A series to examine visual development of figures within narrative paintings, according to their type of plot. The fall of Icarus used as an example.
Brueghel
Although it was Leon Battista Alberti, in the southern Renaissance, who first developed the subject of composition in […]
Miniature landscape views embedded in more conventional paintings were not uncommon during the Renaissance, before landscape was established as a genre.
Palaces of Albert VII, Rubens’ own Het Steen, an imposing Swiss castle, Wivenhoe Park in hiding, and an Australian pastoral station.
Huge clam shells were a common feature in paintings of the birth of Venus, and other classical myths. They also feature in many ‘vanitas’ paintings.
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
From the Adoration of the Shepherds to the Corydon Shepherd of Virgil’s Eclogues, they all had their crooks.
It’s unusual and difficult to make humorous paintings. Here’s a fine selection from Bosch, Brueghel and Rubens to the late 19th century.
After 1600, series of four paintings fell from favour, and artists, particularly the Brueghel family, combined all into single images.
An exotic import until the Romans enlisted her support against the Carthaginians, her chariot is drawn by a lion and lioness – who desecrated an old shrine.
