Charon ferrying the dead to the Underworld, and rarely back again, Psyche in her quest, the centaur Nessus, and lots of sheep and cattle.
Luminais
Sleeping Beauty, a morning nude, in sickness, and the deathbed. Killed in bed, two unusual depictions of the Virgin Mary in bed, and one of a bed floating on the River Seine.
Two young men cast adrift on the River Seine, a king having his hair cut, and one of the finest and most haunting paintings of Psyche.
He started painting popular equestrian scenes and social realist works, but after the Franco-Prussian War turned increasingly to old French history.
The deathbed, hospital beds through the ages, and what we apparently get up to when we take a friend to bed.
Following the Paris Commune of 1871, history painters resorted to indirect reference in paintings of obscure episodes in mediaeval history.
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!
Absent from Classical art, she first appears in Apuleius’ ‘The Golden Ass’, which was written in the 2nd century. Wonderful paintings, particularly from women artists, of this novel.
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.
As Europe slid into the Dark Ages, one king emerged to rule much of what is now France, with one religion, a code of law, and its capital in Paris.
The Eclectic Light Company 