Signatures written on scraps of paper, or in books, with comments, dedications in graffiti, and an apocalyptic vision of Botticelli.
Murillo
From the Renaissance, by convention dreams were shown as a dream view set within a framing real view. Examples by Raphael, Tintoretto and others.
Barefoot and sometimes surprising, as Christ washes the disciples’ feet, and other feet are missing altogether. Barefoot means poverty too.
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.
Why is the Virgin Mary standing on a snake with a part-eaten apple in its mouth? And which painting of her was banned from display in Saint Peter’s Basilica in Rome?
Paintings showing the ragged tatters work by peasants and labourers, from social realism and Naturalism between 1850-90.
On the morning of 22 August 1911, he arrived to paint the Mona Lisa, but it had vanished from the wall of the Louvre. Who had stolen it?
The shepherds become more real and tatty from the Renaissance and Giorgione to Murillo and Bastien-Lepage.
An offshoot of still life paintings of food, it was never very popular, and most of these are decidedly odd. From Jan Brueghel the elder to
From the Adoration of the Shepherds to the Corydon Shepherd of Virgil’s Eclogues, they all had their crooks.
The Eclectic Light Company 