THE MIGHTIEST HEART

Beneath the lovely, if fettered, ornamentation of paintings that borrow from the Renaissance style is a classic boy-and-his-dog story set in the 13th century. Snowdonia is the setting and actual locale in Wales that inspired the legend of Prince Llywelyn, a real Welsh freedom fighter, whose story is expanded here to include his faithful hound, Gelert. Gelert is always at the prince's side; when the hound is wrongly blamed for hurting Prince Llywelyn's son, he runs away, only to return for another rescue. Long's oils are a lesson in Northern Renaissance painting; panels of text resemble tapestries heralding the story amidst medieval portraits, along with elaborate botanicals under swift skies. All of the above is leaf-trimmed and framed with ivy-entwined borders and gilded perimeters. In typifying this period of art, where every object symbolizes the painting's theme, the lavish curtains and brocades echo the velvety hills of the landscape while the folds of a cloak mirror rushing water. Peasants co-exist among royalty, further intensifying the story's moral: ""The mightiest heart can come in the humblest vessel.