Wikipedia:Featured article candidates/The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate/archive1

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The following is an archived discussion of a featured article nomination. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the article's talk page or in Wikipedia talk:Featured article candidates. No further edits should be made to this page.

The article was promoted by Ian Rose via FACBot (talk) 23:19, 3 July 2015 [1].

The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate[edit]

Nominator(s):  – iridescent 09:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

This is an unwieldy title, which if promoted would end the nine-year reign of Harold and Inge Marcus Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering as the FA with the longest title, but the article itself is fairly straightforward. In the early 1830s, artist William Etty had acquired a (deserved) reputation for thinly-disguised pornography masquerading as art, and tried to address this with The Destroying Angel…, in which assorted loose-moralled types receive a thorough smiting.

The "Reception" section is slightly longer than is usual on painting articles; because it was painted specifically with how it would be received by critics in mind, the critical response on its initial unveiling is more significant than for most visual arts articles. Likewise, as with The Sirens and Ulysses the legacy section is shorter than might be expected; Etty fell from fashion very quickly, so there are few people influenced by him, and for the last 150+ years the painting has hung in Manchester where for various reasons artworks tend to receive less attention from historians than they might elsewhere. – iridescent 09:48, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Etty had become famous for nude paintings, and had acquired a reputation for tastelessness, indecency and a lack of creativity.: my whole family just gave me strange looks as I unexpectedly burst out laughing at this line. I'll have to make time to come back for a review. Thank you, iridescent! Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 09:57, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

The juxtaposition of these two articles in the FAC list is serendipitous, isn't it? Etty's problem was that a glance over his works will show that the only thing he could paint well was pornography—his conventional portraits tend to look like they're straining to lay an egg. The more I see of him, the more I'm coming to find him interesting, and I'll try to write a proper biography of him at some point; he seems to have genuinely believed he was performing his Christian duty by showing off God's creation without obscuring it with clothes, and to have been constantly surprised when early 19th-century England wasn't receptive to this. – iridescent 10:07, 14 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Images are appropriately licensed and captioned. Nikkimaria (talk) 01:41, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Comments. As always, feel free to revert my copyediting. - Dank (push to talk)

  • "in today's terms": possibly a WP:DATED issue, but not my call. The footnote that gives a date seems sufficient to me.
  • The price conversions are generated the the {{inflation}} template, so "in today's terms" should always be correct as it the figures update automatically. (The UK inflation rate is currently zero and barring unforeseen circumstances will remain around that figure until 2020, so even if it stops updating it won't cause any significant effect.) a policy Using the Consumer Price Index is always contentious for anything other than staples is potentially contentious, but in this case I think it's reasonable, as we're talking about individual buyers of paintings and the question is effectively "how much could they have bought with the money if they hadn't spent it on pictures?". – iridescent 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • The best I can tell, Wikipedians haven't reached consensus on the question of how best to handle this, so it's not my call (with my copyeditor hat on). - Dank (push to talk) 13:38, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Each human figure is shown in a different position and expresses terror in a different way, and are deliberately painted": singular/plural
  • I think this is a legitimate jump from singular to plural, as it's initially talking about individual items and later about the group. It's analogous to "Each member of the basketball team is under five feet tall, and they have lost their last 30 games". – iridescent 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • It's a grammar issue, not a comprehension issue. There's no word that's available as the antecedent of "are" (unlike in your analogy, where "they" is the subject). - Dank (push to talk) 13:38, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I went with "each is" instead of "are". - Dank (push to talk) 15:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "Behind the central figures of the lunatic, daemon and gambler are a group of figures who have only just realised what is happening. A male figure ... female figure ... female figure": lots of figures
  • Removed a couple of "figures". It's complicated by the fact that it's not always apparent which characters are intended to be human. Most of them are obvious, but the characters being discussed here—the guy in the smurf hat and the two topless women—are painted in the same pale tones as the humans but are quite likely to be intended to represent anarchy. (A red liberty cap would have been as readily understood in the 1830s as a symbol of radical revolution as a swastika armband is recognised today as a symbol of fascism.) – iridescent 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "and perhaps also by the cholera epidemic": That's my edit ... that may need an "indirectly", depending on your meaning
  • AFAIK he never mentioned his thinking behind the composition, so this is all speculation. He certainly had form for painting corpses from reality (see The Sirens and Ulysses), so might have worked directly from memories of the bodies piled in the streets during the epidemic, but it's equally possible that the whole thing is entirely imaginary. – iridescent 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • "(writing under the name of 'Ridolfi')": Possibly a MOS:QUOTEMARKS violation. I've seen plenty of single quotes around individual letters, though.
  • I'm not entirely sure—MOS:QUOTEMARK is about titles rather than pseudonyms, and I'm not sure if we even have a policy on this. My attitude towards punctuation has always been not to worry provided changes don't affect the meaning, if anyone feels the need to change it. – iridescent 13:20, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • A better link: WP:MOS#Reasons to prefer double quotation marks to single quotation marks. - Dank (push to talk) 13:29, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • I think the consensus leans in favor of double quote marks for all except single letters (which can comfortably take single or double quote marks at FAC, for some reason). But I prefer not to push the point for BritEng articles, because it's too easy to misunderstand my intent, that I might be misunderstanding BritEng or trying to force AmEng on everyone. - Dank (push to talk) 15:50, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]


