Twenty cantos summarised with the very best of their paintings by Delacroix, Teniers the Younger, Domenico Tintoretto, Poussin, Tiepolo, and others.
Delacroix
Both Poussin and Delacroix painted important series just before they died. Others here from Bouguereau, Mucha, and the Japanese Araki.
The seductive sorceress Armida is quietly wreaking havoc among the crusaders besieging Jerusalem. Then Erminia leaves the city, in search of her love, the wounded warrior Tancred.
The crusaders start their march down the Mediterranean coast towards Jerusalem. Gabriel appears to Godfrey, and a young couple are saved from being burned at the stake by a ‘pagan’ woman knight.
An odd story about the leader of the Ukrainian Cossacks and his youthful indiscretion becomes a poem by Byron, and finally burlesque titillation.
Contemporary of Géricault and Delacroix, he had an interest in mediaeval history, and was intimately involved in politics, including the accession of King Louis-Philippe to the throne in 1830, and the Greek War of Independence.
The first of two looking at the telling of English legends in paintings: Robin Hood and his ‘Merry Men’, popular for the last 500 years.
He established the unique regime and society of Sparta, with communal meals, harsh selection of newborn babies, and devotion to the state. He enforced those with selfless ingenuity.
How could I follow my 85-part account of Ovid’s Metamorphoses? With the greatest collection of biographies of classical figures, an inspiration to Charlotte Corday herself.
She saves Theseus’ life by her ingenuity, which wins her marriage to him. But at the first opportunity he abandons her and sails away.
The Eclectic Light Company 