Hamlet, including the first visualisation of Ophelia’s death; Christopher Columbus, Medea about to kill her sons, and shipwreck survivors in a small boat.
myth
Normally drawn by 2-4 horses, you can sometimes identify deities by the creatures shown towing their chariot, from black horses to domestic cats.
Odysseus meets with his son Telemachus, is almost revealed by his old nurse, then kills all the suitors before revealing himself to Penelope.
How the Horn of Plenty came about, who filled it, how it often appears with the four elements, and some more complex mythological associations.
Cadmus’ daughter Semele is destroyed by Jupiter’s lightning, but her infant grows into Bacchus. Pentheus is then torn apart by bacchantes, and Cadmus and his wife are turned into snakes.
Cadmus, Europa’s brother, kills a dragon and sows its teeth to grow into the men who help him build Thebes. But his grandson Actaeon is killed when he catches Diana bathing.
Is that the god Cupid, a Cupid, a putto, an amorino, or a cherub? The differences explained and illustrated in paintings by Botticelli, Titian, Raphael and others.
A princess takes her handmaids to the coast to wash her fine robes and themselves. Out steps Odysseus, naked except for strategic leaves, and asks for their help.
The goddess Diana, Selene, the Virgin and Child, or is it just the moon in the sky of a pastoral landscape? Paintings from Bosch to van Gogh.
Odysseus is lashed to the mast as his ship passes the Sirens without being lured away. He’s the only survivor after shipwreck, then is trapped with Calypso for seven years.
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