gratuitous icon post!

[brightknightie]

For the first time in at least seven years, and the second time ever, I've replaced my default userpic icon, both here on DW and on the AO3! As you may know, updating userpic icons is one of my fannish resolutions for this year.

This new icon is an excerpt from a French 1936 trading-card illustration painting (artist unknown) that advertised a company making meat stock and bullion cubes (I kid you not). It depicts the "Matter of France" literary scene in which Bradamante (a woman knight in the service of Charlemagne) defeats an enemy who had caused her to fall behind the rest of the French forces. In the full painting, we see that Bradamante and her horse are on a bridge over a natural moat in front of a castle seemingly built into a cliffside, and her defeated enemy and his horse are falling from the bridge into the moat. I applied a slight color filter to hopefully subtly boost an impression of dawn, not dusk, but didn't otherwise interfere with the artist's lovely work.

I plan to similarly replace the banner on my DW with an adapted excerpt from this same public-domain painting. This will likely take some time.

(Bradamante's primary literary appearances are Orlando Innamorato (1483) by Matteo Maria Boiardo and Orlando Furioso (1516) by Ludovico Ariosto. I haven't yet read either. They're on the list! There's always Wikipedia. The trope by which we get women knights in these Renaissance depictions of imagined early-medieval adventures is that the enemy was actively invading France: all hands on deck. Also, Furioso is apparently a genre parody.)


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Entirely separately, fkficfest '24 is underway! The first story has been revealed. We'll have one or two new stories every day for two weeks. I hope that many people will have time to read and will find works they enjoy! If you do read, please be generous with comments, kudos, and recommendations, whether on the AO3, DW, or elsewhere.

Comments

[thefruitbat]

That's cool! Will have a look at the page. :)

[brightknightie]

Thanks! Aside from liking the painting's looks for my general purpose, I think Bradamante seems like a neat literary character who should be more generally known. She's a skilled warrior with an enchanted lance, and echoes the Greek myth of Atalanta (like Atalanta marrying only a man who could outrun her, Bradamante would marry only a man who could defeat her in combat). According to the summaries, she spends most of the two epics she appears in running around and rescuing the man she will eventually marry.

Real literature. So much to love. :-D

[thefruitbat]

Neat! That's right up my alley. There really aren't enough characters like her in literature, especially not from these times.

[senmut]

It's quite lovely.

[brightknightie]

I'm glad! Thank you.