Blog post 4

    Lady Godiva by John collier, 1897.

I want to talk about this beautiful painting. This work is very bright and this artist used worm colors in this painting. I think that this is early morning because of sky color which mixed of darkness and brightness colors. Moreover, I can see many tall buildings behind her which tells me this is in a town. However, I can only see this women and horse. No one is there even though they are surrounded by many buildings. As you as can see this woman is completely naked and rides a horse. Moreover, she has beautiful long hair and hides her body with her hair. I also can feel sad, embarrassed, and depress from her expression. Future more, I found out that this horse’s face and this women’s face are look alike. Therefore, I think that this artist want to tell us that this horse understands her feels and want to stay with her. This woman is defiantly young age, and in my imaginations, she had to sell her body to someone. That why she is naked and has a sad face in this painting. Another point is that this horse wears a beautiful red cloak and it has gold lion marks. It tells me that this horse’s owner is a high rank and rich men because I know that red color is very special in this period. Only high rank people can wear and has red color.

   Even though this woman is not smiling in this painting, I feel so much beauty from this women, horse, and buildings. Moreover, this artist used beautiful colors to show each detail in this work. That is why I love this painting.

   After researching, I found out that a lot of famous artists painted different kind of “Lady Godiva” from 1850. Moreover, they have common points which are every woman has long hair, are naked, and rides a horse. The minimatthews.com says that According to the legend, Lady Godiva was so distressed about the high taxes levied on the citizens of Coventry that she appealed to her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to give them relief.  In response to her plea, Leofric informed her that he would not lower taxes unless she stripped naked and rode through the town on horseback.  Taking him at his word, Lady Godiva did just that.

  From this research, I was right that she was naked in the town for money and the horse’s owner is rich. Moreover, I learned many details of this work’s story, so I realized that research is very important to know the fact.

P.S. more informations : https://mimimatthews.com/2015/07/06/the-legend-of-lady-godiva-depictions-in-art-literature-and-history/#more-3884