Ultramarine blue for Mary’s cloak, red for the Passion, cardinals and the scarlet woman. Other colour codes, including their importance in multiplex narrative.
history of painting
How ancient Egyptians painted women white and men more swarthy in colour. Separately, colour coding of devils brought similar distinctions.
The faithful king turned into a woodpecker, Aeneas’s long war against Turnus, his founding of the city of Alba, and promotion to deity on his death.
Keeping the aspidistra flying in the homes of the respectable middle classes, in paintings from Carl Larsson to Paul Signac and Harriet Backer.
More secular stories from Belgian coal mines, the Kalevala, Nabi public gardens, family life, to the 12 panels of the Ghent Altarpiece and Japanese woodblock prints.
Three panels, hinged together, first for an altarpiece, later for secular narratives. Examples from 1420, through those of Bosch, to the Eve of St Agnes by Arthur Hughes.
Ulysses visits Circe’s island, where his crew are turned into swine. When she tries to do the same with him, he refuses. They marry and spend a year together.
A survivor from Ulysses’ crew gives a brief account of the encounter between Ulysses and the Cyclops Polyphemus, and its outcome.
More rich narratives, including Titania and Bottom, Falstaff, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Odysseus, Satan, Lady Macbeth, and Fairy Mab.
In 1781 he painted 3 masterpieces, of the suicide of Queen Dido of Carthage, ‘The Nightmare’ still famous today, and the Dream of Queen Katharine of Aragon.
The Eclectic Light Company 