at Leiston Abbey- locals claimed it as the remains of Black Shuck. However, scientific analysis indicated the skeleton belonged to an elderly male farm dog from the 18th century, carefully buried rather than feared… 🐾
#PhantomsFriday

Painting of Abelard visiting his wife, Héloïse in the Abbey of the Paraclete where she is abbess. They're sitting outside on a bench.

Abelard and Héloïse at the Paraclete, Vittorio Calegari (1893).