Comments from Curly Turkey[edit]

  • Feel free to revert any of my copyedits or disagree with any of my comments.
  • The article will require an infobox
  • No article requires an infobox, and WP:VAMOS articles less than most. As a visual arts article on an image containing substantial detail which is only easily visible at higher resolutions so needs the lead image as large as possible, this is pretty much the poster child for an article which shouldn't have an infobox. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
(This was a failed attempt at smartassery in reaction to the hidden comment that begins the article source.) Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:08, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • The Destroying Angel and Daemons of Evil Interrupting the Orgies of the Vicious and Intemperate, also known as The Destroying Angel and Daemons Inflicting Divine Vengeance on the Wicked and Intemperate[1] and The Destruction of the Temple of Vice: I might move these down (to the end of the last paragraph maybe?) as this flood of barely-different titles is an ugly way to open an article
  • It's ugly, but necessary, since it doesn't have a "primary" title as such. (I've used Interrupting the Orgies… as the article title as that's what Manchester Art Gallery currently have it labelled as so that's what people are more likely to search on, but it doesn't have any kind of primacy.) The "also known as" could go in brackets, but shouldn't be moved out of the first sentence. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • ahead of John Constable: "ahead" in what sense? Chosen at his expense? Placed in a higher position?
  • Both. RA is the highest rank in the English arts world; Constable was bumped to 1829 to make way for Etty in 1828. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • many critics condemned his repeated depictions of female nudity as indecent: I wonder if we can get more context here—the nude was already a well established painting subject, was it not?
  • No, it was virtually nonexistent in England as a painting subject, and completely unacceptable socially. Other than classical relics, the first significant English publicly-displayed nude in London was the Wellington Monument of 1822, only 10 years before The Destroying Angel was completed. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • about £5,000 in today's term: when is "today"?
  • In terms of the {{inflation}} template, "today" is generally between one and two years ago. The template updates automatically once the CPI figures are released. The {{Inflation-fn}} template, which is used on each occurrence of an "as of today" price conversion, automatically generates a footnote giving the date and source of the figures being used. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't wikilink this unless and until we have an article on him, it goes to a disambiguation page on which the Payne in question doesn't appear: is it likely there will ever be an article on him? If there is, you may want to do a Henry Payne (dab)
  • The dab page already exists. The hidden-text warning is there to stop people adding a link to it, as it's highly unlikely this particular Henry Payne will ever warrant an article. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • What I'd meant by "(dab)" was "(fill-in-the-blank)", but if he's unlikely to warrant an article, then whatever. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It measures 127.8 cm by 101.9 cm (50 in by 40 in): you don't like {{convert}}?
  • The {{convert}} template can't handle feet-and-inches in multiple dimensions—it would output as 127.8 by 101.9 cm (4.19 by 3.34 ft)—so the conversions have to be completed manually. This has been a documented bug for as long as I can remember, and no-one has ever shown any inclination to fix it, so I imagine it never will be. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Each human figure is shown in a different position and expresses terror in a different way, and are deliberately painted: "each" takes the singular, but "is deliberately" sounds wrong. I might go with "and they are".
  • See my comments above to Dank; I think (but am willing to be persuaded) that this is a legitimate shift from singular to plural. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • If the antecedent is singular, I don't think there's such a thing as a "legitimate" switch to the plural—which is why I suggest throwing in a new antecedent. Curly Turkey ¡gobble! 20:19, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Raving Madness: worth a redlink?
  • I considered it, but probably not unless someone writes it. It's very unlikely ever to get a stand-alone article, as it's a single architectural element of the gateway to Bedlam. Even on Caius Gabriel Cibber it isn't redlinked. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • (identified as a Bacchante by Sarah Burnage of the University of York): the wording makes me wonder: was she the first to identify it? Was it a mystery? Disputed?
  • Burnage claims it's a Bacchante; I've not seen the claim made elsewhere, but feel it's worthy of inclusion. (Burnage curated the only significant Etty exhibition of the last 100 years, so her opinions are more important than most.) I personally think Burnage is wrong here, and given the woman's pose and the fact that Revolution has his arm around her waist she's supposed to represent Marianne (and consequently anarchy, which was a Big Deal in 19th-century Europe), but that's well over the line into OR. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • To the left of the painting: "to the left of" suggests to me outside the painting
  • Reworded to "On the left-hand side of the painting" which should be clearer. – iridescent 14:13, 15 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Johnbod comments[edit]

