DURING A RECENT visit to the Tate Britain art gallery in London, we stopped to view a room that contained paintings of birds. All the paintings except one contained depictions of at least one bird. The exception, in which there was no bird to be seen, was painted by Richard Wilson (1713-1782).

The painting is called “Lake Avernus and the Island of Capri”, and was painted in about 1760. Lake Avernus is near Naples (Napoli). In Roman mythology, it was believed by to be the mouth of Hades, the hellish underworld described in the “Aeneid” by the Roman author Virgil (70 BC – 19 BC). This evil place was believed to emit fumes that killed any birds flying over it.

The name Averna is derived from the Greek word ‘aornos’, which translates as ‘without birds’. Hence the absence of birds in Wilson’s painting.