The Strangest Paintings in the National Gallery - An In-Depth Museum Tour

I'm Jessica, the Museum Guide, and today I'm at the National Gallery showing you some of the strangest, most unusual, and even macabre paintings in the collection. Don't tell the British Museum, but the National Gallery is actually my favourite museum to guide in London. And over the years, as I have guided some of the greatest hits, I've built up a mental collection of quirky paintings and unusual details that I love to point out to people as we're wandering through the different rooms on my tours. Today, I am delighted to share some of the inner workings of my brain with you as we explore the strangest paintings at the National Gallery. As always, thank you so much for watching my channel. I recently lodged a Patreon, and I share a lot of extra content over there, including a bonus tour every month. My patrons just got access to an exclusive tour through the Wellcome Trust Medical Gallery, and I'd love to see you there. The paintings flashing on your screen right now are 10 of the most unusual, strange, and downright bizarre paintings in this venerable collection. I want to be clear, I haven't ordered these paintings in the order of my preference. I've put them into chronological order, but I think you'll be able to tell which ones I get a kick out of the most. I'm going to dedicate around three and a half minutes to each painting. So without further ado, let's get started. Today, we'll start our tour by focusing on a work by an important Florentine artist right at the dawn of the Italian Renaissance. I'm talking about friar Filippo Lippi, and I'm staring at his painting Seven Saints, completed between 1449 and 59. He was a favorite painter of the Medici's, the father of Filippino Lippi, and he was also Botticelli's teacher. I included Venus and Mars by Botticelli in my first National Gallery tour, just linked above, and I'm going to reference that painting a little bit later on as well. In this lunette, and that means a half-moon shaped painting, the patron saints of the Medici banking family sit around talking animatedly, as if they are philosophers at a symposium. On the far left, we can see St. Francis with his stigmata emitting rays of heavenly light. St. John the Baptist is in the middle, and he's flanked by Saints Cosmas and Damian, twin brothers who were both doctors who healed the poor for free. Medici means doctor in Italian, so even though they made their money from banking, that's the connection here. They're always together, these two saints, wearing red gowns and red hats. And look here, just behind them on the shelf, you can see their little golden medicine boxes. By the way, the Orthodox celebrate three different sets of saints by the names of Cosmas and Damian. Like another saint we'll meet very soon, they were martyred under Emperor Diocletian. They had to be beheaded because the previous attempts to execute them failed, trying to burn them alive and drown them at sea. Now before I move on from them, I also have to bring up their most frequently cited miracle, that they grafted an Ethiopian man's leg onto a white man's stump, which is A. impossible, and B. like a weird thing to get fixated on through history, yet it's always brought up. To their left we can see Saint Lawrence, a deacon martyred in Rome under Emperor Sixtus in 258, and Saint Anthony Abbott, also known as Anthony the Great, or the father of all monks to their right. Look at the little grill next to Saint Lawrence on the bench. This symbolizes his cause of death, he was burnt to death on a grill. Now I know it was standard to depict saints with their method of death, but there is something so silly to me about how Saint Peter the Martyr is seen with a big old knife right through his head. Saint Peter was a Dominican preacher in the 13th century Verona, who essentially told Catholics that they couldn't just claim to be religious if they didn't attempt to act in a pious religious way, and that angered some people. He was assassinated with, you guessed it, a knife through his skull. Here he's just chilling and chatting. He reminds me of these gag props, and he also kind of reminds me of Saint Denis, who I included in my 20 top paintings in the Louvre. Saint Denis is a cephalophor saint, which means he carries his own head around. Is there a latin name for a butcher knife through head saint? I don't actually think so. This painting is currently in Gallery D of the National Gallery, hanging opposite its pendant, that means it's the other in a pair of paintings, the Annunciation. Let's move on to our second painting, Portrait of a Woman of the Holfer Family, by a Swabian painter, roughly 1470. So we're still in the 15th century, and we're moving from Florence to Swabia, a region in southwest Germany. Sadly, we don't know who this woman is, or the artist who painted her. We can see the name Holfer here, which you'd think would help with her identity, but that name