What is the name of the person whose composition implies "sadistic torture and occult sexual sorcery"?
Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret illustrates a scene from book III of The Faerie Queene, a 16th-century allegorical epic poem by Edmund Spenser, in which Busirane, an evil sorcerer, abducts the beautiful Amoret (representing married virtue), and tortures her to the point of death. The heroic female warrior Britomart (representing both chastity and Elizabeth I) battles through obstacles to reach the chamber in which Amoret is being held, and slays Busirane moments before he is able to kill Amoret.Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret was intended by Etty to illustrate the virtues of chastity and honour. It shows the moment in which Busirane is interrupted by Britomart as he prepares to kill Amoret. Amoret is chained to a gilded Solomonic column, carved with depictions of Venus, and her clothes fall from her shoulders as she struggles. Britomart, clad in armour, enters Busirane's Moorish chamber, and tramples a blood-stained grimoire as she swings her sword. Busirane, naked from the waist up and with Chinese-style trousers and queue, falls to the floor, his blade still pointing at Amoret's heart. Unusually for Etty, Britomart is painted very thinly, with the canvas weave still visible through the paint. Art historian Alison Smith considers that this was likely inspired by Henry Fuseli, who painted a depiction of Britomart using the same style of painting.In the original poem, Busirane had tortured and cut out the heart of the still-living Amoret by the time of her rescue. When he came to paint Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret Etty had created numerous scenes of combat and death, and would later achieve a degree of critical approbation when it became known that he visited mortuaries to sketch cadavers to ensure the accuracy of his depictions of bodies in varying stages of decomposition. However, he had an aversion to "the offensive and revolting butchery, some have delighted and even revelled in", and disliked the depiction of gratuitous violence. Consequently, in Etty's work Amoret is depicted as physically unharmed by her ordeal, although his composition implies "sadistic torture and occult sexual sorcery".
Although there is a strong suggestion in his letters that in his early years he had a sexual encounter with one of his models and possibly also a sexual encounter of some kind while in Venice in 1823–24, Etty was devoutly Christian and famously abstemious. Alison Smith considers the composition of Britomart Redeems Faire Amoret a conscious effort on his part to praise the virtue of chastity by creating a "challenge for the presumably male viewer ... to vanquish lust and cast a pure gaze on vulnerable womanhood". Throughout his career Etty had championed the use of female models in life classes, creating some controversy, and this painting may have been intended to emphasise his belief that "To the pure in heart all things are pure".
Etty