Worn by the figure of death to obscure its face, as a cowl on a monk’s robes, in religious and academic uniforms, as a chaperon on Dante, and for the traveller when migrating.
Delacroix
Armida takes her ten knights, while Erminia secretly leaves Jerusalem to minister to the wounded Tancred. She flees and becomes lost in the country, where she finds a family of shepherds.
The crusaders start their march on the Holy City of Jerusalem, going from Tartus to reach Emmaus, just as all able-bodied Christians are banished from the city by its ruler Aladine.
How Dante meets up with Virgil, and is guided by him down to the deepest circle of Hell. About the other two books, covering Purgatory and Paradise.
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.
Drawing the chariot of Bacchus/Dionysus, fighting with Christian martyrs, in a Paris zoo, or torrential rain in a tropical storm, or being hunted to be turned into a skin.
Nicolas Poussin’s superb set from the end of his career, a series of women by Bouguereau, Delacroix’s set of myths, Mucha, Crane and a Japanese set from 1917.
Every painter should have a suit of armour hanging in their studio, and those of German Romantics, Pre-Raphaelites and others, of Don Quixote.
Virgil leads Dante through the gate of Hell, with its inscription ‘Abandon hope all ye who enter here’. Charon is persuaded to carry them across with the souls of the dead to enter Hell.
If there’s one book every head of state and leader should read, it’s Dante’s Inferno. Introduction to a new series showing paintings of this first part of his Divine Comedy.
The Eclectic Light Company 