From 1450-1650, paintings of ‘Christian sibyls’ who foretold the birth of Christ, became important motifs for painting. Here’s a selection.
Dossi
A powerful and well-educated woman, rumoured to have murdered one of her three husbands, painted at the time, and later by Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
What happens to men who Circe desires, but refuse her? This one was turning into a woodpecker, his men into wild beasts, and his wife simply vanished into thin air.
Not an easy story to paint, Ovid’s clear account has been largely ignored. Because it is now too absurd to show?
Strikingly original, its details are becoming sinister and idiosyncratic. We also discover why he signed with an owl, and called himself Bosch.
Was painterly style a Venetian phenomenon, or was it more widespread in the early sixteenth century?
