The significance of Alberti’s textbook on painting and simplified perspective, followed by Piero’s account of perspective, and Vasari’s new history of painting.
della Francesca
How rendering of the surface texture of fabrics changed during the southern Renaissance, and new techniques were exported to the north.
Was a primordial deity, attendant at Aphrodite’s birth, or her son by Ares/Mars? When did he get his bow and arrows? Answered in fine paintings.
In the Renaissance, the unicorn wasn’t legendary at all, but had appeared in classical accounts of natural history. It was as real as a rhinoceros.
Myrrh makes its appearance as one of the 3 gifts of the Magi, then as an attribute of Mary Magdalene. A history in paintings by Bosch and others.
The use of symbols in paintings from the Renaissance to the start of the nineteenth century, with van Eyck, Rubens, Girodet, and others.
In the Renaissance, while oil painting was still catching on, many of the greatest masterpieces were painted in egg tempera. How, and to what effect?
The standard blue pigment for the Renaissance and on, until about 1710, it was used in many Old Masters before disappearing by 1800.
A beautiful, intense green used by the van Eycks, Tintoretto, Domenichino, and Renoir, it was never popular in oil paints, and quietly died out.
The Eclectic Light Company 