In the National Gallery of Ireland there is a painting that can only be viewed twice a week because of the need to limit its exposure to light. The luminous watercolour and gouache work on paper, Hellelil and Hildebrand, the Meeting on the Turret Stairs (1864) is by nineteenth century Irish artist Frederic William Burton, and it depicts a moment from a medieval Danish ballad (author unknown), Hellalyle and Hildebrand, translated in 1855 by Burton’s friend, Whitley Stokes for Fraser’s Magazine. The ballad is told in the princess Hellilel’s voice, where she recounts that her father, the King, assigned twelve guards to protect her, and one of them, Hildebrand, became her lover. When the King discovered their forbidden love, he sent his seven sons to kill Hildebrand. He proved a formidable adversary, killing six of the brothers, and as he fought the last brother, Hellelil intervened to save the life of her surviving sibling. Tragically, Hildebrand let his guard down and at that moment, the last brother dealt a mortal blow. Hellelil survived his death, but her brother punished her cruelly, banishing her to a tower as an exile, where she eventually died, brokenhearted.
The moment Burton captures is deeply intimate. It shows Hellelil and Hildebrand in a turret staircase, just as the knight is going down the stairs to meet his fate. That moment in the ballad is captured thus: He kissed me then mine eyes above/ "Say never my name, thou darling love." It is a moment in between: before their ultimate separation and the ensuing violence, suspended by a gesture of love, of holding on to each other, but also of parting where Hildebrand kisses Hellelil’s arm, while she faces away from him as if overwhelmed. On seeing the painting, British author George Eliot commented that it revealed, “the highest pitch of refined emotion,” and “the face of the knight is the face of a man to whom the kiss is a sacrament.” Without knowing the tragic end of the story, this scene alone is captivating because of the suspended moment of such intense emotion, and yet, knowing the entire tale gives the painting even greater poignancy.