was as common as Smith. What we do know is that this artist was extremely gifted, and he likely had a wicked sense of humor. Because of course, we can admire everything about her, from her handsome face, and her elaborately folded and pristine headdress, to the intricacies of her brooch, and the fine fur lining on her clothing. But my eye is always drawn to this fly on her head. Remember, it would have been very expensive to have your portrait painted. You would wear your very best garments, and include your favorite jewelry and symbolism. Nothing was in these paintings by accident. She's standing in front of a rich tapestry, and wearing expensive rings, so why on earth does she have a fly crawling around in this extravagant portrait? Well, there are a few different interpretations. One's light-hearted, and the other is a bit show-offy, and one's quite morbid. Of course, it could also be a combination of all three. The first is what she's holding in her hand here. It's a small sprig of forget-me-nots. Now remember, anytime someone in late medieval and renaissance painting is holding on to something, it isn't by chance. These paintings often took years to complete, and so everything has its place. These flowers have the same meaning then that they do today. They symbolize remembrance, or sometimes even love. Coupled with the fly, which could be a memento mori, a reminder of death, this could be a memorial to a beloved bride who died too soon. But I don't think so. I think instead that the painter and the subject were in on this joke together. Because of course, painting this fly, which is so detailed and lifelike that it is almost trompe l'oeil, I mean look, he even has a little shadow, this was meant to show off the painter's skill. Look at how every single detail is rendered with care and attention. The pins holding her headdress in place, the individual eyelashes, I mean this artist can paint the house down. And the fly is a little calling card, so lifelike that you might reach out to shoo him away from the canvas. But the subject also needs to be in on the joke, I mean providing she isn't dead, she would have been delighted at how regal and wealthy she looks. But maybe she wanted a bit more than that. I mean she's rich, she's bored being there, done that, but this, this is something new. And as she unveils this painting, perhaps at a party, and then hangs it on her wall, she will have her own practical joke to display. A practical joke that speaks to just how wealthy she is, and how she can afford the best of the best to paint her. Of course that's all speculation. But what we do know is that this painting was given to Queen Victoria by Prince Albert, and she later donated it to the National Gallery. Let's move on to our third painting. Here we can see two saints who are often paired together, Saint Fabian on the left, and Saint Sebastian, because they share the same feast day, which is January 20th. They are the stars of this picture, so it's easy to almost miss the two tiny kneeling figures wearing black hooded robes and long white veils, holding objects that look like paddles, lurking down here in the corners. At first glance, I thought these were plague doctors, because these saints are associated with protection against the plague. But these guys are instead engaged in a practice of self-flagellation, the practice of whipping yourself as punishment for sin. Now they might be members of a religious order called the Bianchi, who we know dedicated altars to these two saints. The Bianchi led a series of devotional processions through Italy during the 14th and 15th centuries, when once every 50 years or so, one third of the population would die from the bubonic plague. This was a religious response to that very real fear. And we can see these Bianchi figures, mostly forgotten from history, here in the bottom corners of this painting. This work is by Giovanni de Paola. In many of his works, he has a strange, surreal style, as you can see here in St. John the Baptist Retiring to the Desert, also held by the National Gallery, and in these illuminated manuscripts, such as this one for Dante's Divine Comedy. Back to our saints. St. Fabian was a pope in the third century, executed under Roman Emperor Decius. He's here in his papal robes and a tiara. Yes, you heard me correctly. While we tend to associate it with pretty, pretty princesses, the word tiara actually means a three-tiered crown. St. Sebastian here. He's far more lurid, dressed only in a loincloth and covered with the 20 arrow wounds that he had endured just before his death. The blood drips from each of the wounds. He was tied to a post and shot by Emperor Diocletian's men. Remember, those twin saints Damian and Cosmas were also killed under Diocletian. The man was busy. Here's another painting of St. Sebastian, this one by Di Giovanni. This time, he's on his own. You can also see his many arrow wounds and nearly a wardrobe malfunction. Now, the Golden