Popular comedy about a man who marries and shrew and sets about trying to tame her. Frequently painted.
Leslie
Twin brother and sister are shipwrecked. She disguises herself as a eunuch, and has a noblewoman fall in love with her. Then it gets even more confusing. Great comedy.
A traditional English farce, starring Sir John Falstaff, one of Shakespeare’s favourite characters, who sets out to seduce two married women.
Introduced to Europe from the New World in the 16th century, Queen Elizabeth I loved them, and Jan Brueghel the elder and his son included them in many of their paintings.
He specialised in ‘light genre’ paintings, not-to-serious domestic scenes, painted in fine detail, and was praised by Ruskin.
A succinct summary of Dante’s ascent of the mountain-island of Purgatory, with the best of the paintings from Blake to Rossetti.
Some of the finest paintings of all Dante’s work: Waterhouse, William Blake and others show the arrival of Beatrice in her chariot.
Visits to Scotland became popular among artists in the nineteenth century. Here are wonderful paintings by AW Hunt, Gustave Doré, Rosa Bonheur, Hans Gude, and others.