with love, hellelil and hildebrand

Last year for the month of Valentines day, I wrote about rejection of love with Pope makes love to lady Mary Wortley Montagu.
This year, I’m writing about forbidden love involving Hellelil and Hildebrand.

The Meeting on the Turret Stairs, 1864

This spectacular painting is made by Irish painter Frederic William Burton (1816-1900) and tells a tragic love story between Hellelil and Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. It took me a minute to realize that it is painted entirely in watercolour (!!!). Extremely fragile to the point where it’s stored in a cabinet and only open to the public for an hour a couple of times a week. A new word is needed to describe the painters talent. To say that he’s amazing, magnificent or even extraordinary just isn’t enough.

National Gallery of Ireland writes:
”The subject is taken from a medieval Danish ballad translated by Burton’s friend Whitley Stokes in 1855, which tells the story of Hellelil, who fell in love with her personal guard Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland. Her father disapproved of the relationship and ordered her seven brothers to kill the young prince. Burton chose to imagine a romantic moment from the story before the terrible end: the final meeting of the two lovers.”

There is also a very touching poem, or ballad, about the aftermath of their meeting at the Turret stairs.
It tugs at ones heartstrings a bit with it being quite intense compared to the softness of the painting, but it’s greatly fascinating and beautiful.
Easy-to-read version translated by Whitley Stokes and an excerp from Fraser’s Magazine for Town and Country from 1855.

If you wish to learn more:
Ireland’s favourite painting: The meeting on the turret stairs
Stories Behind Art: Tragic LOVE Story Behind ’The Meeting on the Turret Stairs’ (video, 9min 12sek)

Other artworks that I’ve written about: Lover of art
Keith Haring
Anguish
The swing
Portrait of a black woman
The unequal marriage