After seeing the above I have been reading a book on the life of a Spanish painter named Francisco Goya to try and get behind the hands and thinking of a man who could produce such a painting. It is called the Witches Sabbath and is just one of many paintings he did which I think go some way to capturing, or at least recording, the terrible beauty that is the heart and soul of man. It was one of six paintings Goya did on the subject of witchcraft and the supernatural forces that trot through the world we share. Although it was a subject that interested him it was thought to be a commission by a wealthy patron, a Duchess who hung it in one of her country houses. boy, I bet she had some interesting parties there.
Francisco lived to be eighty two, a remarkable age and lived a full life that straddled two centuries; the 17th and the 18th. In 1901 his body was disinterred from its resting place in Bordeaux for reburial in Madrid. Where it was discovered his head had been removed.
Sounds like the plot for a Dan Brown book does it not?
Bring Me The Head Of Francisco Goya.
