AFTER JOHN FLAXMAN. R.A. 1981.

Little Sparta: Wild Hawthorn Press, 1981
3.6 x 11.8cm, 1pp. A drawing by Gary Hincks after Flaxman’s drawing/print “Apollo and Diana discharging their arrows” from 1792 is updated where the landscape is now of a war time harbour for U-boats and also part of Albert Speer’s “Atlantic Wall”. Finlay refers to the U-boats as “classical” in his text and there is thus both a literary and a visual reference to The Odyssey. Moreover, the two gods are referred to as “an Allied air raid is in progress” (the original Pope quotation has “They Bend the Silver Bow with Tender Skill and Void of Pain the Silent Arrows Kill”). The story of how the children of Niobe were killed by Apollo and Diana because of her fertility-shaming of their mother for only having two offspring is turned into a story of revenge against the Nazis. Scarce. VG+.