Before we masked up for Covid, covering the face had connotations. Here they’re explored, from the niqāb and widow’s veil to the aversion that makes us voyeur.
Morelli
Raphael and Tintoretto creations, Noah’s thanksgiving, Bosch, and two wonderful paintings of Orpheus and the Animals.
Paintings of women covering their faces in embarrassment by Murillo, Gérôme, Corinth, and others.
It’s our faces, more than any other part of the body, that make us human. Paintings of veiled and masked faces by Pelez, Morelli and others.
A relatively common motif, it started with the peculiar association of death and the erotic, then changed in the late 19th century.
More paintings of surprise, by Gericault, Gérôme, Regnault, Bastien-Lepage, Morelli, and others.
Rainbows are one of nature’s grand spectacles. How careful, then, have painters been to get their colours in the ‘right’ order?
A look back at some of the series and some surprises which you might have missed over the last year.
There’s a lot more to this painting than first meets the eye: a bit of Brueghel, some Leighton, and even some Signorelli.
Why did it take over 300 years to solve a compositional problem, and tell such a simple story?