Clik here to view.
Reading visual art: 33 Picture in a picture, landscapes
The great majority of paintings, even those showing complex narrative, try to persuade your brain that they’re really natural three-dimensional views. A few weeks ago, I looked at some exceptions...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 34 Picture in a picture, stories
In yesterday’s look at embedded landscapes, I showed one of the series of the five senses painted by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul Rubens, for its distant landscape. This article moves on to...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amazons at War
Now most commonly associated with the world’s largest online retailer, or its largest river, in classical mythology the Amazons were a tribe of women warriors. Coming from somewhere far to the east, or...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Amazon Queens
Aside from their war with the Greeks, examined in the first of these two articles, those women warriors the Amazons appear in several other myths and legends. They have also proved popular figures for...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 35 Chimeras and devils
This week’s two articles about reading visual art go in quest of one of the animals in the extensive bestiary of classical mythology, the Chimera. It has since come to refer to a creature with multiple...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 36 Modern chimeras
In the first of these two articles I started my quest for the Chimera from classical myth, a fire-breathing monster from Lycia. This was generally agreed to be a lion with the head and neck of a goat...
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Memoriam Pierre-Paul Prud’hon 1: Joséphine
Two hundred years ago, the French artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758–1823) died in Paris. He’s another of that legion who were rated as masters in their day, but have since been largely forgotten....
View ArticleClik here to view.
In Memoriam Pierre-Paul Prud’hon 2: Nemesis
Two hundred years ago today, the French artist Pierre-Paul Prud’hon (1758–1823) died in Paris. In the first of these two articles commemorating his death, I looked at some of his paintings up to his...
View ArticleClik here to view.
February fill dyke in paintings: Noah’s Flood
There’s an old English proverb “February fill dyke, be it black or be it white”, referring to the rain (black) or snow (white) that usually falls heavily during the month and fills all the ditches....
View ArticleClik here to view.
February fill dyke in paintings: Other floods
In the first of these two articles centred on the English proverb of “February fill dyke, be it black or be it white”, I showed a selection of paintings of the Great Flood from the Old Testament book...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trojan Epics: Introduction to a new painting series
For most of us, the epic stories of the Trojan war are Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, and maybe Virgil’s much later Aeneid. But Homer’s two epic poems are the sole survivors of a whole cycle that began...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 37 Fables to 1800
The title given to most older paintings, and some far more recent, usually wasn’t that given by the artist, but is often derived from documents claiming the painting’s provenance. It may have been a...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 38 Fables in the 19th century
Prior to the nineteenth century, fables had been prominent in two periods of painting: during the Dutch Golden Age, when they were based on contemporary versions of “Aesop’s Fables”, and in the work of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trojan Epics: 1 Zeus’s plan and a wedding feast
The first epic in this cycle is thought to have been recorded after Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey, in the Cypria, but it must have existed in oral versions from about 1200 BCE. Although the original has...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 39 Major Norse deities
Deities from the classical Mediterranean civilisations appear in innumerable paintings. If you need a key to identify a Greek or Roman deity, try these: Goddesses and Gods. Northern European cultures,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 40 Minor Norse deities, the Wild Hunt
In the first of this pair of articles, I showed some paintings of the major deities of the Norse pantheon, and their myths. This article continues with lesser-known deities and other figures,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trojan Epics: 2 Paris and his Judgement
Zeus had decided that the only way to solve the problem of there being too many mortals on earth was to arrange a war between the Greeks and Trojans. He set up the marriage of Thetis to Peleus to serve...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 41 Signatures and dedications
This week I look at the paradoxical practice of including writing in a painting, and what it can tell us about the reading of that image. Today’s article concentrates on signatures and their...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Reading visual art: 42 Words in the story
It’s unusual for paintings to contain words beyond the artist’s signature and any dedication, as considered in yesterday’s article. In terms of popular neuro-psychology, we’d suppose that when reading...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Trojan Epics: 3 Helen and her abduction
Zeus’s plan for a war between the Greeks and Trojans had advanced well. Peleus and Thetis were married, and she was soon to become pregnant with Achilles, who would become the leading warrior of the...
View Article