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Characters in Painted Stories: 10 Oedipus
In this series looking at how characters in stories are portrayed, in the context of Christopher Booker’s analysis of literary narratives into The Seven Basic Plots, I have completed my survey of those...
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Characters in Painted Stories: 11 The moment of change
Christopher Booker’s analysis of literary narratives into The Seven Basic Plots follows a long tradition of analysis which goes back to Aristotle’s Poetics, which dates from around 335 BCE. Having...
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An illustrated Christmas Carol
A relatively recent secular tradition of Christmas in Europe and elsewhere is the seasonal story. Some develop the theme of the long, dark nights of the winter with ghosts and the paranormal, but in...
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Don Quixote 38: The hunting party and the first trick
In the previous episode, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were eating as guests of the Duke and Duchess, when their chaplain’s speech made the knight seethe with anger. He rose and delivered a searing...
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Don Quixote 39: Sancho’s letter
In the previous episode, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were taken out hunting by the Duke and Duchess. The party met with quick success in the form of a wild boar, but Sancho Panza climbed a tree in...
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Don Quixote 40: The bearded duennas
In the previous episode, the Duke and Duchess had been preparing further tricks to play on Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, after the latter had agreed to lash himself three thousand three hundred times...
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In memoriam Antoine Coypel 1
Tomorrow is the three hundredth anniversary of the death of one of the most famous of the Coypel family of artists, Antoine (1661–1722). In this article and tomorrow’s I’ll try to give an overview of...
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In memoriam Antoine Coypel 2
Three hundred years ago today, on 7 January 1722 Antoine Coypel died. In the first of these two articles commemorating his life and art, I showed examples from the earlier years of his career,...
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The Thread of Time in paintings 1: The Fates
Time is one of the two fundamental elements of narrative, the other being events. Depicting time is one of the great challenges in narrative painting, and referring to time as a concept within a visual...
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The Thread of Time in paintings 2: Threads
In the first of these two articles yesterday, I showed some paintings which depicted the concept of time through its mythological expression in the Fates. Today I look at more subtle allusions which...
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Don Quixote 41: Flying a wooden horse
In the previous episode, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were in the gardens of the Duke and Duchess, waiting for the arrival of the Countess of Trifaldi, alias the Dolorous Duenna. When she arrived in...
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Characters in Painted Stories: 12 Telling a familiar story
Until the nineteenth century, pretty well every narrative painting relied on the viewer already being familiar with the original story, and its purpose was to show a part which would elicit those...
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Characters in Painted Stories: 13 Telling a new story
In the nineteenth century, storytelling in literature changed. New genres such as detective and ‘mystery’ novels started to challenge the convention of narrative closure. Readers of Edgar Allan Poe’s...
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Don Quixote 42: The governor and the wooed
In the previous episode, Don Quixote had assured the Countess of Trifaldi that he would stop at nothing to relieve her and the dozen duennas of their long and thick beards. She told the knight that the...
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Characters in Painted Stories: 0 Summary and contents
This article is an overview and summary of this series, as well as linking to each of its articles. While there has been a great deal of excellent writing on literary narrative, precious few studies...
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Don Quixote 43: The judge and an angry cat
In the previous episode, Don Quixote and Sancho Panza were the victims of another of the Duke and Duchess’s wicked tricks. After a bit of persuasion, Sancho Panza dressed up as a combination of a man...
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Altogether Now: Introduction to uniquely visual narrative
Visual narrative, the mainstay of much of painting since the Renaissance, is too often considered to be the poor relative of serial forms of storytelling in literature and movies. There’s at least one...
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Don Quixote 44: A governor starved and a knight pinched
In the previous episode, Sancho Panza had assumed the governorship of the ‘Island’ of Barataria amid general rejoicing. Once he’d given thanks and been presented with the keys to the town, he was taken...
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Altogether Now: 1 Hans Memling’s Passion, 1470
Throughout the Renaissance the most popular choice for church altarpieces was a polyptych showing the story of the Crucifixion. The early Netherlandish painter Hans Memling (c 1433–1494) painted many,...
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Don Quixote 45: Rounds and a present
In the previous episode, Sancho Panza took lunch as governor of the ‘Island’ of Barataria, with his doctor sat beside him. The latter, though, dismissed every dish as being unhealthy for Sancho to eat,...
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