  • The dimensions should be in the lead, or at least in the caption to the top pic.
  • This gets complicated, now I dig into it. The source just refers to "Breughell's frightful fancies", which could be a reference to Pieter the Elder, Pieter the Younger or Jan the Elder. In the 1830s, the hell paintings of P the E (Dull Gret, The Fall of the Angels and The Triumph of Death) would probably have been best known in England through reproductions by his sons. Of his sons, Pieter the Younger ("Hell Brueghel") was at that time attributed with further hell paintings, but those have since been reattributed to Jan. Given how messy this is now I look into it, I'm going to change this to a direct quote and de-link it. – iridescent 15:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Would Brueghel family work? Johnbod (talk) 15:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Possibly, although I'm thinking it might make sense to remove it altogether or replace it with something vague like "Flemish apocalyptic paintings". All our articles on the Brueghels are fairly dreadful. – iridescent 16:20, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, Pieter Bruegel the Elder in particular is a long-standing disgrace. You know that describing PBtE as "Flemish" is inviting trouble - see his talk page? Why, he isn't even documented as setting foot in the county of Flanders! Both likely birthplaces are now (just) in the Netherlands. Johnbod (talk) 16:03, 19 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Meh. He lived in Brussels, he worked in Antwerp, he was taught by the Flemish van Aelst, his wife was Flemish, he died in Brussels, he's buried in Brussels, Dull Gret and The Fall of the Angels are in Antwerp and Brussels respectively, and aside from a single painting in Rotterdam not a single work of his is on display anywhere in the modern Netherlands. The man's a Belgian. – iridescent 10:41, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
He's a Brabanter. The English usage that South Netherlands = Flanders is what makes our Belgian colleagues cross. Neither Brussels nor Antwerp are Flemish cities according to them. Johnbod (talk) 13:31, 23 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Meh again. The map at nl:Vlaanderen covers Brussels and Antwerp, and the world has not yet come to an end. We describe Beethoven as German even though no such country existed in his lifetime and he spent all his adult life in Vienna. (Unless someone suggests a better alternative, I'm just going to leave it as a unlinked quote. In any case, the writer saying it would have been thinking of Pieter II, as in the 1830s the hell paintings were attributed to him.) – iridescent 11:13, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Yes, fine as it is. Johnbod (talk) 13:31, 25 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Don't sources mention the borrowing of the collapsing columns in the left background from Giulio Romano's Sala dei Giganti in Palazzo Te? If so, worth a line.
  • None that I can find; aside from Burnage's chapter on the painting it really hasn't been written about much. Per my comments to Curly Turkey above about the obvious reference to Marianne/Liberty, I can see quite a few obvious references in here, but mentioning them is going to over the line into OR; the only ones I can find specific sources for are Raving Madness and the Barberini Faun. – iridescent 15:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • It's not usually on display, is it? It would be nice to add something on that if possible - even if only that it was/was not on display at some recent date.
  • As of a couple of years ago it was hanging in the MAG, albeit tucked away in a corner. Their online catalogue is currently down for maintenance; I'm going to be in Manchester in a couple of weeks and will poke my head in and see if it's still on display. (I suspect it probably is; given how much they invested in Sirens, they have a vested interest in generating interest in Etty.) It was certainly exhibited in the Etty retrospective at the York Art Gallery in 2011. – iridescent 15:41, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Ok. York is worth mentioning I think, if you have a ref. Johnbod (talk) 15:46, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Done – iridescent 16:25, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
@Johnbod: Doing a bit of OR and taking a look and asking a staff member, the MAG has Sirens and Perseus & Andromeda on permanent display, The Warrior Arming on for-the-foreseeable display, and Venus and her Doves currently on the main staircase but liable to be rotated out next time they change the theme. The Destroying Angel has suffered the indignity of being removed to make way for All You Need Is Love by Banksy, which looks singularly out of place in the "English painting of the early 19th century" gallery but I guess they hope will entice the yoofs to engage with the romantic tradition. – iridescent 19:31, 26 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Support That's all I could find, plus I made a couple of edits [2]. Nice piece, and I think the emphasis on the taste/nudity issue is correct. Johnbod (talk) 14:12, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
All comments sorted, thanks. Johnbod (talk) 16:53, 17 May 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • Very small comment(s) (not in small font):
