Week 18. "Romeo and Juliet" 30"x40"

True, I talk of dreams,
Which are the children of an idle brain,
Begot of nothing but vain fantasy.
Romeo and Juliet. ACT I Scene 4.

Love cannot exist without a courageous heart. But dying for love is cowardly. It’s when love is lost and yet a life of love is continued to be lived that courage is discovered and true love found.

As I was taking the photo of this painting this morning my next door neighbor came over to take a look at it. I watched as she identified the different subjects within the painting piece by piece, not all at once. She saw Juliet first, then the moon and then the flowers. It seemed that she thought she had seen all there was to see and then suddenly saw Romeo lying there across the bottom. Then I pointed out the rams along the top of the wall. It was wonderful to get to see this process of discovery. The effect is lost to some degree when the image is shrunk down to be viewed on a computer monitor but when looking at the actual painting it does take a while to see what's what in this picture. The composition is deceptively simple. Even Juliet's shirt is difficult to see properly. The lines in it keep twisting and turning keeping the viewer's eye busy trying to make sense out of it. The bodies are still but the emotions are turbulent. One thing that's been left totally obscured and would never be known if not let in on the secret is that the quote from the play at the beginning of this blog (True, I talk of...) is written on the slab on which Romeo lies. The vines and moss have almost completely covered the text but parts of it can still be seen when looked for very closely.