“She lies there curled up asleep like a comfortable feline, radiant in the golden light of a late summer afternoon. Luscious drapery enfolds her perfect body, so delicate that the sinews of her curves can almost be touched. Behind her an incandescent Mediterranean Sea glistens under the torrid sun’s rays. To the right an oleander flower teases with both beauty and death for in its blossom is a deadly poison.”

So began my post on this most alluring of all Victorian ‘academic’ paintings: ‘Flaming June’ by Lord Leighton when it returned in 2016 for a visit to the studio where he painted one year before his death in 1895.

Flaming June is now back on loan to the Royal Academy from her home in Puerto Rico’s art gallery while it is being rebuilt after the island’s disastrous 2020 earthquake.

In the same room on the opposite wall there’s another painting which relates to Flaming June in two ways. It’s a tondo, or composition in a rounded format, by one of the greatest of all artists, Michelangelo.

Firstly. Leighton’s painting is also a ‘tondo’ in the way its subject’s design is in a rounded format.

Secondly, Leighton was inspired by the pose of Michelangelo’s statue of Night on Lorenzo de’Medici’s new sacristy tomb at San Lorenzo church in Florence – a statue we viewed only last month on our visit to Michaelangelo’s secret room which we described in our post at https://longoio3.com/2024/03/28/michaelangelos-secret-room/

On this somewhat murky Mayday it was wonderful to see these two masterpieces facing each other and relating to their respective historical ages: The Renaissance with its high aspirations and the Victorian with its equally high ambitions.

To see both in one room was an absolute treat.