The Meeting on the Turret Stairs

I was hanging some new photographs in my living room and paused to sit in a wing chair, one I don't often sit in. From that vantage point I can gaze upon a very large, framed copy of this painting.

It is called The Meeting on the Turret Stairs by Sir Frederic William Burton, R.H.A. (1864) and the original hangs in the National Gallery of Ireland.

It is full of romantic longing and it is delicious to ponder the story behind the painting.

The actual theme is the Danish ballad of Hellelil and Hildebrand, Prince of Engelland, one of her bodyguards. Her father ordered his seven sons to kill Hildebrand, but he only succumbed after he killed the father and six of the sons. Hellelil died shortly after, supposedly of heartbreak.