This foot, which touches the ground twice during the opening credits of Monty Python’s Flying Circus, is probably the most famous foot in modern screen history. It has now been revealed that his inspiration was a 16th-century painting in the National Gallery.
“In the late sixties I would come to the gallery to steal ideas, some of them from paintings and buying posters and souvenirs of characters I liked,” says Python member Terry Gilliam. “Then I went home to create some wonderfully ridiculous animations.”
In the documentary film shot to celebrate the gallery’s 200th anniversary, which falls this weekend, Gilliam describes how Bronzino’s Allegory of Venus, Cupid and Madness led him to create the descending bare foot. Gilliam, who later directed films such as Brazil and 12 Monkeys, noticed Cupid and a dove in the lower corner of the painting.
“It looked like his foot was about to crush the unsuspecting bird. I thought this would be a nice punctuation mark; to suddenly stop what is happening. Cupid’s foot made it even better, because what could be better than being crushed by love?” he told The Telegraph.
Gilliam is one of 16 people, including some celebrities, some gallery staff, director Gabriele Finaldi and retail sales assistant Joshua Pell, who talk about their favorite painting in My National Gallery, which will be released in nearly 300 theaters starting from the first one. week of June.
Claudia Winkleman, presenter of Strictly Come Dancing, Traitors and The Piano, tells how in her youth she was whisked away every weekend by her father Barry after his divorce from journalist Eve Pollard.
“So my love for art came from my brilliant father. But each visit we would only look at one painting and for about 40 minutes. Then we’d come back the next week and so on,” Winkleman said. He chooses Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks not because of its religious depiction but “because it’s so human. I also see it as a calming in a hectic life.”
Princess Eugenie, the younger daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, also went for a religious work: Correggio’s Madonna with a Basket. It refers to the “Ethereal Madonna”. Eugenie, another Art History graduate like Winkleman who now works at a Mayfair gallery, describes “a mother looking after her young child and struggling to put on her coat.” “I recently had a second baby and I know the feeling.”
Gilliam’s former Python colleague Michael Palin, perhaps unsurprisingly for a railway enthusiast, chooses Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed.
“This marks the birth of railways,” says Palin, presenter of the BBC TV series Great Railroad Journeys. “But Turner also depicts the countryside offset by the train. “It’s a true narrative where you feel like the New World will win.”
According to children’s author Jacqueline Wilson, it was the Impressionists that attracted her when she was first taken in by her father in her youth.
“Especially Renoir’s The Umbrellas. It is such an enjoyable work. I had also long identified with the young woman in the painting, who looked very working-class and had red hair. Years later I created Hetty Feather, which had a similar social status.” The book was later turned into a popular TV series.
Six of the 16 people interviewed stated that they were taken in as children by a parent or grandparent.
“It’s a very formative experience,” says Ali Ray, the film’s co-director. “What’s more, many secondary schools no longer accept students, and far fewer can study art history.”
But for Peter Murphy, it was a visit to the National Gallery in his mid-50s that changed his life.
Murphy, who was born in Liverpool and now works as a piano teacher in London, had a serious drink and drug problem while working on Channel 4’s Eurotrash in the 1990s and Noughties.
“Dealers were coming into the office with heroin and crack cocaine,” says the now 69-year-old. Things got worse after his mother died when he was 42; The mother gave him to his sister at birth, but she took him back when he was four. “I felt worthless. I went crazy. “It also cost thousands of dollars a year.”
One day in 2009, after another visit to Narcotics Anonymous in Soho, Murphy stopped by the National Gallery. “I’ve been there before, but this time I found myself in a blue painting. This was Bellini’s Madonna in the Meadow.
“I was quickly struck by the serenity and calmness of this Virgin and child. I am not religious, although I was raised by a very strict Catholic father. Seeing Madonna made me think, ‘My mother’s house’.”
It was a Damascus moment. Murphy then traveled every day for more than 12 months to view the painting. It helped him get rid of drink and drugs. In later years he went several times a week and still does so today, believing he has stayed clean and sober.
“Painting gives me inner peace. And thankfully the gallery is free. I just feel like I belong here. This is my club. This is my National Gallery.”