Great paintings of the masters telling Virgil’s epic of the life of Aeneas. From his conception and the fall of Troy, to his time with Dido in Carthage.
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Increasingly popular during the 19th century, stories of people going from rags to riches have seldom appeared in paintings. Here are Cinderella and Robin Hood, and an explanation.
Two young men cast adrift on the River Seine, a king having his hair cut, and one of the finest and most haunting paintings of Psyche.
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?
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 Eclectic Light Company 