How well do paintings of the stories of Perseus and Theseus fit Booker’s Seven Basic Plots? As he gives these as examples of Overcoming the Monster, do his stages work?
myth
A banquet with a river god, a pitched battle at his friend’s wedding which turned into a full-scale war, a relationship involving incest, suicide and violent death, and the abduction of Helen – quite the career of a Greek hero.
Every 9 years, 9 of the finest young men and 9 young maidens from Athens were sent to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Then Theseus joined them to kill the monster.
From abandonment by his father, to the reunion in which Medea tried to poison him, Theseus was a true and thoroughly flawed hero.
From his battle with the sea monster to the deadly fight at his wedding to Andromeda, paintings by Titian, Veronese, Burne-Jones, Vallotton and others.
From conception in the rape of Danaë by Zeus, to his mission to bring the head of Medusa to King Polydectes, paintings by Klimt, Burne-Jones, and others.
The birth of his first son who looked able to survive, important commissions, Deputy Director of Painting at the Royal Academy, and Painter to the King at last.
The Prix de Rome changed in the 19th century. Its subjects became more obscure, and its successes few and far between.
Founded around 1666, the Prix de Rome was an annual contest for narrative painting. First prize was study at the French Academy in Rome.
Seashells appear in Turner’s myths, Dyce’s fresco for Queen Victoria, twice in Elihu Vedder’s work, and in Odilon Redon’s. And a story from Rubens about seashells and colour.
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