May 3
"The Shadow" by Edmund Blair Leighton- 1909.
The Shadow is based upon the Greek myth of Debutades's daughter, a Corinthian girl who drew the portrait of her beloved on the wall of her bed-chamber by tracing the outline of his shadow cast by the lamp-light on the night before he departed for war. Leighton changed the setting for the drama to the battlements of a medieval castle, below which the young crusader's ships are waiting.
I like this painting for the sweetness it witholds despite the sadness behind the fear of never seeing her beloved one ever again. His shadow is all she’ll have to remember him; at least her last memory of him is not wounded or bloody.
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