Capricorn: the goat with a tail

This month sees Capricorn the goat usher in the winter, although unlike this image from a medieval manuscript, the true sign is a sea-goat, with coiled serpent-like hindquarters.  As a goat, it is linked in classical myth with the god Pan (who leapt into a river and grew a fishtail, to escape the giant Typhon), and with the forest satyrs, or is shown drawing Bacchus' chariot, and is a symbol of lust to be overcome in christian art.

Capricornus, from a medieval calendar book

Capricorn appears with serpent tail in Henry VIII's great clock at Hampton Court Palace ( seen just above Sagittarius with his arrow). With its many dials, the clock shows the phases of the moon and the times of high tide at London Bridge - essential knowledge for river transport to and from the Palace.

Hampton Court Palace astronomical clock, by Nicholas Oursian, 1540

The zodiacal Capricorn image with coiling tail was also chosen by the Florentine ruler, Cosimo I de Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, as his impresa, or personal device, together with his motto, "Fidem fati virtute sequemer" : I shall pursue with valour the promise of Destiny.  He believed the influence of the stars had brought him victory against Siena under the sign of Capricorn.

Cosimo's capricorn impresa in the Laurentian Library, Florence 

Designed by Michelangelo, the library was opened by Cosimo in 1571.  The stained glass windows, after drawings by Vasari, were added later.  Here the Capricorn figures act as supporters to the central Medici coat of arms.

Caesar in Rome

Triumphs of Caesar: VII the Corselet Bearers  Andrea Mantegna, 1485-95

© Royal Collection, Hampton Court Palace

My first encounter with  Mantegna's work was an engraving from his Triumphs of Caesar series, reproduced on the cover of an Italian exercise book in a department store in Rome in 1960.   In provincial England much of life was still utilitarian: everyday stationery and exercise books were undecorated, and notebooks had plain paper or card covers.   I was also amazed to buy my postage stamps over a formica counter printed with Italian Renaissance drawings,  and brought back these lovely laminated  notebooks with their art pictorial covers as souvenirs.   This one shows Trajan's column in Rome in the background, with its equestrian statue of Trajan on top, not as either Julius Caesar or Mantegna would have seen it, but as it would have appeared after Trajan's death in AD 117. Mantegna would have been recreating this view from historic accounts and surviving antique sculptures, for Trajan's statue disappeared before he was born. (It was replaced by a statue of St. Peter in 1587.)

These world famous paintings were bought by Charles I for the Royal Collection, along with other great Italian Renaissance works of art, in 1629, and their home has been at Hampton Court Palace since.  They are displayed separately from the other art treasures in the Palace, in triumphal sequence in the Orangery, and should not be missed.