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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 4: Saints and sinners
At about the time that Tintoretto was painting a cycle of works based on the early chapters of the book of Genesis, in the early 1550s, he completed three religious paintings for the Palazzo dei...
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Susanna and the Elders 1: Origins and early development
Popular painted narratives which examine critically issues facing women throughout history are few. Among them, and some of the most popular narrative religious paintings in the Western canon, are the...
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Susanna and the Elders 2: Masters and the modern
In the first article of this short series, I looked at paintings telling the story of Susanna and the Elders, from the Old Testament book of Daniel. I have focussed on those showing Susanna in her...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 5: First work for the...
The late 1550s were a challenging time for Jacopo Tintoretto: he had established his art in the city of Venice with several paintings of renown, but hadn’t been able to tap in to the rich patronage...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 7
During the later years of Jean-Léon Gérôme’s career, he devoted much attention to the rising Impressionists – whom he vehemently opposed – sculpture, photography as an art, and the depiction of truth....
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 6: Crucifixion and the Choir
Jacopo Tintoretto closed the 1550s with three of the major religious paintings from his early career, in which he moved on from the archaic, and learned to handle crowds. Jacopo Tintoretto (c...
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Bathsheba and King David: 1 The standard account
Last weekend, I looked at one of the popular stories from the Old Testament featuring a woman in its leading role, that of Susanna and the Elders, in which Susanna’s virtue is maintained and eventually...
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Bathsheba and King David: 2 Differing views
Most of the paintings telling the story of Bathsheba and King David had shown its opening scene, featuring the nude figure of Bathsheba in the foreground, and a distant king watching her from his...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 7: Assumptions and Saint Mark
By 1560, Jacopo Tintoretto’s paintings had come to dominate the interior of the Madonna dell’Orto in Venice. I am only sorry that I have been unable to locate images of the five Virtues (one of which...
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Too Real: the narrative paintings of Jean-Léon Gérôme, 8
In the final decade of his career, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s paintings fell from favour, displaced by Impressionism and the modern styles which he had long opposed. He remained resolutely realist and...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 8: The Albergo and its...
The scuole (plural of scuola) in Venice were fraternity institutions. There were numerous regular scuole, but a few rose to become officially recognised as Scuole Grandi, which had elaborate...
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Two Scenes in One Painting: multiplex narrative from the Romans to 1500
Telling a story in a single painting isn’t easy. Indeed, some have claimed that it’s impossible. If a painting is a faithful view of a scene at a moment in time, strictly speaking it can only show that...
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Two Scenes in One Painting: multiplex narrative from 1500 to 1600
In the first of these three articles about telling stories in paintings using the multiplex technique (or ‘continuous narrative’), I showed a series of examples stretching from classical Rome to...
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Two Scenes in One Painting: multiplex narrative from 1600-1947, and in Asia
In the two of these three articles about telling stories in paintings using the multiplex technique (or ‘continuous narrative’), I have shown examples stretching from classical Rome to the Renaissance,...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 9: Passion and Treasurers
In 1565, Jacopo Tintoretto took a short break from his painting for the albergo of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco to paint a commissioned work for the church of San Cassiano, also in Venice. Jacopo...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 10: Last Suppers and the Doge
From about 1570 onwards, Jacopo Tintoretto was attracting enough work into his studio that much of it had to be carried out by his staff and apprentices. Among them were some of his own children: he...
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Painting Fables 1: Dutch Golden Age to Oudry
When the viewer already knows the story behind a painting, it makes it much easier for them to read that painting. Stories with which we are all very familiar are fables, whether told by Aesop, La...
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Painting Fables 2: Landseer to Bonnard
Prior to the nineteenth century, fables had been prominent in two periods of painting: during the Dutch Golden Age, when they were based on contemporary versions of “Aesop’s Fables”, and in the work of...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 11: Old Testament visions of...
Jacopo Tintoretto’s next major project, in the late 1570s, was to provide paintings for the ceiling of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. But before that, he and his workshop painted...
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Italian History and the Classics: the paintings of Giuseppe Sciuti
With few exceptions, such as the Pre-Raphaelites, nineteenth century painting is portrayed as centring on the city of Paris. For example, those Italian artists who are better-known, like Giuseppe De...
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