Apollo Musagetes

Apollo and the Muses1921Oil on canvas283.21 x 428.62 cm (111 1/2 x 168 3/4 in.)
Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

MONSERRATE - Music Room

At the head of the Music Room, looking down the long enfilade of the arched corridor is Apollo. Leader of the dance, encircled by his Muses, he commands this mythical space, the central figure of Monserrate’s complex iconography.

Thalia

MONSERRATE - Music Room

Thalia, Muse of Comedy, her name derives from the Greek thallein (to bloom). She is usually depicted as a young woman crowned with an ivy garland, holding a mask and a shepherd's staff.
It seems appropriate to begin with the "blooming" Muse. Monserrate's Muses are to be found adorning the spandrels of the pointed arches supporting the music room dome. Generally nine in number a few more were added for good measure ... and symmetry.


The Music Room at Monserrate has 16 "Muses" including one who is not a Muse at all: Musagetes.

Thunbergia coccinea

MONSERRATE


Photographed in late October 2008 this flowering vine has bloomed at Monserrate for at least eighty years. First mentioned by Walter Oates in his article published by the Gardeners Chronicle in the 1920s.

(c)

Gerald Luckhurst

Oct. 2008


Thunbergia coccinea
Tropical jungle flowering vine, pendant scarlet flowers from late autumn and through the winter. Vigorous evergreen tree climber for warm frost-free position. Originally introduced from Nepal (Nepal eastwards to Burma, also grows in W. China, Indo-China and Java).

Seeds were sent to Kew from the Calcutta Botanic Garden around 1825 by Nathaniel Wallich and grown in "festoons" in around the gallery of the Palm House. It was rarely grown in amateur stove houses because of generous growth and shy flowering .

N. P. Manandhar Plants and People of Nepal gives habitat as "moist and shady places at 300-1800 m". The flowers are cooked as a vegetable, juice of the plant is applied to cuts and wounds and the root is chewed to treat boils on the tongue. The vine is used for binding.




Thunbergia coccinea Wall. ex D. Don, ; Prodromus Florae Nepalensis 120 (1825).

formerly known as
Hexacentris coccinea (Wall. ex D. Don) Nees in Wall., Pl. Asiat. Rar. 3:78. 1832.
Flemingia coccinea Hamilton