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Reading Visual Art: 183 Sewing for a purpose
Sewing pieces of textile or other sheet materials dates back to the Stone Age if not before, and needles fashioned from bone are among man’s oldest tools. Until the nineteenth century, all forms of...
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Reading Visual Art: 184 Just sewing
In the first of these two articles considering the reading of sewing in paintings, I looked at sewing for a purpose. More commonly, sewing is seen in its own right, as an activity performed almost...
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Painting poetry: Byron’s Mazeppa
In this weekend’s two articles, I look at paintings of the poems of George Gordon Byron (1788-1824), Lord Byron, known best for his gripping tales and the epic Don Juan. Today I concentrate on the...
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Painting poetry: Byron’s Oriental and other tales
Lord Byron’s poem Mazeppa was briefly popular in paintings during the first half of the nineteenth century, but was by no means his only work to have been painted. When Byron was on his Grand Tour of...
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Changing Paintings: 55 The Wedding of Peleus and Thetis
After two humorous stories poking fun at King Midas, Ovid makes a start on the central theme for much of the remainder of his Metamorphoses, retelling the myths about Troy, and how its fall led to the...
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Reading Visual Art: 185 Poison A
In this week’s two articles about reading paintings, I tackle one of the greatest challenges in narrative art: how to depict the purpose or intent of an inanimate object, specifically here a poisonous...
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Reading Visual Art: 186 Poison B
In this second article looking at how difficult it is to depict the purpose or intent of an inanimate object, specifically here a poisonous liquid, I show some more classical history paintings before...
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Changing Paintings: 56 The hawk, kingfishers and a diver
With Peleus and Thetis safely married and the birth of their son Achilles, Ovid brings Book Eleven of his Metamorphoses to a close with a series of less-known myths that have also been rarely depicted....
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Reading Visual Art: 187 Poster, messages
No one knows when people started attaching big sheets of paper to walls as posters, but it wasn’t until large-format colour printing became popular in the middle of the nineteenth century that the...
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Reading Visual Art: 188 Poster, adverts
In this second article looking at examples of the use of posters in paintings, and how their contents can be relevant, I move on to the last couple of decades of the nineteenth century. By this time...
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Changing Paintings: 57 The sacrifice of Iphigenia
As Ovid ended Book Eleven of his Metamorphoses with some unrelated myths, he returns to the story of the war against Troy in the opening of Book Twelve. King Priam, father of Aesacus and King of Troy,...
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Reading Visual Art: 189 Lightning of the gods
If there’s one thing sure to put the fear of God into someone it’s a nearby bolt of lightning. One of the most understandable associations of lightning is thus with deities, particularly those who are...
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Reading Visual Art: 190 Lightning in the sky
In the first of these two articles looking at the reading of lightning in paintings, I showed examples drawn from mythical and religious narratives. Today I start with a symbolic use, then consider the...
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Changing Paintings: 58 A wedding ruined by centaurs
Borne on the fair winds brought by the near-sacrifice of Agamemnon’s daughter Iphigenia, the thousand Greek ships sail for the shores of Troy. The Trojans had already become aware that they were on...
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Reading Visual Art: 191 Curtains of concealment and revelation
Curtains, drapes of fabric suspended from rails or lines, have been around a long time, but have only recently become popular for providing an internal screen for windows. Although they have other...
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Reading Visual Art: 192 Curtains as a device
In addition to their use for concealment and revelation in paintings, curtains serve other purposes, often as a visual device, or in their everyday roles. They have been widely used through history to...
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Changing Paintings: 59 The death of Achilles
As Ovid reaches the end of Book Twelve of his Metamorphoses, Nestor is still telling stories to the feast in honour of Achilles’ victory over Cycnus in the Trojan War. He has just completed the long...
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Reading Visual Art: 193 Altars, early
Most religions centre their ceremonies and worship around a raised horizontal surface, a stone slab, table or platform referred to as an altar. In some pre-Christian religions altars are used for...
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Reading Visual Art: 194 Altars, later
Given the great many paintings commissioned as altarpieces, it’s perhaps surprising that relatively few others depicted Christian altars. When you might expect them to, for example in Nicolas Poussin’s...
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Reading Visual Art: 195 Hats with meaning
It wasn’t that long ago that it was most unusual to go out without wearing a hat. Although they’ve made something of a comeback in recent decades, in much of the world they’re still far from popular...
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