Maria's Painting
I made this image to commemorate reaching 75 subscribers on Comic Fury. It's in reference to a scene in Folio II wherein the painter Maria Cosway is depicting Henry and Angelo as St. Francis recieving the stigmata. While it may seem absolutely ridiculous for a Cardinal in the Catholic church to pose as St. Francis in spiritual ecstasy while his twink boyfriend, dressed as an Angel, holds him... this DID actually probably happen like two centuries prior to As it is in Heaven when a young Caravaggio painted the same scene for his cardinal-patron, Franceso Maria Del Monte. I remember reading somewhere, and forgive me as I cannot recall where, that it was Del Monte himself posing as St. Francis and the beautiful young man who appears in much of Caravaggio's works from this era sitting as the angel. Well, I thought this was so funny and charming that this anecdote stuck with me long enough for me to adapt it for my own purposes within the comic.
Cosway herself is a fascinating figure who I am certain will appear again within the comic. Her actual paintings are beautiful and nowhere near as silly and wonky as this, I doubt I could ever render with the precision and grace she had in her employ. She was also a composer!