Popularly intended to transform base metals like lead into gold, alchemy relied on special glassware like alembics, and is included with other ‘dark arts’ in paintings.
Collier
Expressing a weariness with this life and yearning for the next, they originated in Flanders, but soon became popular in the Dutch Republic in its Golden Age.
By the end of the 19th century, problem pictures were popular features in the press. Most successful of British painters was John Collier, but they soon died out in the early 20th century.
Significant paintings based on The Sleeping Beauty, Mariana and Mariana in the South, and Break, Break, Break.
One of the most private areas in a house or apartment, shown here by Degas, Maximilien Luce, Pierre Bonnard, Édouard Vuillard, Eric Ravilious and others.
A member of many of the royal courts of Europe, and featured in several of the plays of William Shakespeare, a jester and entertainer.
Sorolla’s White Slave Trade, a mother’s adultery and break up of her family, the awakened conscience offering redemption, or destitution.
Originating in the Northern Renaissance, these paintings expressed feelings of emptiness, and the futility of earthly life. Examples of these elaborate allegories.
Sleeping Beauty, a morning nude, in sickness, and the deathbed. Killed in bed, two unusual depictions of the Virgin Mary in bed, and one of a bed floating on the River Seine.
Huge divans, closed wooden cabinets, and iron bedsteads. In love, marriage, adultery, problem pictures, and the erotic.
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