If you remember one Shakespeare play well, it’s Romeo and Juliet, shown here in paintings of the balcony scene, and the couple’s tragic deaths.
Fuseli
What is that princess doing dressed for a pageant, and what is happening to her swatch of carmine fabric? How billows express motion.
Examples from Wright of Derby, Turner, Millet, van Gogh, Bonnard and others. But how many used the monochrome of scotopic vision?
Physiognomy originated in ancient Greece, but was codified by Lavater in 1772; phrenology followed from 1796, and together they attracted many painters.
How paintings of the Aeneid, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Homer’s Odyssey match up with the basic plot of The Quest.
How Odysseus and his crew escaped the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, then became turned into pigs by the sorceress Circe.
After Dido’s suicide, Aeneas takes a trip to the underworld, guided by the Cumaean Sibyl. He goes on to found the city of Lavinium, a precursor to Rome.
Every 9 years, 9 of the finest young men and 9 young maidens from Athens were sent to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Then Theseus joined them to kill the monster.
The deathbed, hospital beds through the ages, and what we apparently get up to when we take a friend to bed.
Known from her wedding, which led to the Trojan War, and for being the mother of the Greek warrior Achilles, she is well-known in paintings.
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