Once widespread across Europe and many other lands, they used to grind all the grain into flour, provide power to sawmills, make paper and more.
Bosch
Three panels, hinged together, first for an altarpiece, later for secular narratives. Examples from 1420, through those of Bosch, to the Eve of St Agnes by Arthur Hughes.
From Christ’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem, through the Last Supper, to his trials and crowning with thorns.
From Dürer’s groundbreaking hare to the fable of the hare and the tortoise, a hidden hare in a well-known Turner and a white rabbit for the first of the month?
The origin of the conical hat worn by Jews. and that worn by dunces. Cavaliers and Roundheads, crowns and mitres, the cardinal’s red biretta, and Dante’s chaperon.
Curtains around 4-poster beds, revealing hidden opinions, framing a cameo landscape, showing time and place, and in a trompe l’oeil still life.
Son of Pieter the Elder, brother of Pieter the Younger, and father of Jan the Younger, collaborator with Rubens and others in some of the finest paintings of the 16th-17th centuries.
One for sorrow, two for joy, according to the rhyme. Magpies play cameo roles in several major paintings, as shown here.
In Bosch’s Garden of Earthly Delights, animals charmed by Orpheus, the story of Rebecca and Eliezer, and accompanying the three Magi to the Nativity.
Stories involving swimmers, including Hero and Leander, the Ship of Fools, and a poem by Thomas Gray, with paintings by Bosch, Rubens and others.
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