How to paint a landscape with faithful and coherent cast shadows, why most painters don’t do so, and a few get it wrong.
Gérôme
In the Roman arena, with a runaway slave, sparing the life of Daniel, at the feet of St Jerome and St Rufina, and snoring gently on the rug.
Leonardo da Vinci studied different types of shade and shadow, but recommended painters not to depict cast shadows in their paintings. This explains why.
Examples of putting figures in the spotlight from paintings of Tiepolo, David, Goya, Gérôme, Thomas Eakins, and others.
Using shadows to tell or add detail to a visual story. Examples by Robert Campin, Gérôme. William Holman Hunt, Lovis Corinth and others.
Paintings by William Blake, Elihu Vedder, Jean-Léon Gérôme, Léon Bonnat, James Tissot, Lovis Corinth and others.
The Mona Lisa illusion, Mary Magdalene with eyes red from tears or shut in ecstasy, closed from fatigue, or nearly blinded by light.
A visit to Rome, in the paintings of Valenciennes, Turner, Paul Bril, Gérôme, and others, and a little history of landscape painting.
A collection of paintings with strange incongruities that can make them impossible to read, from Masaccio to Gérôme.
Transformations of Lycian peasants into frogs, Pygmalion’s statute into Galatea, the pregnant Myrrha, silkworm moths, and autumn.
The Eclectic Light Company 