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Jerusalem Delivered: 12 Rinaldo saves Armida, and Jerusalem is delivered
With the massed Egyptian army approaching Jerusalem, Tancred had completed his duel with Argante, leaving the Circassian dead and Tancred badly wounded. Erminia, in company with Vafrine (who had been...
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The Decameron: Cimon and Iphigenia, a tale mostly untold in paint
On the fifth day of the Decameron’s stories, Fiammetta had chosen the theme of the adventures of lovers who survived calamities or misfortunes and reached a state of happiness. The previous article in...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 13 Summary and highlights
In the last dozen articles in this series, I have worked through the plot and sub-stories of Torquato Tasso’s epic poem Jerusalem Delivered, showing the best of the paintings which have been made to...
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The Decameron: Temptation of a faithful wife
On the tenth and last day of stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron, the theme is set by Panfilo, the ‘king of the day’, as those who have performed liberal or munificent deeds in the cause of love, or for...
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Jerusalem Delivered: 14 Heroes and Heroines
Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered features six leading characters, three men and three women. In this my final article looking at this epic and its paintings, I’m going to look at their stories and fate. The...
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The Decameron: The flowerpot’s grisly secret
Some stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron attained fame less in the original, but in much later retelling. A good example is the tragic tale of Lisabetta related by Filomena on the fourth day, when it was...
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Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in paintings
A Christmas Carol was not Charles Dickens’ first attempt at a Christmas story, but probably remains the most successful of any writer in the English language. Published on 19 December 1843, the first...
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The Decameron: The wrong way to a man’s heart
Last week, I looked at the tragic tale of Lisabetta which was told by Filomena on the fourth day of Boccaccio’s Decameron. The first story that day was equally tragic. Although it is less familiar in...
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Painting Goethe’s Faust: 0 Introduction to a new series
Narrative painters in the nineteenth century seldom painted contemporary stories, taken from the great and popular authors of that century, such as Victor Hugo, Charles Dickens, or Émile Zola. The...
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The best of 2018’s paintings and articles 2
Although there remains some uncertainty over the exact year of his birth, modern opinion is that Jacopo Tintoretto was born half a millenium ago, in 1518. I therefore took the opportunity to celebrate...
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The Decameron: The hundred and first story
It’s generally held that Boccaccio’s Decameron consists of a hundred stories told ten each day for a total of ten days. But there’s a bonus, the hundred and first story which is buried in Filostrato’s...
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The Decameron: The suffering of Griselda
The last story in Boccaccio’s Decameron, and the final article in this series, is the tenth of the tenth day, told by Dioneo. For the modern reader, it is a strange conclusion which praises submission...
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The Decameron: Index to stories and the finest paintings
Over the last couple of months, I have looked at those stories in Boccaccio’s Decameron which have been depicted in paintings. Although I haven’t searched out all the many cassone on which such scenes...
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More Than Portraits: the paintings of Diego Velazquez 4 From Mars to Venus
Following the return of Velázquez from his first visit to Italy, by early 1631, it was time to get on with his court duties. Over the next fifteen years, he and his workshop produced a great many...
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More Than Portraits: the paintings of Diego Velazquez 5 Sibyl and Spinners
Late in Velázquez’s career, when his position at court was very close to King Philip IV, he painted two of his finest, most important, and most enigmatic works: Las Hilanderas (The Spinners), and Las...
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The Women in the Life of Jules Joseph LeFebvre 1
Most painters paint women, but I can think of only one artist whose whole career consisted of painting almost exclusively women: Jules LeFebvre (1834–1912). He was also one of the great teachers of the...
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Poussin’s Inheritance: the 400th anniversary of Charles Le Brun 1
The great French landscape and narrative painter Nicolas Poussin worked for most of his career in Rome. Between 1642-46, Poussin taught one of his few pupils in his studio in Rome, the brilliant young...
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Poussin’s Inheritance: the 400th anniversary of Charles Le Brun 2
Four hundred years ago today, the French painter and art theorist Charles Le Brun (1619–1690) was born in Paris. In the first article of this pair, yesterday, I traced his history and work up to the...
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More Than Portraits: the paintings of Diego Velazquez 6 Spinners
Having set the scene with Velázquez’s unusual painting of a young woman who could be a sibyl, or an allegory of painting, I come to look in detail at his Las Hilanderas, which he painted for an unknown...
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Introduction to Dante’s Divine Comedy
I’m reaching the end of my coverage of paintings of Goethe’s Faust, so it’s time to open another book which has been a major inspiration to and influence on visual art. This time it’s Dante Alighieri’s...
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