    • There are repeated instances of conversion to current monetary value in which the note is inside a right parenthesis instead of outside it. There's no hard and fast rule on this, I know, but it strikes me as unsightly-ish. • Arch♦Reader 04:53, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • My personal feeling is that when a statement inside parentheses is being cited, the citation needs to go in there as well to make it clear it's the citation just for the fact in parentheses rather than the sentence as a whole. – iridescent 08:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • "the cost of all his paintings had fallen below their original prices"... but this one seems to have gone from "£11,000 in today's terms" to "£68,000 in today's terms"? • Arch♦Reader 05:17, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • The sentence is "by the end of the 19th century the cost of all his paintings had fallen below their original prices". That "£68,000 in today's terms" is what it went for in 1854. – iridescent 08:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • does size matter? 36x46, Robinson p. 189 [same page(s) describe large size as going out of style for economic reasons, and wives not liking the profusion of T&A out in the open parts of the house.. important?] • Arch♦Reader 05:21, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
  • In the context of this painting, no, since this is an absolutely standard-size work. When Robinson's talking about large paintings in the context of Etty he means works like The Sirens and Ulysses, which is the size of a small house; not small works like this which could easily be put in the cupboard when the vicar came to tea. To put in perspective what Robinson is talking about when he talks about "large paintings", the image to the right shows Sirens hanging alongside Perseus and Andromeda, which is about the same size as The Destroying Angel. (The blue Banksy is hanging in the spot normally occupied by TDA.) – iridescent 08:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
    • Many interesting details/observations (Laocoön, Tories and Whigs, oh my!) in Elliott, B. J. (1982). Painting and Politics at the Royal Academy Exhibition of 1832 (Doctoral dissertation, University of British Columbia).,but I'll leave it to you to pick through them I like knowing these kinds of things, but I don't know if you deem them FAC-ish. • Arch♦Reader 05:33, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
      • Per my comment to Johnbod above, I'm very reluctant to engage in a "spot the allusion" exercise without explicit sources for each figure mentioned, unless someone can either come up with a quote from Etty where he says "x is a reference to y", or the allusion is so obvious (such as the reference to Raving Madness) that it's unchallengeable. There are a lot of glaringly obvious references (the Palladium on the altar immediately below the angel springs to mind) but playing Where's Waldo without explicit sources is just going to lead to a mess of "This figure is possibly x, this figure is possibly y". – iridescent 08:41, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
support wonderful addition to the series. Engaging, informed, knowing; this is wiki at its best. It hints at a few realities I never dated mentioned in polite society but allways knew. Late 80s Ireland and early Victorian Britain were not that different. There are some small things with commas and that I can fix later, but very impressed. Ceoil (talk) 20:05, 7 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Thanks! From you this is high praise indeed. – iridescent 17:41, 8 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Support from Hamiltonstone. I made a couple of copyedits I hope are OK. Lovely article about a very striking painting. It reminded me of the works of his contemporary John Martin, but with the dramatic treatment of the landscape replaced instead with similarly violent treatment of figures. Thanks for this. hamiltonstone (talk) 11:46, 23 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Source review[edit]

All of the sources appear to be reliable, and the citations are formatted correctly. I agree with Archreader about the citations inside parentheses, but without a hard and fast rule on it, I guess it comes down to a matter of taste. That's my only quibble, everything else looks fine. No sourcing problems here. --Coemgenus (talk) 12:13, 30 June 2015 (UTC)[reply]

Coord note[edit]

I'm about ready to promote this but, just scanning the article, I'd expect to see "Breughell's frightful fancies" attributed inline. As it stands, I don't know if the quote belongs to Burnage or a contemporary critic (anonymous or otherwise). Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 11:28, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]

✓ Done; the reference was already in there, but had wandered further down the section during a reshuffle. I've given the {{Ref supports2}} template an experimental outing, to indicate which part of the text this is supporting. – iridescent 15:37, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
Heh, I'll admit I was expecting more along the lines of 'and, according to The Examiner, "Breughell's frightful fancies"' but I think the way you've done it makes sense too. Cheers, Ian Rose (talk) 23:18, 3 July 2015 (UTC)[reply]
The above discussion is preserved as an archive. Please do not modify it. No further edits should be made to this page.
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