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The Divine Comedy: Purgatory 10 An overview of Purgatory
Before Dante takes us on from Purgatory to Paradise, I’d like to take a brief overview of the last nine articles in which he has taken us through Purgatory, looking at some of its finest paintings....
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Visual Riddles: Beginnings 1850-60
For many centuries if not a couple of millenia, narrative painting relied on depicting stories which the viewer already knew. Because painting a single synchronous image can only show one moment in...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 1 The moon and broken vows
The least-known of the three books which make up Dante’s Divine Comedy, to his contemporary readers Paradise was its most important. Having given gruesome detail of what would await them in Inferno,...
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Visual Riddles: Across continents
In the first article in this series, I looked at some of the first major narrative paintings to appear in the middle of the nineteenth century which depicted unresolved stories. Although most of those...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 2 Fame and love
From their visit to the shell of Paradise in the heavens which contains the moon, Dante and Beatrice ascend rapidly to the next shell containing the planet Mercury, where they meet the spirits of those...
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Visual Riddles: Fame
By 1873, a number of significant artists had painted narrative works which didn’t resolve. They were by no means confined to Britain, but included some in Germany, France, and the USA. These coincided...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 3 The wise and warriors
From the shell containing the planet Venus, Dante and Beatrice pass from the shadow of the earth into the full light of the Sun, which occupies the next shell in their outward and upward journey...
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Visual Riddles: Refinement
By the early 1880s, many painters had made narrative paintings which didn’t resolve, and those works were starting to attract a following at exhibitions. This article looks at some examples which were...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 4 The just and the contemplative
As they journey through heavenly Paradise, Dante and Beatrice move upwards from the shell containing Mars to the next containing Jupiter. Gustave Doré (1832–1883), Jupiter, Paradiso Canto 18 (c 1867),...
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Visual Riddles: Puzzles for the people
By 1895, paintings with unresolved narrative had become popular and widely discussed. Themes for these included relationships between men and women, the ‘fallen woman’, the ‘kept woman’, unhappy...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 5 Into the Empyrean
Dante and Beatrice ascend the golden ladder – previously Jacob’s Ladder – taking them up from the realms of the planets to the shell of fixed stars, where they arrive in Gemini, under whose sign Dante...
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Visual Riddles: Collier’s controversies
In the late 1890s, ‘problem pictures’ had started to generate public controversy in the press, with critical analyses, correspondence, even competitions to choose the most appropriate resolution of...
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The Divine Comedy: Paradise 6 An overview of Paradise
The least known of the three books which make up Dante’s Divine Comedy, at the time it was arguably its most important. In Inferno, he details the eternal sufferings of the damned; in Purgatory, there...
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The Napoleon of Painting: the bicentenary of Théodore Chassériau 1
Tomorrow (20 September), we celebrate the bicentenary of the birth of the artist described by Ingres as the Napoleon of painting: Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856). In case you haven’t seen many of his...
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The Napoleon of Painting: the bicentenary of Théodore Chassériau 2
This is the second of two articles looking at the paintings of Théodore Chassériau (1819–1856), who was born two hundred years ago, on 20 September. In the first, I looked at a selection of his...
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The Divine Comedy: Overview and list of articles
Over the last seven months, I have travelled with Dante in his Divine Comedy, showing paintings and prints to accompany his imaginary journey to the depths of Hell in Inferno, ascending the...
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Visual Riddles: Decline and fall
During the first decade of the twentieth century, John Collier was the painter the whole of Britain was talking about. His unresolved narratives, or ‘problem pictures’, had captured the public...
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Painting the Distant Past: Charlemagne 1
Next week, I start a new narrative series telling the story of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso in paintings. I’ll be providing a full introduction to this major work of European literature, one of its...
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Painting the Distant Past: Charlemagne 2
In yesterday’s article, I told of Charlemagne’s early rise to power, and his military successes in southern Europe. He found the going rather harder in the north. Charles’ series of campaigns against...
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Visual Riddles: Summary and contents
Over the last couple of months, I have been tracing the history of paintings which show enigmatic stories, narrative which isn’t resolved, what are often referred to as problem pictures. This article...
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