Angelo Colarossi – { feuilleton }

Virgil Finlay’s Tarzan

Thanks are due to Ty Reutel for alerting my attention to this one. I’d no idea that the great Virgil Finlay had illustrated Tarzan but here’s the proof, one half of an interior drawing for The Quest of Tarzan in Argosy Weekly for 1941. That’s the first surprise, the second, of course, was that Finlay had copied Frederic Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877) ( below), a sculpture which has been a subject of discussion here recently. I’ve mentioned before my including Leighton’s work in one of my Lovecraft adaptations; I referred to many other artworks in those stories but never made any direct reference to Virgil Finlay even though he was the original illustrator of Lovecraft’s The Haunter of the Dark when it was first published in Weird Tales in 1936. Finlay’s illustrations for that story later appeared with some of my own in the enormous Centipede Press collection of Lovecraft art so it’s strange to find that we were also led to the same Leighton sculpture.

Tarzan illustration has been in my thoughts for the past few weeks while I’ve been at work (again!) on the collected Reverbstorm, many pages of which played variations on Burne Hogarth’s comic adaptations of the Tarzan stories. Reverbstorm is at long last very close to being finally, absolutely finished, and ready for printing in a single definitive volume. No production schedule just yet but any news will be announced here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Frederic Leighton’s sculptures
• Virgil Finlay’s Salomé
• Die Farbe and The Colour Out of Space
• Lovecraft’s favourite artists revisited
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• The monstrous tome
• Men with snakes

Frederic Leighton’s sculptures

An Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877).

The python wrestler by Frederic Leighton (1830–1896) has appeared here before, and it’s one sculpture that always catches my eye for having appeared in my adaptation of The Call of Cthulhu in 1988. It’s now one of the Leighton works available for close viewing at the Google Art Project although only from a single angle, something that seems a flaw in web presentation of three-dimensional art.

The Sluggard (c. 1895).

In the same collection is a copy of Leighton’s The Sluggard from the Yale Center for British Art. What’s notable about this piece is that it’s generally offered as Exhibit A for the homo-prosecution during discussion of the artist’s sexuality. The Sluggard to which most people refer is the life-size bronze which is a lot more robust and muscular than this lithe and twinky specimen. According to a note at the V&A Yale’s copy is one of many cast from the clay model for the life-size version. What was excused at the time as a late Victorian exercise in contrapossto looks even more camp—in the Philip Core definition—than the finished piece which makes me wonder whether Leighton beefed up the original to disguise something. Core defined camp as “the lie that tells the truth”; camp art always pretends to be one thing whilst simultaneously telegraphing a very different message about its creator. Leighton’s sexuality is a source of continual speculation which means it’s unlikely now to be resolved in any direction, and the artist himself would loathe our prurience, but it’s only by reappraising works in this way that we’re able to show that gay people didn’t magically erupt via some process of spontaneous generation in 1967. If Leighton had any dalliances whilst holidaying in the gay resort of Capri then he was perfectly circumspect. Back at home, as a President of the Royal Academy he had a rather pompous and remote reputation, being memorably described by Violet Paget as “something between an Olympian Jove and a head waiter.” For more camp, see The Narcissus Hall in the artist’s incredibly lavish home, Leighton House in London, where 1st Baron Leighton, PRA, lived splendidly alone.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Men with snakes

Serpentine pulchritude

One of a great series by photographer Jean-François Carly showing male and female models adorned with snakes and little else. Makes a change from the usual state of affairs where men are more commonly depicted wrestling with serpents rather than wearing them.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Men with snakes

Ricardo Bellver’s El Ángel Caido

This Luciferian statue by Spanish sculptor Ricardo Bellver (1845–1924) was drawn to my attention in the comments a while back and I thought it about time it had a post of its own. Statues of Satan/Lucifer or fallen angels are usually depicted at the mercy of Saint Michael’s feet and sword, it’s unusual to see such a work where the forces of Heaven are implied rather than shown. It’s even more unusual to have such a figure on display in a public park, as Bellver’s is.

The sculpture … of great dramatism and originality, obtained the First Medal at the Spanish National Fine Arts Exhibition in 1878, and the same year was cast in bronze for the third Paris World’s Fair. Later on, the Prado Museum donated it to the City of Madrid, and in 1885 it was installed in a square with the same name in the Retiro Park (the largest one in Madrid).

The writhing serpents are probably a nod to the Laocoön and manage to impose modesty as well as evoke an erotic frisson, a familiar ambiguity as I’ve noted before. Wikimedia Commons has a lot more photos while Flickr has even more here and here.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• Melancholy Lucifers
• Angelo Colarossi and son
• Dark Angel
• Men with snakes
• Angels 4: Fallen angels

Angelo Colarossi and son

Callum at Front Free Endpaper sent me this photo a while ago of a page from an old boys’ book after he saw my Men With Snakes post which featured the same statue, Lord Leighton’s Athlete Wrestling with a Python (1877). Leighton’s sculpture came to mind again recently following a chance reference to another bronze figure, and one of the most famous statues in London, Alfred Gilbert’s Angel of Christian Charity (1893) aka Anteros or, as everyone now knows it, the Eros of Piccadilly Circus, patron saint of the area’s rent boys. The notable fact was the revelation that the model for Eros was one Angelo Colarossi whose father was also named Angelo Colarossi and was the model for Leighton’s python wrangler. Colarossi Snr, an Italian immigrant, was a popular artists’ model and—no doubt wisely in those days—encouraged his son to follow the same line of work.

One rarely sees mention of the identities or lives of models for works such as these although they aren’t always unknown, as noted earlier in a post which touched upon American model Audrey Munson. Unknown they may often be but these two models at least have monuments beyond the dreams of any other family of Victorian immigrants. It fascinates me to think of these images of father and son lodged in different parts of London. (Leighton’s statue is now in Tate Britain.) Colarossi Snr is also believed to have posed for John William Waterhouse and an article at the Waterhouse site pursues some possible examples.

Previously on { feuilleton }
• San Francisco angels
• Men with snakes