How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
Bouguereau
Fraudsters, the incestuous Myrrha, mother of Adonis, a counterfeiter, Potiphar’s wife, then the treacherous who betrayed their kin.
Nicolas Poussin’s superb set from the end of his career, a series of women by Bouguereau, Delacroix’s set of myths, Mucha, Crane and a Japanese set from 1917.
Is this Hecate, triple-headed goddess of the night, with owl and bats, or another of Blake’s mythology, representing spiritual beauty? A misidentified painting explained.
The tragic story of Quasimodo, hunchback bell-ringer of the cathedral, and Esmeralda, a beautiful young dancer, and her pet goat Djali.
The first transformed into a Lotus Tree for picking lotus flowers; the second dissolved in her own tears to become a spring; the third changing gender in time for their wedding.
The King of Thrace who raped his sister-in-law, cut out her tongue, and imprisoned her in a remote cabin. Her revenge is brutal and unforgiving.
After Courbet, the Great Wave influenced Bierstadt, Gauguin, Walter Crane, Henry Moret, Georges Lacombe, and became truly iconic.
This artist’s colony developed in the 1860s, and soon became popular with Americans studying in Paris. It attained fame with Paul Gauguin, who first visited in 1886.
The modified myth of Pandora remained popular well into the 20th century, when it must have seemed even more appropriate with war and pandemic.
The Eclectic Light Company 