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Reading visual art: 74 Size
Relative size of objects and figures is one of the dominant cues for the perception of depth, but there’s more to size than the three-dimensional illusions it brings. Put four identical elongated...
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The bicentenary of Alexandre Cabanel: 2
In my first article celebrating the bicentenary of the birth of the French painter Alexandre Cabanel, I ended with a painting of his from shortly after he had been appointed a professor at the École...
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Arthur: 4 Sir Lancelot’s arrival
With Merlin sealed in a cavern by Nyneve and Morgan le Fay hiding in the land of Gorre, the young King Arthur was hoping for a quieter time in his court, with his one hundred and fifty Knights of the...
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Reading visual art: 75 Cats
Although cats were probably domesticated (if that’s the right word) at the dawn of civilisation in the Fertile Crescent, they weren’t popular as house pets among the Greeks or Romans during classical...
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Paintings of Bathsheba and King David: voyeurism rewarded 1
At the start of this month I looked at one of the most popular stories from the Old Testament featuring a woman in its leading role, that of Susanna and the Elders, where Susanna’s virtue is maintained...
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Paintings of Bathsheba and King David: voyeurism rewarded 2
By 1650, most of the paintings telling the Old Testament story of Bathsheba and King David had shown its opening scene, featuring the nude figure of Bathsheba in the foreground, and a distant king...
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Arthur: 5 Tristram, Isode and the potion
After setting up the first of the two love triangles involving King Arthur and his knights, that between the King, Queen Guenevere and Sir Lancelot, Sir Thomas Malory proceeds to the second, to which...
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Reading visual art: 76 Dogs A, Workers
Dogs are man’s best friend, domestic companions or workers that are dependent on their master or mistress, and love above all else to please them. They’ve lived alongside humans for at least the last...
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Reading visual art: 77 Dogs B, Companions
In the first article of this pair, yesterday, I showed examples of dogs playing roles in stories, and in working partnerships with humans. To conclude this topic, today I show a small sample of the...
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Arthur: 6 Death of Tristram
Sir Tristram (Tristan) had brought La Beale Isode (Isolde) from her parents, the King and Queen of Ireland, to marry his uncle King Mark of Cornwall. Tristram and Isode had already fallen in love, and...
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Reading visual art: 78 Shepherds and sheep
Ever since the domestication of the sheep well over ten millennia ago, people have been caring for flocks, moving them between pasture, helping care for and protect young lambs, and selecting those to...
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Reading visual art: 79 Pigs and swineherds
Pigs were domesticated around ten millennia ago, from wild boars in the Fertile Crescent, and independently in China. Since then, they have remained a popular farm animal, and a source of food for...
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Judith and Holofernes: 1 Murder
Warning: this article includes images of paintings showing graphic details of human decapitation. Life before the twentieth century wasn’t the clean and generally compassionate existence that we have...
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Judith and Holofernes: 2 Target or trophy
Yesterday, in the first of these two articles showing paintings telling the Biblical story of Judith’s murder of Nebuchadnezzar’s general Holofernes, I concentrated on the moments of his beheading,...
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Reading visual art: 80 Horse with wings
Although I have yet to see any horse with wings, they were prominent in the past, both in classical mythology and in Renaissance literature. They fall into two main categories: Pegasus and hippogriffs....
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Arthur: 7 Galahad and the quest
For many who gave their accounts of the legends of Arthur and his knights of the Round Table, the central story is the quest for the Holy Grail, and the role of Sir Galahad. According to Sir Thomas...
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Reading visual art: 81 Language of flowers A
In many European cultures flowers have developed into a visual language, in which particular species have a meaning that often isn’t obvious from their appearance. Naturally this has varied across...
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Reading visual art: 82 Language of flowers B
After the Renaissance, the language of flowers continued in European paintings but didn’t really blossom again until the Pre-Raphaelites and those associated with the movement in Britain during the...
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The rape of Lucretia in paintings
This weekend, in my series looking at paintings of narratives centred on women, I tackle two tragedies: the first is the rape of the Roman noblewoman Lucretia, leading to her suicide. Tomorrow I look...
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Arthur: 8 Galahad’s sword and shield
Following a vision of the Holy Grail before the knights of the Round Table, all one hundred and fifty of them had vowed to leave on the quest to find it. After staying together overnight, they each...
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