Successful monster

The theme of Beauty and the Beast, in which women at first resist the 'monstrous' but eventually succumb to their desires, fitted well within the Early Romantic artists' fascination for literary and macabre allusions. This plate demonstrates Mortimer's brilliance in creating a sense of movement through the use of rapidly-drawn lines. The subject is a loose adaptation of the Triton abducting a woman in Raphael's Galatea in the Farnesina (1514). (Monsters and Maidens, 2004)

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