“It seemed like his foot was about to crush the unsuspecting bird. I thought it would make a lovely punctuation – a sudden halt to what was going on. Cupid’s foot made it even better because what better than to be crushed by love,” he told The Telegraph.
Gilliam is one of 16 people – some celebrities, others gallery employees including director Gabriele Finaldi and retail assistant Joshua Pell, and the general public – who talk about their favourite painting in My National Gallery, which will be released in about 300 cinemas from the first week of June.
Claudia Winkleman, presenter of Strictly Come Dancing, Traitors and The Piano, tells how as a youngster she was taken each weekend by her father, Barry, after his divorce from journalist Eve Pollard.
“So my love for art came from my brilliant dad. But we would only look at one painting each visit and for about 40 minutes. We would then come back next week, and so on,” Winkleman said. She chooses Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, not for its religious depiction but because “it’s so humane. I also see it as a soother in a hectic life”.
Princess Eugenie, younger daughter of the Duke and Duchess of York, has also gone for a religious work – Correggio’s Madonna of the Basket. She references “the ethereal Madonna”. Eugenie, another Art History graduate like Winkleman, and now working at a Mayfair gallery, relates to “a mother looking after her young child, and struggling to put on its jacket. I’ve recently had a second baby and know that feeling”.
Gilliam’s former Python colleague, Michael Palin, perhaps unsurprisingly for a railway enthusiast, chooses Turner’s Rain, Steam and Speed.