Dweller in the Library

The Writing on the Wall - another illustration from The Standard Bible Story Reader.

The Flight to Egypt from the Standard Bible Story Reader. The Holy Family are jolly lucky it wasn’t a Boat to Australia.

(Source: bibleclipart.blogspot.com.au)

tastefullyoffensive:

[via]

Good heavens - this is a Bible injoke, a reference to Mark 11:12-14. Genius! *so proud of self for getting it*

demonagerie:

British Library, Add MS 11695, detail of f. 147v. Beatus of Liébana, Commentary on the Apocalypse. 1091-1109

demonagerie:

Lausanne, Bibliothèque Cantonale et Universitaire, U 964, detail of f. 480v (woman clothed with the sun, dragon with seven heads). Biblia Porta. Franco-Flemish, end of the 13th century.

(via Jonathan Guthmann – The Cherub of Ezekiel’s Vision)

judaizers:

First Day of Creation (from the 1493 Nuremberg Chronicle)

I’ll bet God’s Little Princesses has Esther, though - she, too, saves the day through her courage and wits, but less sex and violence is involved. :) Here she is risking death by approaching the king without being summoned first.

omgthatartifact:

Jael and Sisara

Artemisia Gentileschi, 1620

A not dissimilar tale to Judith’s: Jael dispatches the enemy king Sisera with the help of a handy tent peg. The look on her face! “Well, here goes!” Even if Judith doesn’t count, I reckon you could get this heroine’s story into God’s Little Princesses, if you gloss over the gruesome details.

omgthatartifact:

Judith Slaying Holofrenes

Artemisia Gentileschi, 1611-1612

“Hold my earrings

hold my purse

It’s not your feelings gon’ get hurt.”

I love this painting, and the fact that it shows the beheading as a bloody struggle whereas most representations of the scene were in the day presented as effortless.  Gentileschi’s women aren’t the delicate, modest venuses and madonnas that male painters so adored.  They were powerful, self-assured, and ready to conquer.  She is one of the first great feminist artists.

A sadly now-defunct second-hand book shop in Canberra had a picture of this painting in its Women’s Studies section. XD

omgthatartifact:

Judith and Her Maidservant

Artemisia Gentileschi, 1613-1614

Enough of fathers and sons. Here are two hardcore ladeez saving the day, by chopping off the Assyrian king’s head and smuggling it out of his camp. Judith didn’t even have to shag him; she just waited until he was sloshed. Remember the bowl ready to catch Jephthah’s daughter’s blood? I think it was Sister Wendy who pointed out that the maidservant has with forethought brought along a basket for Holofernes’ head.

(Alas, I suspect the deuterocanonical Judith would qualify as one of God’s Little Princesses.)

I nearly fell off my chair the first time I saw this. It’s an illustration by George Becker of Rizpah defending the bodies of her sons, which have been left out to be eaten by animals and birds. She spent five months doing this, until they finally got a decent burial.

Sez Wikipedia: “British rabbi Jonathan Magonet has described Rizpah as ‘every mother who sees her sons killed before their time for reasons of state, be they in time of peace or in war. All that remains is for her to preserve the dignity of their memory and live on to bear witness and call to account the rulers of the world’.”

You could probably just about squeeze this story into God’s Little Princesses (though not Becker’s illustration!), since Rizpah is being a Good Mother and, like Tamar, showing up the crappy men who essentially own her.

And here is Jephthah’s daughter being sacrificed to God, thanks to a vow gone horribly wrong, in what surely must be the original version of Beauty and the Beast. No last-minute ram in a thicket for this unnamed girl. (Note the servant holding a bowl to catch the blood.)

Let me start with some Biblical women that it’s only understandable they left out of a book for little girls. Here is Sherlock’s relative Horace Vernet’s painting Judah and Tamar (1840). Tamar - my namesake, at least on the Ketubah - after being repeatedly screwed over by her family, used her intelligence and guts (she risked being burnt alive) to get what she was owed. As you see here, she disguised herself as a sex worker and schtupped her father-in-law. Hardcore!

(Source: commons.wikimedia.org)

fearvictim:

Creating of Eve by Natalia Smirnova

In Russian iconography is a tradition to represent God creating the world not in the form of the bearded aged man, but in the form of Sofia-Knowledge Divine—as the maiden, or an angel.

(Source: nuclearharvest)