John Collier’s latest ‘problem picture’ became the most popular event in the Royal Academy’s annual exhibition.
Alma-Tadema
More virtuoso glassware as painted by William Holman Hunt, Chase, De Nittis, Vallotton, and others in the 19th century.
Tintoretto to a friend, Antonello’s cartellini, Alma-Tadema’s dedication of a wedding present in some graffiti, and some mysterious Venetians.
Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Tintoretto, William Blake, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting of Sappho each rely on words.
Gretchen and Faust become lovers, but her mother dies as a result of Faust’s sleeping potion, and he kills her brother in a sword-fight.
Viewed as classic and fit for narrative painting, Faust is about good and evil, a powerful story which has inspired powerful paintings.
As Europe slid into the Dark Ages, one king emerged to rule much of what is now France, with one religion, a code of law, and its capital in Paris.
The story of a Renaissance city-state on Sardinia, a good mother, and the state funeral of a great Greek general on Sicily – some of the paintings shown.
Roman soldier of great valour, successful commander, but a disaster of a statesman. His story was told by Shakespeare, and in many paintings by Poussin, Kaufmann, and others.
A successful general and much-loved statesman, he was responsible for building the Parthenon and Acropolis. Yet he gave his wife to another man, and lived with a courtesan who ran a brothel.