Legend, which is a 13th century compilation of hagiographies, or lives of saints, states that he was pierced by so many arrows that he, quote, looked like a porcupine. He somehow survived this torture, and so Diocletian's men later beat him to death. They weren't very good at killing these guys on first attempt, were they? By the way, we'd expect to see this gold embossed detail in much earlier paintings and in a lot of Byzantine art. But there is a connection here. Though this gold would have been considered very outdated by the late 15th century in most places in Italy, it was still common for painters in Siena, like Giovanni di Paolo here, to utilize this technique in homage to Duccio, the great Sienese painter of the late 13th century. And here are some pieces by Duccio held by the National Gallery. While this one evokes an altarpiece, especially with the gold, the frame, which is believed to be original, shows no signs of being attached to other panels. So it may have been an individual panel used for private prayer, but it seems too large for that. There's damage to the lower section of the frame, so it might have actually been attached to a pole and paraded through the streets during religious festivals, which makes it all the more amazing that it survives here in such good condition. On to our fourth painting. Would you believe we're still in the 15th century? What can I say? It was a wacky time in art history. Now this painting has long confused and beguiled audiences. Let's talk a bit about the painter first. Piero di Cosimo was quite the character. He continued to paint in an early Renaissance style, even though the trends had changed by the time he is creating this work. He has talent, sure, but I always find this painting kind of folk artsy, almost like outsider art. When we compare it to the sublime works of someone like Leonardo or Botticelli, who were both painting at this time, it's a little bit hokey, dare I say? Piero was undoubtedly a kooky guy. The Renaissance biographer Vasari wrote of how he, quote, lived more like a beast than a man because he refused to allow his home to be cleaned or his orchard to be trimmed. And let's see, he was also afraid of fire, so much that he rarely cooked his food. He was terrified of thunderstorms, like I imagine these dogs would be, and he lived mostly on a diet of hard-boiled eggs, which he prepared 50 at a time, so he didn't have to cook very often. But as a true Renaissance man, he loved to paint mythological subjects, such as this really weird Venus, Mars, and Cupid, which evokes Botticelli's Venus and Mars, and the National Gallery's other Piero, the Lapiths fighting the Centaurs, and the scene before us. This painting goes by a few different names. Until the 19th century, it was regularly referred to as the Death of Procris, inspired by Ovid's tale of the death of Procris at the hands of her other, at the hands of her husband Cephalus. In the tale, Procris believes that Cephalus was being unfaithful to her, and so she spies on him while he goes on a hunt. Believing that her rustling is a wild boar in the However, there are some inconsistencies between the painting and the story, and so the National Gallery rejects that title, and calls it either a satyr mourning over a nymph, or the extra vague, a mythological subject, and it is indeed that. For instance, we should see Cephalus kneeling over her and crying, not this faun or satyr. That said, some argue that Piero could have instead been inspired by a late 15th century adaptation of Ovid's work by a beloved playwright of the day, Niccolo da Correggio. We just don't know what Piero was thinking. I mean, he was too busy boiling eggs and collecting trash to tell us. Some people believe that Piero was fascinated by alchemy, and that this entire painting evokes that most magical of sciences. In that case, the main dog, who is visually echoed by the three other dogs in the background, represents Hermes Trimagistos, a fusion of the Greek god Hermes and the Egyptian god Thoth, popular in the esoterica of the day. The tree growing over Procris's breast symbolizes the arbor Philosophica, which is this chemical reaction, also known as Diana's tree, and the composition represents an alchemist's greatest desire, victory over death. Like Botticelli's Venus and Mars, this type of painting is called While Piero was praised for his depiction of animals, I really think his humans are weird. Her breasts are very unusual, and both of their faces are kind of underdeveloped. I do love this guy though. Some historians argue that he is Laelaps, a dog in this myth, known for always catching what he was hunting. But that's yet another inconsistency. Laelaps is turned to stone earlier in the story, so he couldn't be here after Procris's death. But if it isn't Procris, who is it? I guess the National Gallery is on to something by just calling it a mythological subject. One other interesting detail here is the fingerprints. We can see hundreds