Compassion and suffering: Clive Ashwin has some lessons from the arts
‘The historical realities demanding compassion are constantly changing.’
Landscape with Man Killed by a Snake, by the French seventeenth-century painter Nicolas Poussin (on display at the National Gallery, and pictured) tells a curious and macabre story. In the foreground a man lies dead at the edge of a lake, in the coils of a huge serpent. A second man, who has witnessed the scene, flees with his arms outstretched in horror to raise the alarm.
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