On a barren, sandy plain, naked spirits suffer under showers of flakes of fire. Blasphemers lie flat on their backs, sodomites keep moving, and usurers crouch with purses strung from their necks.
myth
Is this Hecate, triple-headed goddess of the night, with owl and bats, or another of Blake’s mythology, representing spiritual beauty? A misidentified painting explained.
God seen as a master craftsman, forming the world, or a symbol of reason drawn from Blake’s own personal mythology? A painting explained.
While other uncouth figures fought with their clubs, animal skins appealed to a different group, as John Godward’s beauties draped their bodies on them.
That well-muscled man brandishing a large olive-wood club and wearing a lion-skin can only be the ultimate high-testosterone uncouth hero, Hercules.
Overview and full contents of all 74 articles in this series, from creation out of chaos and the flood, to the death of Julius Caesar and Emperor Augustus.
His finest narrative paintings from Susanna and the Elders in 1890, through Salome and Homeric Laughter, to Ariadne on Naxos and the Trojan Horse in 1924.
Completes this unique virtual exhibition with paintings on the Calydonian Boar Hunt, Philemon and Baucis, Birth of the Milky Way, Adonis, and more.
A unique virtual exhibition of some of Rubens’ finest depictions of myths drawn from Ovid’s Metamorphoses.
From the foundation of Troy, the start of the war with the Judgement of Paris, the death of Achilles, the sack of Troy, and Aeneas journey to found the precursor to Rome, and on to the age of Augustus.