of Piero's fingerprints where he has dappled the rather expensive blue pigment all across the sky. I love details like that. It's like the artist is right here in the room with us, bridging a gap that spans more than 500 years. All right, we're finally in the 16th century, and this one is a doozy, a very famous doozy at that. This is the so-called Ugly Duchess by the Northern Renaissance master Quentin Massus, painted in 1513. She's given this title because she later would go on to inspire John Tenniel's 1865 illustration of the Duchess in Alice in Wonderland. Quentin Massus uses every bit of his talent and skill here in what might be a satirical joke, but could also be a depiction of a real person. More on that shortly. But before we delve into the meaning behind this painting, let's just stop for a moment to appreciate the artist's skill here. Some of the detailing in her headpiece, for example, it's not just the colours. There's depth scratched into the paint, so it catches the light and reflects on multiple different levels. And just look at her hands. They're so realistic and frankly, very beautiful. We can't deny that a lot of care and attention has been given to this subject, and there are two main theories as to why. Now let's start with the most common theory, that this is a gag. Massus would have been familiar with Leonardo da Vinci's earlier caricatures of this woman. Or were they earlier? We'll come back to that. She's dressed in outdated fashions, the clothing of her youth, not what was in style in the 1510s. Her headdress is called an Escoffian, and it was very old fashioned by this time in favour of the simpler gabled hood. Massus could have even chosen this headdress because it evokes the devil's horns. She's the prime example of the expression mutton dressed as a lamb, not just a woman, but an old woman who still thinks she's desirable and is therefore the subject of our derision and mocking. This painting has a partner, that is the portrait of an old man, which is now in private collection. In fact, when hanging together to follow the style of the day, they should actually be reversed. In polite society, she should be on the right and he on the left, and therefore they are upsetting social order, and perhaps that adds even more to the intended joke. She offers a limp rosebud towards him, and he is certain to have been put off by her wart and her oversized chin, her wrinkled bosom, and the fact that she seemingly doesn't have any teeth. She's acting like a coquette, and he has his hand up, he's pushing the rose away. Or is he accepting it? Now, maybe Massus had seen Leonardo's jokey drawing and taken it to the next level by treating her with the care and attention usually only given to the young and the beautiful, thus heightening the joke, making it even more absurd. But that isn't the only theory. Because look at this. It is so lovingly painted. I mean, why go to so much trouble to paint a simple grotesque or a satirical joke? Which leads us to believe that maybe Massus was painting a real woman here, and that it came first, and Leonardo was actually replicating this painting with his lowbrow drawings. Although this one, which is similar, certainly did come first. Perhaps Massus is doing a version of a woman called Margaret Maltash, both reviled and kind of revered as the ugliest woman in Europe when she lived a century earlier. But a more common theory is that this is a depiction of a woman with a severe case of Paget's disease, which is a bone disorder. And I briefly mentioned this disease because it was named for a former curator of the Hunterian Museum. And I've just linked that video above. Perhaps this woman was of high society and paid Massus handsomely to create this portrait. Or maybe he took an interest in her because of her unusual appearance. And that might explain the outdated clothes, which were either her best or maybe costumes he had laying around the studio. If he wrote about it, it's lost. So we might never know the true identity, if any, of this unusual woman who inspired her very own exhibit here at the National Gallery a few summers ago. That exhibit was called The Ugly Duchess, Beauty and Satire in the Renaissance. Here we have another insect painting, also German, and so usually in the same room as the Heufer woman. This is by the leading printmaker on the continent at the time, Lucas Cranach, the Elder. And I just love how this portrait was painted by his son called, you guessed it, Lucas Cranach, the Younger. As many of you know, I have a baby at home who's rapidly becoming a toddler. And maybe that's why I love this painting so much. Cupid, recognizable by his wings, is trapped in some trouble of his own making. He has disturbed a beehive and now he's being attacked by bees while still holding the honeycomb. I mean, he could simply let it go. But his desire for the honey is too strong. It reminds me of this meme. Oh, look, it's the consequence of my own actions. He's