Faust signs his contract with the devil in his own blood. Paintings by Ary Scheffer and others, and an engraving by Delacroix tell this story vividly.
Delacroix
Tasso’s narrative is as complex and interwoven as these six leading characters, from the pious Godfrey to the scheming sorceress Armida.
Twenty cantos summarised with the very best of their paintings by Delacroix, Teniers the Younger, Domenico Tintoretto, Poussin, Tiepolo, and others.
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.
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