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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 12: Back to mythology for...
With the completion of his work on the magnificent paintings of Old Testament stories in the ceiling of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, Jacopo Tintoretto painted another couple of...
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Legends of England in Paint: Robin Hood
Last weekend, I looked at the use of fables as the basis for narrative painting, and in doing so mentioned legends. Although there is considerable overlap between these two categories of story, and...
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Legends of England in Paint: Lady Godiva
The legends of Robin Hood, which I examined yesterday, are long and involved, and seem to have been depicted mainly in illustrations to accompany the text. Today’s look at paintings of popular English...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 13: Three rapes and a Senator
Towards the end of the 1570s, Jacopo Tintoretto and his workshop began work on a dozen paintings for the walls to complete the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco. At about the same time,...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 14: The life of Christ in...
Having whet your appetite with a glimpse of the smallest two of the paintings which Jacopo Tintoretto made for the walls of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, this article looks at...
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Victor Hugo on Canvas: Quasimodo and Esmeralda
Over the last couple of weekends, I have looked at paintings of some fables and legends. When it comes to literary genres such as folk and fairy tales, categories become very blurry. This weekend I am...
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Folk Tales on Canvas: from Denmark to the USA
Having seen how popular paintings of the modern ‘legend’ of Quasimodo and Esmeralda became during the nineteenth century, this article looks briefly at paintings of other well-known folk tales from...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 15: The Sala terrena of the...
Jacopo Tintoretto’s arrangement to provide paintings for the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, made in 1577, was most unusual. Instead of being paid for each painting as a separate commission, as was normal,...
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The Painter as History: Ary Scheffer 1
In the early nineteenth century, French painting included some of the greatest artists of the period. Jacques-Louis David was in decline prior to his self-imposed exile in Belgium, but the bright new...
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The Painter as History: Ary Scheffer 2
My first article about the history painter Ary Scheffer (1795–1858) looked at his early work, up to 1831, a period in which he was politically very active, helped put Louis-Philippe on the throne of...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 16: Paradise
By 1883, Jacopo Tintoretto, his son Domenico and their workshop had completed the last paintings for the Sala terrena in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco in Venice. In his final decade, Jacopo, now in...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 17: The Last Suppers
So great and lasting is the influence of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper (c 1498) that even today we tend to think of its formal composition as the standard approach to depicting this scene. So it may...
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Celebrating the 500th anniversary of Tintoretto, 18: The Hallmark of Genius
Over the last two months, I have surveyed 111 of the paintings of Jacopo Tintoretto, who was most probably born five hundred years ago today, on 29 September 1518, or thereabouts. He was one of three...
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The Dead Travel Fast: The Gothic Ballad of Lenore in Paint
In the last few days, I showed a couple of paintings by Ary Scheffer which are based on the ‘Gothic’ Romantic ballad Lenore, by the German author Gottfried August Bürger, published in 1774. Here is a...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 17b Julius Caesar 1
In the great majority of Plutarch’s Lives, he introduces the subject of his biography with a preamble about their parentage, then tells of their childhood and formative years. In the case of Julius...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 1 Introduction to a new series
In amost every collection of paintings from before 1900, you’ll come across works with mystifying titles like Tancred Baptizing Clorinda. Those names don’t come from mythology, nor are they Biblical. I...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 2 The start of the First Crusade
It is 1095, another seemingly faceless year between the collapse of the Roman Empire across Europe, and the start of the Renaissance. There are only about fifty million people in the whole of Europe,...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 3 Jerusalem
In early 1099, the main body of ‘armed pilgrims’ who had obeyed Pope Urban II’s call to Holy War, leave the city of Antioch and start their long march to Jerusalem. They leave Prince Bohemond I behind,...
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From Indiscretion to Burlesque: Mazeppa in paint
Most of us do things in our youth which we wouldn’t dare try when we have gained the wisdom of age. For Ivan Mazepa (1639–1709), who became a ‘Prince’ of the Holy Roman Empire, one of Europe’s largest...
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Plutarch’s Lives in Paint: 17b Julius Caesar 2
After Julius Caesar’s amorous adventures with Cleopatra in Egypt, and his return through Asia, he resumed his dictatorship in Rome. The following year he was made consul, and crossed into Sicily in...
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