complaining to his mother, Venus. Was she wearing any clothes? You could imagine him kind of tugging on her hem. They're standing beneath an apple tree that's heaving with fruit. And Venus has a rather lascivious pose for someone posing with her son, wearing a large ostrich feather hat and the jewelry popular in the Saxon court. After all, she is the Roman goddess of love and he the god of physical love or lust. In one of our next paintings, their dynamic is going to get a lot weirder. So just prepare yourself. Now this is actually based on a poem, Idyll 19, or the Honeycomb by the ancient Greek writer, Theocrates. This was a popular poem in Cranach's Germany, and he illustrates it as a He was friends with Martin Luther and also painted him. And so these moralizing tales were good business. Venus is reaching up towards the apple on the tree evoking Eve's original sin. And her seductive facial expression illustrates the power of women over men, a common fixation at the time. You can see it here in the smirk of this courtesan and definitely here in Venus. But I don't know, I suspect men in Cranach's Germany had more power over women, but I digress. In the poem, Cupid asks his mother how such a small sting could cause so much pain. And she reminds him that the tiny prick of his arrow causes even more havoc and suffering. Cupid is as sweet as honey, but as sharp as the bee. The Latin inscription here reads young Cupid was stealing honey from a hive when the bee stung the thief on the finger. So it is for us. The brief and fleeting pleasure we seek is mingled with sadness and brings us pain. This could even be an allegory for venereal disease and more on that with our next painting. Now notice the details hidden in the forest. This stag and hind were meant to appeal to Cranach's wealthy patron. It's so richly detailed. I mean, check out these swans and even two teensy figures walking down the hill. Cranach is showing off his skill while also painting a subject matter popular with his patrons. This painting is very similar to another of the artists depicting Adam and Eve and held at the Courtauld Gallery. And let me know if you'd be interested in a tour of that fascinating and strange museum. By the way, in 2008, the National Gallery revealed that this painting belonged in the past to a very infamous and terrible person. It was in Hitler's private collection. Now remember the when I told you that our next painting would have an even stranger dynamic between Venus and Cupid? Well, here it is. This is to me the absolute hands down strangest painting in the National Gallery, one of the weirdest I've ever seen. And all the more jarring because it is here in the This is an allegory with Venus and Cupid by Agnolo Bronzino, painted in 1545 when he was working for the Medici's in Florence. And it's been confusing visitors in the National Gallery since it was purchased in 1860. Now at first glance, you might not notice anything unusual amidst all the other cherubic children and Roman gods and goddesses present in this room. The three figures in the foreground look very renaissance-y. But wait, just wait. Look at the figure on the left. We know he's Cupid because of his wings, but they're parrot wings. And look at the strange contortion of his body. It is extremely unnatural and his neck, kind of hidden by this woman's shoulder, must be far too long. He's wrapped around his mother in almost a snake-like way and their bodies form these zigzag shapes. And she's none other than Venus, yet they are sharing an erotic kiss, their mother and son. We know this is Venus because she holds the golden apple that she won in a beauty contest beating out Juno and Minerva. She holds her son's arrow in her hand. Why else would she be engaging in this behavior if she were not poisoned by Cupid's arrow? Or is she trying to seduce him to disarm him? Look down at his foot. He's stomping on a dove, which is yet another symbol of Venus. And I'll come back to that dove shortly. So it is disturbing for its erotic undertones. The other figures in the background are extremely bizarre. We can only really identify Venus and Cupid with certainty, but the work is sometimes called Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time. We think that this is a visual poem or riddle because the Medicis loved a good riddle. This was likely a present from Cosimo Medici to King Francis I of France. But the meaning has been lost, and we can only try to decode all of the weirdness. Let's start with this man up in the top right corner. This is likely Father Time, depicted with wings because, you know, as the saying goes, time flies, and he has an hourglass balanced on his back. Below him is a mischievous little puto, this naked little guy here, and he has bells on his ankle and thorns piercing his foot. He clutches a bouquet of roses, a symbol of Venus, and he's about to throw petals at her feet, so he might represent Folly. Directly below him are two masks, perhaps meant