01 Work The Art of War, Armand-Charles Caraffe's Metellus besieges a city, with footnotes

Armand-Charles Caraffe (1762–1822)

Metellus besieges a city, c. before 1805

Oil on canvas

height: 53.5 cm (21 in); width: 80 cm (31.4 in)

Hermitage Museum

Tamburlaine is a poor shepherd who rises to power to live out his blood-soaked fantasy of conquering the world. His extravagant savagery shows what horror can result when unlimited political libido is let loose upon the world...

Tamburlaine the Great is a play in two parts by Christopher Marlowe. It is loosely based on the life of the Central Asian emperor Timur (Tamerlane/Timur the Lame, d. 1405). Written in 1587 or 1588, the play is a milestone in Elizabethan public drama; it marks a turning away from the clumsy language and loose plotting of the earlier Tudor dramatists, and a new interest in fresh and vivid language, memorable action, and intellectual complexity. Along with Thomas Kyd's The Spanish Tragedy, it may be considered the first popular success of London's public stage.

Marlowe, generally considered the best of that group of writers known as the University Wits, influenced playwrights well into the Jacobean period, and echoes of the bombast and ambition of Tamburlaine's language can be found in English plays all the way to the Puritan closing of the theatres in 1642. While Tamburlaine is considered inferior to the great tragedies of the late-Elizabethan and early-Jacobean period, its significance in creating a stock of themes and, especially, in demonstrating the potential of blank verse in drama, is still acknowledged.

Whereas the real Timur was of Turkic-Mongolian ancestry and belonged to the nobility, for dramatic purposes Marlowe depicts him as a Scythian shepherd who rises to the rank of emperor. More on Tamburlaine the Great

Armand-Charles Caraffe (1762–1822) was a French historical painter and etcher, who spent part of his career at the Russian Imperial court.

Caraffe was born in Paris in 1762. He was a pupil of Lagrenée and David. He visited Rome, and then travelled in Turkey, but returned to France at the outbreak of the Revolution becoming so active a member of the Jacobin Club that he was imprisoned from 1794 to 1797. In 1799 he exhibited a picture of Hope supporting Misfortune to the Grave, which was much praised, and in the following year one of Love, abandoned by Youth and the Graces, consoling himself on the bosom of Friendship. In 1802 he left France for an appointment at the Court of St. Petersburg, where he remained until 1812, and painted The Oath of the Horatii for Prince Yusupov. He eventually returned to Paris, where he died on 18 August 1822. More on Armand-Charles Caraffe

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