Major works from around 1500 by Giovanni Bellini, Mantegna, Botticelli, Perugino, Leonardo da Vinci, and Fra Bartolomeo.
Mantegna
How an architect, two great masters of painting, and the author of an early textbook on painting applied geometric optics to change painting.
It was the patrons who funded, enabled, and occasionally directed the movement towards realism and secular subjects, and developed the genres.
An exotic import until the Romans enlisted her support against the Carthaginians, her chariot is drawn by a lion and lioness – who desecrated an old shrine.
With Umberto Eco as our guide, explore Parnassus, the Garden of Earthly Delights, Alcina’s island, Colchis, and the Garden of the Hesperides.
Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt, the suicide of Cato the Younger, Caesar’s triumphs, and the development of a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
Seldom shown in lead roles, superb paintings by masters including Botticelli, Blake, Renoir, and Velázquez, and one strange myth to finish.
Wisdom, crafts including weaving, and warfare, she’s a popular figure in paintings from Mantegna to Klimt, and a contestant in the Judgement of Paris.
Famous for discovering his wife Aphrodite making love with Ares, he is blacksmith to the gods, and selected mortals.
Nine daughters of Mnemosyne representing each division of the classical arts. Paintings from Raphael to Moreau.