to represent artifice and deception. And peeking out behind him is a figure that haunts my nightmares. I mean it. Look at her dead, dead eyes. And speaking of twisted bodies, her hands are on backwards. There's also something weirdly contemporary about her hairstyle, which to me makes it all the more disconcerting. Her body is that of a snake with monstrous lion's feet. In one hand, she holds a honeycomb. There's that honeycomb again. And in the other, distorted hand, she has the stinger of a scorpion. Opposite her, we see a shrieking figure grasping his head in agony, which many people believe is syphilis. Maybe this, like the bee stings in Cronach's painting, is the cost of pleasure. Finally, in the top left corner is a figure the most contentious amongst art historians. Is this oblivion? Is this fraud? I think it looks like the unknown from the Glasgow Willy Wonka experience. This face looks almost unfinished, and it's painted like a mask, mimicking the masks in the bottom corner. And perhaps Father Time, with his own twisted hand, is hiding something from her, and from us, behind this blue sheet. I don't know if it's just me, but I find this painting endlessly fascinating and endlessly disturbing. And I'm not the only one fascinated by it. As I said, I would bring things back around to this dove. That's because Terry Gilliam of Monty Python would wander around the National Gallery for inspirations for his illustrations when he was a young man, and he delighted in this chubby foot about to crush the dove. He used it as a direct inspiration for the foot that stomps down in the Python animations. This painting is part of a series of 10 frescoes painted by Domenichino and his assistants, originally covering the walls in a garden pavilion of the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati near Rome. Though it was painted on the wall, it's designed to look like a trompe-l'oeil tapestry with an embroidered border. Eight of the 10 frescoes were then transferred to canvas, and all are here at the National Gallery. Domenichino was actually named Domenico Zampiero, but he went by the diminutive Chino because he was of short stature, and this becomes important a bit later on. Domenichino's friend Giovanni Battista Agucci dreamed up the design and the theme of these frescoes to honor the Aldobrandinis, a Florentine noble family. Pope Clement VIII was an Aldobrandini, and exalt their philosophical and religious ideas. The Aldobrandinis were delighted with the theme of Apollo, who was not just the god of the sun and the arts, but also the god of reason. Here in this scene, Apollo fights the Cyclops, a mythical race of giants with one eye in the middle of their forehead. In my video on the Musee Fragonard, I show off some of the animals born with birth defects that may have inspired the Cyclops myth thousands of years ago. Here, the Cyclops represent very human characteristics by essentially being giant balls of id and brutality. Apollo, here in a red cloak, is shooting his arrows at two Cyclops. One has been shot or is playing dead, and the other one is running away in fear. This is the only scene chosen by Agucci and Domenichino that does not feature in Ovid's Metamorphosis, so this would have been a lesser known tale for the family and their guests. According to Euripides' play Alcestis, Apollo is seeking revenge against the Cyclops because they made the thunderbolt that Zeus used to kill Apollo's son Asclepius. So far, interesting, but not strange, no more strange than other Greek mythology. That is, until we start to focus on the and here we see a dwarf. He is incredibly out of place, and this is the only one of the frescoes that he appears in. The tapestry has been pulled back and the man is chained to a barred window, which mimicked a real window that was opposite the fresco in situ, and he's next to some fruit and food, some of which has been stolen by this cat. This little person was a real individual. It was common for nobility and people of importance to keep people of short stature on retainer in their households, where they would serve as jesters. This man was in the household of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, and the cardinal ordered Domenichino to add him to the painting as a punishment for impertinence. I guess Domenichino was a bit sassy, and so the cardinal said, oh yeah, well since you're so short you can add this dwarf to your painting, which is kind of cruel if you think about it. A study for the dwarf in this painting is in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle. I'm going to Windsor to research another video soon, so maybe I'll pop in and pay him a visit. I really think he looks like Hoggle from the movie Labyrinth. Okay, so one of our last paintings, the Bronzino, inspired Terry Gilliam in his art, but this painting by Salvatore Rosa inspired another creative, none other than the master of creature horror, H.P. Lovecraft, and this 1646 painting is