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Orlando Furioso: Out of the storm into captivity
Angelica had come across the moribund body of Medoro, stopped the bleeding from his wound, nursed him back to health, and fallen deeply in love with him. They married whilst they were still living...
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Foundling: Paintings of Moses in the bulrushes
There are a few themes which even the boldest of narrative painters has avoided committing to canvas. One which is particularly topical is the abandonment of babies, something mothers have felt...
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Foundling: Paintings of Romulus and Remus
In the first article of this pair about abandoned babies, I looked at the most popular story of a ‘foundling’, that of Moses. Although extensively painted from late classical times, none of those...
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Orlando Furioso: Treachery, reunion, and madness
In the last episode of Ariosto’s Orlando Furioso, just before Christmas, we left the woman knight Marfisa and her colleagues, who had just escaped the fearsome tribe of women who had held them captive,...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1842-55
The most significant movement in British painting history in the nineteenth century was the Pre-Raphaelite, but few of the most important British painters of that century were members of the...
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Orlando Furioso: Punishment, and an imposter caught out
Orlando has discovered that his beloved Angelica – who disliked him intensely – had married Medoro, and is driven to madness as a result. He tore his armour and clothes off, abandoned his precious...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1855-60
By the mid-1850s, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) must have been getting increasingly frustrated. He’d tried several different genres and themes, from traditional history painting, literary narratives,...
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Lusty Old Goats: Satyrs in paintings
This weekend I’m looking at the bad boys and girls of mythology – satyrs and sirens. As everyone who has seen paintings of them knows, satyrs sneak up on sleeping nymphs and rape/seduce/abduct them,...
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Delightfully Deadly: Sirens in paintings
In the first article of this pair looking at bad boys and girls in mythological paintings, I showed a few of the many paintings of satyrs from their early popularity in the Renaissance onwards. Today I...
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Orlando Furioso: Discord among the Saracens
After Ruggiero had rescued Bradamante’s brother Ricciardetto from being burned at the stake, and heard his account of how he came so close to death by posing as his sister, the two knights rode to...
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Not a Pre-Raphaelite History Painter: Ford Madox Brown 1861-90
In 1861, Ford Madox Brown (1821–1893) became a founding member of Morris, Marshall, Faulkner and Company, and from then until that firm’s dissolution in 1874, he appears to have been mainly concerned...
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Orlando Furioso: Insatiable women and the ultimate self-sacrifice
When Doralice had rejected him, Rodomonte stormed off from the siege of Paris and headed home. Having reached the River Saône, he stayed in an inn whose landlord proved talkative at dinner that night,...
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Benjamin West and Modern History 1
This year, we commemorate the two hundredth anniversary of the death of the American painter Benjamin West (1738–1820), who spent almost his entire career in Britain. When West was born in Springfield,...
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Orlando Furioso: Saracens forced to retreat to Arles
Orlando had continued his rampage through France and Spain, and discovered Angelica and her new husband Medoro on the beach at Tarragon in Spain. She escaped from him by putting her magic ring in her...
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Raphael and Painting: 2 School of Perugino
Whatever you may think about Raphael’s art, there’s no disputing how important he had become by the time of his death almost five hundred years ago. Not only did Pope Leo X visit the artist several...
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The story of painted narrative 1
The consensus claims that narrative painting died during the nineteenth century, and some even deny that it’s possible to tell a story in a single painting. If you’ve read more than a few of my...
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The story of painted narrative 2
In yesterday’s article about narrative painting, I laid the ground by giving a simplified terminology of different methods for telling stories in visual art, and showed examples of each, drawn largely...
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Benjamin West and Modern History 2
Benjamin West’s first commissioned painting for King George III, the King of Great Britain, had been completed the year before he painted The Death of General Wolfe, and was followed in 1770 by a...
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Orlando Furioso: The quest of jealousy, and the flight of the hippogriff
Rinaldo, his band of knights and private army of around seven hundred had attacked the Saracens besieging Paris by night, killed many, and put the survivors to rout. King Agramante had fled to Arles,...
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Raphael and Painting: 3 Becoming Raphael
Between 1503-08, Raphael appears to have worked in northern Italy, and from 1504-08 spent much of his time in Florence. This overlapped with the period in which Leonardo da Vinci was in that city, and...
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