Before we masked up for Covid, covering the face had connotations. Here they’re explored, from the niqāb and widow’s veil to the aversion that makes us voyeur.
Corinth
A glimpse inside Botticelli’s studio, an artist who foresaw his own death, an unusual Birth of Venus, the Ship Fools, and more painted stories from 1922.
Caillebotte’s gardening almost stopped him from painting, and Vincent van Gogh shows vegetable gardens on the hill of Montmartre.
The stories of Samson, whose prodigious strength depended on not having his hair cut, and Mary Magdalene, who dried Christ’s feet with her hair.
Ignored bodies, a complex chain from the head of John the Baptist, and Velazquez’s royal portrait which omits the King and Queen,
More wives from Raffaela Zeppa, through Lovis Corinth’s Charlotte Berend, to Pierre Bonnard’s Marthe, plus two husbands.
A story of jealousy, adultery, treachery and race, which resulted in an early professional actress in a lead, and the first major lead for a black actor.
How we got from one of the most senior gods, and a winged young man, to a chubby infant armed with a bow and arrow, let alone an unknown former saint.
Introduced to Europe from the New World in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I loved them, and Jan Brueghel the elder and his son included them in many of their paintings.
Does analysis of literary plots offer anything to the understanding of visual narrative in painting? A journey through some of the best painted stories in quest of the answer.
The Eclectic Light Company 