positively Lovecraftian. Its title is Witches at Their Incantations. Rosa is painting in the mid-17th century, but his work will become really popular again in the Georgian period, and then again in the Victorian Romantic period, and any time really when people develop a rekindled taste for the Gothic. After all, in an age of enlightenment and rationality, it's always nice to rekindle some magic, and in this case, that's literal. When he painted this, which is one of his most unusual paintings, Rosa was already known for his landscapes, some of which were filled with ruins, which would later go on to inspire the Romantics. I mean, you can see here the direct influence he had on Constable, for instance, and even on Turner. Here is Rosa as Passariello, a stock character in the Commedia della Arte. It's a really camp self-portrait. I think this guy served me an expensive coffee and shortage earlier. This is a sublime landscape, dark but beautiful and richly detailed, filled with monstrous figures, almost like a Hieronymus Bosch hellscape. It is lit as if by flashes of lightning, and it shows us a series of sudden, strange visions. Here, two men have resurrected a skeleton from the grave, and they are forcing him to write something. Perhaps he's rewriting his will in their favor. Just above them is this very folk-horror, wicker-man style figure, shrouded in a cloth and wearing a flower crown while holding lit candles. Next to them, a beautiful naked witch with a voodoo doll accompanied by an older witch grinding up entrails for a potion. Behind them, a witch applies smoke to this hanged criminal, while her companion cuts its toenails for use in a future spell. Here we can see a knight being beaten by a broomstick as he sets fire to a rabbit atop a paper on which a spell has been written, and a heart impaled on a sword. On the far right of the painting, a baby is being held up for sacrifice above the gaping maw of a monster, and just off-center, a monstrous skeletal bird has come to life. This really inspired Lovecraft. Now believe it or not, Rosa was actually quite a cynical man who was not given to superstition. It's likely that this painting was actually designed to mock those in Europe and the U.S. at a time when people were literally hunting witches. I plan to visit the iconic Witchcraft and Folklore Museum in Cornwall and one in the Basque region of Spain both in the next year or so, so let me know if you'd be interested in those videos. Okay, it's a big jump in time! We're going from the 17th century to finishing our tour today, not with a painting, but an arresting and bizarre series of mosaics from the 20th century, here in the Portico entrance. These are the Anrap mosaics, so named for Boris Anrap, a Russian-born artist who paled around with the Bloomsbury set of artists and writers, and we'll see them, literally, soon. He is arguably the most important mosaicist in British history, and you can also see his work at the Tate Britain and in Westminster Cathedral, which we'll feature in one of my Halloween videos coming up. People very rarely notice these. They're so dazzled by the stairs and the grand ceilings and the promise of famous paintings ahead that they often forget to look down, but here we see a series called The Awakening of the Muses, the central marble mosaic laid in 1933. The National Gallery commissioned Anrap to lay two mosaic pavements in the vestibule of the main hall to illustrate the labours of life that's on the west and the pleasures of life on the east, and these were completed between 1928 and 1933. They feature subjects such as commerce, engineering and science, and swimming and dancing, cricket and hunting, and many others. In 1952 he came back and laid a third pavement, the Modern Virtues. In keeping with the ethos of the Bloomsbury group, which championed the beauty of everyday life, he depicts the muses as people in his world, celebrities, politicians, and his Bloomsbury friends. And here's where things get really weird, because here are just a few of the people you might recognize here in the mosaics. Here we have film star Greta Garbo as Melpomene, the Muse of Tragedy. Art critic Clive Bell is baucus, but he is looking a bit too sober for my liking to be truly Bacchanal. Bloomsbury writer Virginia Woolf as Cleo, the Muse of History, and just look at her lovely pen. The ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn as Delictation, and the philosopher Bertrand Russell as Lucidity. But finally, most bizarre of all, Sir Winston Churchill as Defiance, fighting this monster creature. This one, I think, is the most recognizable to the modern eye, and it's the one that makes me chuckle on a regular basis as I show guests through the museum and just visit for my own personal pleasure. I think it's a perfect way to end our tour. I hope you've enjoyed learning about some of the lesser known and really unusual paintings here at the Gallery, and I'll see you the next time I'm at the Museum.