Do not be fooled by their static nature! Images have the power to play with time as well as space. It’s easy to dismiss still images as limited in their ability to interact with stories— but here is an example that says otherwise. In this 1912 painting, Heinrich Vogeler calls on cultural knowledge of the famous story of Melusine to tell a new story, in a single image, through the compositional manipulation of recognizable elements; a shining example of the power of visual art in interaction with stories. 

In order to discuss how Vogeler manipulates and communicates with literature, we have to demonstrate that the painting is recognizable as Melusine to a viewer familiar with the story. The central figure– almost perfectly, in fact, centered in the middle panel– is a young, white woman, sitting contemplatively nude on a rock in an edenic forest scene. Our first hint to her identity is that her legs are blue and scaly, ending in fins which dip into a pool of water. So far, this figure might represent any number of semiaquatic characters– an Undine or a naiad, perhaps. It’s the other humanoid figure in the scene that identifies Melusine– Raymondin, only a third of her size in the image, peers from the forest background, divided from her by a river. He holds the tools of hunting: a spear and a crossbow. His clothing, similar to a medieval kirtle and bycocket hat, is reminiscent of Robin Hood, placing this image contemporary with Melusine in human history.

However, the identification of the figures as a medieval hunter and a scaly-tailed woman ends the direct allusion to the familiar story. After the revelation of the characters’ identities, the viewer will realize that the scene in this image never occurs in the story of Melusine. The forest setting, and Raymondin’s hunting garb, call to mind the beginning of the story, when Raymondin and Melusine meet for the first time in the forest. Critically, when they meet, Melusine is fully human. Her hybridity is a secret, a secret which (we know), is responsible for her tragic end. However, in Vogeler’s painting, she displays her hybridity fully at the first meeting.
Her comfort in her mermaid form, her peaceful contemplation, believing herself alone and not knowing she’s being watched– not holding a mirror, but perhaps looking at her reflection in nearby water– is reminiscent of another iconic scene in the story: the final scene, when, after a life of love and service, Raymondin breaks his vow to Melusine and discovers her hybridity. 

How can a painting illustrate the first scene and the climactic scene of a story in one composition? How is the story still recognizable, despite this distortion of plot and time? The painting is, after all, a triptych; if Vogeler wanted to paint the beginning and end of the story, couldn’t he have done it on two separate panels? And what does his choice to compress the two scenes into one do to the viewer’s mind?It is questions like these that demonstrate the ability of paintings to interact with stories beyond simply representing snapshots of the action.

There is much to be said about how Vogeler’s choices respond to the story of Melusine. The convergence of the beginning and end of Melusine’s story offers the viewer the opportunity to completely rewrite it. As we know her story, the span of Melusine’s interactions with the human world, her actions to shape it, her building of castles, her delivery of powerful sons, happens after she meets Raymondin (as a human) and before he discovers her “curse”. In the well known version, the reader might ask themself whether the arguable success of her foray into the human world is worth the (arguably) inevitable tragic end. In Vogeler’s version, though, her secret is apparently revealed before Raymondin even speaks to her. The viewer might ask instead– who would Melusine have been, without Raymondin? (The implied inverse, “what might Raymondin have been without Melusine”, is certainly minimized by his diminutive stature in the painting). There is not a single built object in this scene. The Melusine of legend is known for having left an immortal mark on the earth in the form of the castle of Lusignan; Vogeler’s Melusine appears as if her influence on the world may begin and end at her relationships with the short-lived woodland creatures surrounding her. Another, more “romantic” line of thinking asks whether the “fate” that brought Melusine and Raymondin together would still connect them if Raymondin had happened to commit manslaughter on a Saturday. Is the value of their relationship only that it resulted in a powerful ruling family– or do they have a compelling romance on their own, in the forest? Does this premature discovery, in fact, offer a solution to the tradegy– could Raymondin have still taken her as his wife if she had no secret?

There is actually something unique about the power of a still image to compel us to look deeper. Film, or music, or even literary fiction, which we can progress through in linear time, which calls our attention constantly to something new, boast the ability to create immersive worlds that we can feel part of. But still images move only as quickly as our minds; we cannot travel through a painting on a set path, we experience all of its elements in whatever order they catch our eye. In this way, paintings are a singularly compelling form of storytelling. Written and spoken word can tell us things, but paintings invite us to ask our own questions.