A gentle lion: Is this what Aslan looks like?
In his essay, "It All Began With a Picture," C. S. Lewis informs us that the Chronicles of Narnia actually began with an image of a faun carrying parcels in a snowy wood. "At first I had very little idea how the story would go," he relates. "But then suddenly Aslan came bounding into it. I think I had been having a good many dreams of lions about that time [maybe he had seen and was remembering Durer's lion!]. Apart from that, I don't know where the Lion came from or why he came. But once he was there, he pulled the whole story together, and soon he pulled the six other Narnian stories in after him."
Surely Durer's drawing of this lion did inspire the artist's great engraving of Saint Jerome in His Study. Here is the lion sleeping in the foreground as Saint Jerome translates the Bible at his desk in the background.
Sleeping next to the dog--"the peace of God that passeth all understanding"
No comments:
Post a Comment