Buried in the introduction to day 4, this became La Fontaine’s fable of Brother Philippe’s Geese, was painted by Boucher and others, entered French idiom, and was alluded to by a vanished painting by Gauguin.
Boucher
A common convention in paintings of classical myth, the river god was a bearded old man with a put pouring forth water, often seen with a Naiad, his daughter.
A succession of victories, many by his personal bravery and leadership from the front. But ultimately they were unsuccessful – and Pyrrhic.
Rembrandt’s masterpiece looking deep into Bathsheba’s predicament, but it was von Stuck who first suggested that she may have been a willing participant.
How Vertumnus tried to trick Pomona into loving him, then told her a threatening story. Neither worked: it was being himself that won her in the end.
Paintings of odalisques, slave markets, and Turkish baths became popular in the nineteenth century. What was the Orientalist fantasy, and why?
Meleager is burned to death by proxy, his sisters transformed to guinea hens. Then Achelous transforms nymphs into islands.
The North Wind carries off his betrothed, in eight superb paintings by Rubens, Boucher, Evelyn De Morgan, and others. A miniature history of painting.
Less than 30 lines of the book are devoted to the abduction of Europa, which has become its best-known and most-often painted story.
A triple bill of myths, ingeniously interwoven into a story with four different metamorphoses – and some superb paintings.
