Arty Farty Friday ~ Allegory of Bad Government

Around this time last year I wrote an Arty Farty Friday post on Carrie Ann Baade an associate professor in the Department of Art at Florida State University. Now, a year later I'm going to feature her again, but focus on one of her paintings, for reasons which will not be especially difficult for any stray readers in the USA to appreciate. The painting is titled "Allegory of Bad Government."

Before posting the image, a word to explain that it was inspired by Italian painter Ambrogio Lorenzetti’s 14th century moralistic civic mural cycle titled The Allegory of Good and Bad Government. This consists of a series of three fresco panels, six different scenes, painted between February 1338 and May 1339 in Siena's Palazzo Pubblico—specifically in the Sala dei Nove (Salon of Nine), council hall of Siena's nine executive magistrates, elected officials who performed executive, and some judicial, functions. The paintings have been construed as being "designed to remind the Nine [magistrates] of just how much was at stake as they made their decisions". The 14th century was a turbulent time for politics in Italian cities, due to constant violent party struggles; governments were overthrown, and governments were reinstated.
See Wikipedia HERE.

Carrie Ann Baade's painting "Allegory of Bad Government" inspired by Lorenzetti, and also by The Mad Hatter's Tea Party from Alice in Wonderland, depicts figures as guests who embody traits such as Cruelty, Greed, War, Hate, with echoes of the seven deadly sins: Pride, Greed, Wrath, Envy, Gluttony, and Sloth. Tyranny’s cape is the tablecloth. The painting is both political critique as well as commentary on our internal states of mind.

Click on image for a clearer, larger view.

I shall point out all the gnashing greedy teeth, the waste lying around below, and...look to centre back of the painting: a pair of eyes with tentacles of yellow hair above...remind you of anyone? I shall now leave it to any passing stray readers to relate further allegorical inferences to....well, ya know!