The popular story of the Judgement of Solomon is a great challenge for visual art. Here are some of the better attempts at solution, from Raphael to Blake.
Giorgione
Well known from language, the scarlet woman should be easy to read in paintings. But all that is scarlet isn’t who you’d expect.
In some populations, as many as one in ten men has significant colour vision deficiency. What effect does that have on how they perceive paintings?
From the fur-trimmed cloaks of Jan van Eyck, to the soft folds of Lisa Gherardini’s dress: clothing and fabrics painted in oils.
What do paintings look like to someone with deuteranopia? Why do great paintings ‘draw’ the eye? Do we see the colours the artist intended? And how many words for blue are in Ukrainian?
Paintings by rising stars including Michelangelo, Giorgione and Raphael. The state of paintings of secular stories from classical and literary sources.
The shepherds become more real and tatty from the Renaissance and Giorgione to Murillo and Bastien-Lepage.
From Giorgione, Dürer and Altdorfer to Turner, Pissarro, Monet and Renoir: landmarks in the composition of landscape paintings.
Staffage – people, animals, birds, carts and ships – make a big difference to many landscape paintings. Have you met the Wanderer too?
Although it was Leon Battista Alberti, in the southern Renaissance, who first developed the subject of composition in […]