The Blue Astronomer I and II - The Boatman

King Philip IV and Queen Mariana of Spain are shadowy figures in the mirror, yet they central to the way in which the world is ordered, the taxonomy of the day. The King controls who will live and who will die, which lands are colonised and how history unfolds. He is the Boatman, Charon, the ferryman of Hades.

In this image, his two heads look to both the past and the future, he is both king and queen. He rides a sea populated with monsters on a crocodile.