A strange dream offers hope when plague strikes the citizens of Rome in 293 BCE. They bring a snake back, the god Aesculapius, who saves the city and has a temple on Tiber Island.
Delaunay
How expression of pain became stereotyped in narrative paintings from Caravaggio to Böcklin, a very early Rembrandt and the anguish of a ewe on the death of her lamb.
How Daedalion was turned into a hawk, a wolf was turned into marble, King Ceyx and his wife became kingfishers, and Aesacus was turned into a diver.
Did Sappho really throw herself from the Leucadian Cliff when she was jilted by Phaon the local ferryman, or was Ovid ridiculing the story?
A simple story of an unsuccessful attempt at abduction and rape becomes a compositional struggle. It also results in the death of Heracles.
The punishments of Sisyphus, the DanaĂŻds, Ixion, Tityus, Tantalus and Ocnus told in paintings by Titian, Claude, John Singer Sargent, and others.
Born in southern Ukraine, he trained first in Odesa, then went to St Petersburg briefly. In 1910, he moved to Paris, where he worked from 1925 until transported to Auschwitz in 1943.
Paintings of the death of Ophelia, from the first by Delacroix in 1838 to an etching from 1889. The most popular scene which happens entirely off-stage.
The Prix de Rome changed in the 19th century. Its subjects became more obscure, and its successes few and far between.
A brief overview of the legendary and mythical history of the city and its empire, with links to all the articles in this series, and some of the finest paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 