A period in which the winters were exceptionally cold, landscapes showing folk skating on frozen canals and rivers, promenading, and playing kolf, and ancestor of modern golf.
Category Archive: Painting
Applying thinner layers of paint, or glazes, developed optical effects that were widely used into the late 19th century, but have now fallen from favour.
Written by Giovanni Boccaccio by 1352 and revised in 1370-71, it consists of a hundred stories told by 7 women and 3 men who fled Florence during the Black Death. Some of those tales have been extensively painted.
Completed her training in about 1553, met Michelangelo in Rome in 1554, where she became an established portraitist, invited to the court of King Philip II of Spain, advised the young van Dyck, and died in her early 90s.
Four women painters who achieved greatness against the odds, between 1580 and 1665: Lavinia Fontana, Clara Peeters, Artemisia Gentileschi, and Elisabetta Sirani.
Tuna fishing in Spain, goldfish sold as pets or in a Berlin flat, underwater with a diver, and in many still lifes, including those of William Merritt Chase, the master of fish.
Venus born surrounded by colourful fish, in the element water, in a feeding frenzy by Turner’s Slave Ship, with mermaids, and brought ashore ready to eat.
How Dutch painters studying in Italy came to be influenced by Caravaggio, and took his style back to Utrecht, where they became known as Utrecht Caravaggists.
Composition and effects of different types of varnish, with its visual effects, and how it can make a painting unreadable when it contains accumulated dirt.
How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
