The Hero and the Dark Lady
From a Fictionwise eBooks summary of Mike Resnick's novel The Dark Lady…
Leonardo, an art historian of the far future, is given a mission…
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"His instructions: Search the galaxy for any piece of art bearing the image of his obsession: the mysterious Dark Lady, a beautiful and somber human female whose exact likeness, he has secretly discovered, appears in paintings and sculptures throughout history–dating all the way back to Earth's ancient Rome. |
Leonardo's research reveals the link between the artists of the Dark Lady: human men who voluntarily risk their lives. If she appears to men who court death, she may be their Angel of Death … or, as Leonardo hopes, the female of an ancient… legend–The Mother of All Things."
Today, August 27 (or tomorrow, according to some accounts), is the date of death of a great actor, Robert Shaw, who died at 51 in 1978. If in real life he was anything like the brave men he played… King Henry VIII, SPECTRE assassin Red Grant, Panzer commander Colonel Hessler, and shark hunter Captain Quint… he, if anyone, deserved to be greeted in heaven by the Dark Lady.
For a more scholarly treatment of the Dark Lady, see this Princeton University Press site.