The goddess Diana, Selene, the Virgin and Child, or is it just the moon in the sky of a pastoral landscape? Paintings from Bosch to van Gogh.
Breton
A symbol of the harvest with Ceres, a weapon for Bacchantes, the sign of the Divine Reaper Saturn, used by Iris to cut locks of hair, and for cutting the cereal crop.
Neptune’s trident has three tines, while Pluto’s is a bident with only two. Or it could be a pitchfork. How to read them in paintings.
Barefoot and sometimes surprising, as Christ washes the disciples’ feet, and other feet are missing altogether. Barefoot means poverty too.
Paintings of open fires and stoves from 1565 to 1884 show how we lived through the winter before central heating.
Spinning natural fibres like wool into yarn was “women’s work” and had several connotations, here explored in paintings, and the origin of the word ‘spinster’.
Not just the cereal harvest, but here paintings of the fruit harvest, from Bassano and Poussin, with grapes, figs, apples, blackberries, to Berthe Morisot.
Paintings showing the ragged tatters work by peasants and labourers, from social realism and Naturalism between 1850-90.
An offshoot of still life paintings of food, it was never very popular, and most of these are decidedly odd. From Jan Brueghel the elder to
Bishop’s crosier, monarch’s sceptre, field-marshal’s baton, or just another fashion accessory?
The Eclectic Light Company 