Brushstrokes and painterly marks in the portraits of Gainsborough, Reynolds, Angelica Kauffmann, Jacques-Louis David and James Tissot.
David
The son of Thetis, he was dipped in the water of the River Styx to make him invulnerable, apart from his left heel. He went missing from the thousand ships, when he went into hiding, but was recovered by Ulysses.
Among the leaders of the French Revolution, he was almost guillotined alongside Robespierre, but got on well with Napoleon, and was even offered the post of court painter to King Louis XVIII.
Successful on his 4th attempt at the Prix de Rome, he became the leading Neoclassical painter and painted history and other narratives. Then he became embroiled in the French Revolution.
Fine paintings from Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Gerard David, Beccafumi, Lavinia Fontana, Tintoretto, El Greco and Murillo.
How Lycurgus got the Spartans to keep his laws, the 300 at Thermopylae, a Spartan poet supporting warriors in the 2nd Messenian War, and the role of Sparta in the start of the war against Troy.
The remarkable story of how Lycurgus laid down the oral laws of Sparta, to create the perfect male warrior. Paintings by Degas, Delacroix, David and others.
Perseus and Andromeda, the death of Medusa, Proserpine abducted by Pluto to Hades, weaving contest between Minerva and Arachne, Lycians turned into frogs, Marsyas flayed, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and the origins of Theseus.
Romulus ploughs the boundary of the city of Rome, then defeats the Sabine king Tatius, marries his daughter, and is eventually taken to be the god Quirinus.
Ariadne, Bacchantes, Sappho, Queen Guinevere, Salome and Judith in ecstasy, in paintings by Lovis Corinth, David, Rossetti, Gustav Klimt and others.
The Eclectic Light Company 