Crusaders - Tumblr Posts

Bridge to Mseilha Fort, near Batroun, Lebanon

The Dedication by Edmund Blair Leighton

The Dedication is an important rediscovery in Edmund Blair Leighton's oeuvre. Known only through a black and white photogravure published in 1908 it has not appeared on the open market for over seventy-five years. The picture is one of several painted in the 1900s in which a knight and his lady are seen in incidents illustrative of the code of chivalry. This series included The Accolade; and God Speed

Although not specifically Arthurian in subject matter, these pictures represent a late phase of the Victorian revival of interest in the national legend. Pictorially, they have many antecedents. Perhaps the most obvious are William Dyce's murals in the Queen's Robing Room in the House of Lords, in which the artist used incidents from the Arthurian stories to embody abstract concepts such as religion, chivalry, generosity and mercy, and the chivalric subjects that Rossetti and his followers were so fond of in the late 1850s.

In this painting by Leighton we see a knight and a noble lady in a Church kneeling before an alter as the knight pledges his sword in his holy cause and the noble lady offers up a prayer with her eyes closed and hands clasped; while in the background we see a soldier waiting outside, holding the knights horse.

The crusaders. I know the anatomy is wonky but I still kinda like it.