How repoussoir originated in figurative painting, and came to become a popular compositional technique for landscapes from Giorgione to Turner.
Claude
When to paint looking into the rising or setting sun, or when to put your back to the sun to show its light cast on a mountain peak.
Left as a cliffhanger ending to Book 2, Jupiter assumes the form of a white bull, and lures Europa to sit astride his back before whisking her away across the sea.
The abduction of Proserpine, Acis and Galatea, Scylla and Glaucus, the Battle of Himera, and the funeral of Timoleon, and great Greek general.
A diversion to see the Cumaean Sibyl at Lake Avernus and visit the Underworld produced some of the finest narrative landscapes.
Driven by storms to the coast of North Africa, Aeneas and Dido fall in love, but he can’t stay and must move on in search of his destiny.
Aeneas flees the burning city of Troy with his wife, father and young son. But his wife falls back and is lost. He builds ships and sails on to Delos.
The punishments of Sisyphus, the Danaïds, Ixion, Tityus, Tantalus and Ocnus told in paintings by Titian, Claude, John Singer Sargent, and others.
Paris, Prince of Troy, is the perfect pawn in Zeus’s plan for war. He develops a taste for beautiful women, then accepts Aphrodite’s bribe in the beauty contest of the three goddesses.
Starting from Egyptian blue in ancient times, pigments preferred by painters for sky blue have changed repeatedly. Here’s a brief history.