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Reading visual art: 61 Cupids, putti, cherubs
Chubby infants with wings are common adornments of paintings, and are often more than mere decoration. Is that a Cupid (or even the Cupid), a putto, amorino, or cherub? Only when we know which, can we...
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Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 6 Women of Algiers
After Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) had redeemed his reputation at the Salon in 1831 with Liberty Leading the People (1830), he had some history paintings to complete, among them a commission from the...
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Reading visual art: 62 Cornucopia
The cornucopia is literally a horn (Latin cornu) of plenty (Latin copia), the horn of an animal overflowing with an abundance of fruit, other edible delicacies and flowers. It’s a symbol of rich...
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Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 7 The Jewish Wedding
After his return from North Africa, and his first successful Orientalist painting drawn from that experience, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) wasn’t short of work. In addition to a steady stream of...
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Reading visual art: 63 What’s drawing that chariot?
Chariots are two-wheeled carts intended for performance rather than load carriage. They traditionally come with three engine options: two-, three- and four-horsepower. For the average charioteer or...
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Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 8 Ophelia and histories
As Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was busy decorating the Palais-Bourbon in Paris, he found time to complete a succession of easel paintings based largely on literary works. Among these were pioneering...
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Legends of Orpheus in paint: 1 To the underworld
Orpheus was the greatest bard, musician and poet of classical Greek myth. This weekend I show a selection of paintings of him, drawn from three main episodes: his ability to charm animals and birds...
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Legends of Orpheus in paint: 2 Loss and death
In the first of these two articles showing paintings of the myths of Orpheus, I had left him convincing Persephone and Hades that Eurydice should be allowed to leave the Underworld, on the strict...
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Trojan Epics: 20 Agamemnon’s fate
Years before Odysseus reached Ithaca, other Greek warriors had returned home from the sacked city of Troy. Among them were Menelaus, King of Sparta and former husband of Helen, Pyrrhus (or Neoptolemos)...
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Reading visual art: 64 Damned to impossible tasks
There’s a special place in the Underworld for some in Greek mythology, for those damned to perform impossible tasks for eternity. Although a tiny backwater in classical myth, these unfortunates have...
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Trojan Epics: 21 Flight of Aeneas
The last full epic in the Trojan cycle is that told most eloquently by Virgil in his Aeneid, the story of Aeneas the Trojan and his escape from the burning city of Troy. From there he had his own...
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Reading visual art: 65 Wells
For much of the world, until the arrival of piped water supplies from the nineteenth century onwards, fresh water was likely to come from a well, a hole dug into the ground that is deep enough for...
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Trojan Epics: 22 Dido in Carthage
Following the battle between Aeneas and his men with the harpies, Celaeno directs them to leave her island and head for Italy, where she prophesies that they will become so hungry that they will eat...
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Reading visual art: 66 Herms and terms
Sculptures occasionally appear in paintings, and while most are straightforward to read, there are two special breeds that deserve careful interpretation: herms and terms. The Classical Greek herma,...
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Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 12 Sky, sea, flowers
With his decorative paintings in the Palais Bourbon and the Palais du Luxembourg complete at the end of 1847, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) had already been discussing his next major project, but that...
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Trojan Epics: 23 The Cumaean sibyl
With smoke already rising from the funeral pyre of his lover Queen Dido of Carthage, Aeneas and his fleet sailed north from the coast of Africa towards his destiny in Italy. The fleet had further...
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Ukrainian Painters: Mykola Ivasyuk
For the moment, I have reached the end of my list of Ukrainian painters whose work is out of copyright, and for whom I can get sufficient information and usable images of their art. I conclude with...
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Paintings of Eugène Delacroix: 13 Tales and tempests
In April 1849, Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) was commissioned to undertake his last and greatest decorative painting, of a side chapel in the Church of Saint-Sulpice in Paris. He started this when he...
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Trojan Epics: 24 Latium and deification
Aeneas and his survivors from Troy finally settled in Latium, where King Latinus had been advised by oracles that his daughter Lavinia would marry a foreigner, rather than the neighbouring King Turnus...
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Reading visual art: 68 Eyes ≠ 2
One of the almost invariant characteristics of humans is that they have two eyes, even when one or both might not be capable of sight. Myth and legend has brought us two well-painted instances of...
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