Curtains around 4-poster beds, revealing hidden opinions, framing a cameo landscape, showing time and place, and in a trompe l’oeil still life.
Laurens
Candles in Candlemas, as votives, at pardons and funerals, and snuffed out as part of excommunication. Used in sorcery, allegory, and Vanitas.
Many of our lives start and end in them, and between we spend at least a third of our life in bed. Paintings from Delacroix to Ravilious.
Following the Paris Commune of 1871, history painters resorted to indirect reference in paintings of obscure episodes in mediaeval history.
More extraordinary tales from French and European history told in his paintings.
He was probably the last traditional history painter in Europe. This selection of his works is accompanied by full explanations of the history behind each.
A look forward to the eclectic collection of painters whose anniversaries I’ll be marking here, and a glimpse of some of the paintings to come. Happy New Year!
A battle in which the Romans were overwhelmingly defeated, used later as an icon of German nationalism. And the vicious murder of the wife of the emperor Claudius.
More women reading, from Dante’s beloved Beatrice to Charlotte Corday, who was psyching herself up with Plutarch’s Lives before murdering Marat in his bath.
Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt, the suicide of Cato the Younger, Caesar’s triumphs, and the development of a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
The Eclectic Light Company 