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Changing Paintings: 35 The tragedy of Cephalus and Procris
Ovid ends Book 7 of his Metamorphoses with one of his best stories. It’s told by Cephalus, the envoy from Athens, to the sons of King Aeacus on the island of Aegina, following the king’s account of the...
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Reading visual art: 154 Courts of law A
Depictions of courts of law aren’t common, and fall into five main groups: those showing cases and events from legend and history, modern documentary records of trials, others purely fictional, some...
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Reading visual art: 155 Courts of law B
As lawyers rose to prominence in life during the nineteenth century, two artists in particular targeted them with their scathing satire: Honoré Daumier and Jean-Louis Forain. Honoré Daumier...
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Heroines 14: The crime of faithfulness
Stories of the abduction of women and their enforced marriage have persisted for an extraordinary length of time. One of the most popular, and still much-loved, musicals is Seven Brides for Seven...
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Heroines 15: Sappho and the ferryman
The little we know of Sappho is, like the little remaining of her poetry, scant and fragmentary. She was arguably the greatest classical Greek lyrical poet, a lesbian of renown, and was alleged to have...
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Changing Paintings: 36 Theseus and the Minotaur
Book 8 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses resumes his account of King Minos of Crete waging war against the Greeks, and the hapless Cephalus who had inadvertently killed his wife Procris with his javelin....
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Reading visual art: 156 Hospitality in myth
In the past, hospitality to strangers was high on the list of virtues expected of everyone, however rich or poor they might have been. To ensure that those living in the ancient world respected the...
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Reading visual art: 157 Hospitality in life
The previous article looked at paintings of three classical myths which extolled the principle of hospitality to strangers by warning people of the dire consequences of failing to respect it: Atlas was...
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Changing Paintings: 37 The fall of Icarus
The architect and artificer Daedalus had been introduced by Ovid in his account of the death of the Minotaur, and the next myth in Metamorphoses tells of the tragic end to Daedalus’ stay on the island...
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Reading visual art: 158 Voyeur, classical
As a visual art, painting is all about looking and seeing, and one of its more discomforting themes is that of the voyeur, the eyes that shouldn’t be there, looking at something they really shouldn’t....
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Reading visual art: 159 Voyeur, modern
In the first article of these two considering voyeurism in paintings, I examined classical examples from myth and the popular Biblical stories of King David and Bathsheba, and Susanna and the Elders....
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Heroines 20, 21: Cydippe’s apple of love
There’s more to classical Greek and Roman myths than rape, murder and metamorphoses. Sometimes they tell touching stories of true love, like that of Acontius and Cydippe. You won’t have heard of them,...
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Heroines: Introduction, overview and contents
Ovid’s Heroines (Heroides in the original Latin) are among his more controversial writings. They could have been written early in his career, or quite late, and some have claimed that few of its...
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Changing Paintings: 38 The Calydonian Boar Hunt
As Ovid approaches the midpoint of Book 8 of his Metamorphoses, he has just left Daedalus burying his son Icarus after their flight from Crete went tragically wrong. He then relates one of the greatest...
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Reading visual art: 160 Birth
Despite the hopes of the taxman, there really only are two certainties in life, that everyone alive was born, and we’ll every one of us die. This week, in this series examining how to read visual art,...
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Reading visual art: 161 Death
Although birth hasn’t proved such a popular theme in paintings, there are countless depictions of death. Dominant among them in European works are those of the Crucifixion, but in this brief survey I...
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Changing Paintings: 39 The feast of Achelous
At the end of the Calydonian boar hunt, what should have been an occasion for rejoicing turned sour when the two sons of Thestius objected to Atalanta being given the prize, and the enraged Meleager...
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Reading visual art: 162 Tents, ancient
Since ancient times there have been some who need to live in temporary shelters. If you don’t have a dense wood to hand, then one of the better options is a tent consisting of animal skins or fabric...
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Reading visual art: 163 Tents, modern
In the first of these two articles showing tents in paintings, I covered those depicting historical battles of the more distant past. Today’s sequel brings those up to date with tents of the late...
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Changing Paintings: 40 Hospitality to strangers and virtue rewarded
Achelous the river god is hosting Theseus, Ixion’s son Lelex, and others at a banquet. Once Achelous has told the story of the nymphs who were turned into the Echinades, Lelex launches into the next,...
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