From bizarre origins as his mother was consumed by fire, and he completed gestation in Zeus’ thigh, to his marriage to Ariadne on the island of Naxos.
history of painting
We journey on, through Thomas Cole’s classical city, to the Garden of Armida, briefly to Paradise, past the submerged city of Ys, ending up in a Surrealist vision of the Dorset coast.
With Umberto Eco as our guide, explore Parnassus, the Garden of Earthly Delights, Alcina’s island, Colchis, and the Garden of the Hesperides.
Painstaking watercolour technique using transparent layers like glazes gives marvellous results in the Renaissance narratives.
Friend and model of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, taught to paint by Ford Madox Brown, and photographed by Julia Margaret Cameron, her paintings are truly Pre-Raphaelite.
Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt, the suicide of Cato the Younger, Caesar’s triumphs, and the development of a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
Seldom shown in lead roles, superb paintings by masters including Botticelli, Blake, Renoir, and Velázquez, and one strange myth to finish.
Photographers, musicians, harvesters, foresters, booksellers and propagandists, and tinkers from the roads of the past.
Bosch’s two wayfarers, Courbet’s Stone Breakers, and wonderful paintings by Brett, Troyon and Ford Madox Brown show those who lived on the road.
Paintings from 1885 onwards, looking at women from Ovid’s ‘Heroides’, his ‘Metamorphoses’, women of Troy, and this unusual time series across the canvas.
The Eclectic Light Company 