created, & modified, =this.modified
rel: Balloonfest ‘86, Treb Heining and Balloons
- painted by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema
In a banqueting-room with a reversible ceiling he once buried his guests in violets and other flowers, so that some were actually smothered to death, being unable to crawl out to the top.
In order to meticulously paint each petal one by one, Alma asked for the roses to be shipped from the French Riviera every week for as long as it took to complete the artwork.
Knight of the Flowers
Created by Georges Rochegrosse.
Rochegrosse depicts the moment when Parsifal, the chaste hero destined to find the Holy Grail, has just struck down the guardians of the castle of the magician Klingsor. He moves away into the enchanted garden, deaf to the calls of the flower maidens, femmes fatales scantily clad in narcissi, peonies, roses, irises, tulips, violets and hydrangeas.
Perhaps fearing criticism, Rochegrosse explained in the Journal des Débats of 2 June 1894 that he had intentionally distanced himself from the opera libretto in order to represent “the central idea of the scene”: this human being who was immune to temptation because he was “obsessed with the ideal”.
