Descending past the Minotaur of Crete, they reach a group of centaurs and travel on past famous killers, into a wood of thorn trees of those who committed suicide.
Botticelli
Love is blind, so is Cupid, as well as the personification of Fortune. Also applied to those about to be executed, and to celebrate our sense of sight in a widespread game of blind man’s buff.
He taught, and travelled more. Paintings include ‘Death, the Reaper’ and one of the last of his major oil paintings, ‘A Masque for the Four Seasons’ with its references to Botticelli’s Primavera.
Now known as one of the leading illustrators of children’s books, he was also an accomplished and recognised painter. Here are some narratives from his early career.
Dante and Virgil enter the first circle of Hell, Limbo, where those who never sinned but weren’t baptised in the Christian faith are confined.
First imported through Venice by 1300, it became more precious than gold until it could be made synthetically from 1830. The queen of pigments.
If there’s one book every head of state and leader should read, it’s Dante’s Inferno. Introduction to a new series showing paintings of this first part of his Divine Comedy.
The red that lasts hundreds of years without fading, but it’s a highly toxic salt of mercury. Used in European paintings from the Romans to the late 19th century.
From Botticelli’s Primavera to floral meadows of the Spring, with Millais, Millet, Böcklin, Walter Crane, Dennis Miller Bunker, and an unknown Italian Impressionist.
Pitched battles at the weddings of Hippodame and Pirithous, and Andromeda and Perseus. The Trojan War resulting from the wedding of Thetis and Peleus, and turning water into wine with Veronese.
The Eclectic Light Company 