A deer substituted for the sacrifice of Iphigenia, as companions for the sorceresses Medea and Circe, in Bonnard’s rural idyll, Rosa Bonheur’s wildlife portraits, and others.
Maclise
A member of many of the royal courts of Europe, and featured in several of the plays of William Shakespeare, a jester and entertainer.
Robin Hood, who robbed the bad to help the poor, and his colleagues William Tell, Oleksa Dovbush and Holger Danske.
Invented by Paracelsus and popularised in a novella, poems and plays, Ondine became popular in painting, then in 1962 in medicine.
A selection of paintings of Yoric (Hamlet), Touchstone, and Shakespeare’s other fools, and a few from others including the great Polish Stańczyk.
Full of memorable lines such as “All the world’s a stage” and songs like “It was a lover and his lass”, a favourite comedy and well painted.
Increasingly popular during the 19th century, stories of people going from rags to riches have seldom appeared in paintings. Here are Cinderella and Robin Hood, and an explanation.
Invented by the alchemist Paracelsus, these water nymphs became popular in the 19th century with prose poems and a novella. Here they are in paint, by Turner, Waterhouse, Gauguin, Schiele, and others.
The first of two looking at the telling of English legends in paintings: Robin Hood and his ‘Merry Men’, popular for the last 500 years.
The Eclectic Light Company 