This is The Guardian.

Here's how the heroes of Empire will fall by Anadella Soubin.

In a type of neoclassical painting one might call The Apotheosis of X. The dead hero is

bundled up to heaven by a host of angels, usually in a wind-swept tumult of robes, wings,

and clouds. A crowd of grieving mortals watches from below as their hero becomes divine.

It's a celestial scramble. In Rubin's sumptuous apotheosis of James I, heaven is chaos, and

James looks terrified at having arrived. In Barralez apotheosis of Washington, the dead

president has his arms outstretched in a crucified pose, while farther time and the angel of immortality

bear him up to heaven. In a mid-1860s apotheosis, a freshly assassinated

Lincoln joins Washington in the sky and clings to him in a tight hug. In Fragonard's

apotheosis of Franklin, the new God reaches back to earth with one hand while a stern angel

grasping his other hand drags him upward.

In 1785, in a Covent Garden Theatre, a spectacle premiered depicting Captain James

Cook's voyages in the South Pacific. During the final scene of Amai or a trip around

the world, at the words, Cook ever honored immortal shall live an enormous oil painting

descended from the ceiling. Philippe Jacques de Lutterborg's apotheosis of Captain Cook commissioned

for the occasion. Cook is carried up to heaven by the angels Britannia and fame, but his

gaze is directed back at the vertiginous earth, where ships and canoes are facing off

in Hawaii's Kayalaka Kua Bay. His expression is queasy, and his eyes seem to plead,

don't drop me. Cook had been a revered figure among British

Siemens. Wherever he goes, he plants English gardens, noted a Sri Lankan anthropologist,

not without some disgust. Cook's ship was an ark, heavy with sheep, cattle and potted

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