With Umberto Eco as our guide, explore Parnassus, the Garden of Earthly Delights, Alcina’s island, Colchis, and the Garden of the Hesperides.
Bosch
Bosch’s two wayfarers, Courbet’s Stone Breakers, and wonderful paintings by Brett, Troyon and Ford Madox Brown show those who lived on the road.
Sphinxes by Ingres and Moreau, Watts’ Minotaur, Blake’s Cerberus, Hieronymus Bosch, and more monsters.
Wanderers, wayfarers and pilgrims have walked across continents in search of wisdom, spiritual enlightenment, or a bite to eat and sheltered sleep.
Paintings of the Frog Prince and variants by Marianne Stokes, Kolo Moser, and Pierre Bonnard. Medea by Sandys and Waterhouse.
In the Renaissance, the unicorn wasn’t legendary at all, but had appeared in classical accounts of natural history. It was as real as a rhinoceros.
Paintings of windmills from Hieronymus Bosch, Rembrandt, Jacob van Ruisdael, Thomas Girtin, and others.
Easily told in words, stories are harder to paint. Here are five main methods used, explained and shown in examples from the masters.
What was thought to be an unusual painting by Hieronymus Bosch turns out to be part of a triptych. But what is the Ship of Fools about?
Myrrh makes its appearance as one of the 3 gifts of the Magi, then as an attribute of Mary Magdalene. A history in paintings by Bosch and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 