A saint banished to the island of Patmos, a history wound around a column, and a megalomaniac emperor strangled in his bath by a professional wrestler.
myth
A nymph cursed by Hera to repeat the words just spoken to her, and a youth who falls in love with his own image. Together the result in some of the finest narrative paintings.
Claude Lorrain’s view of Delos, Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks, several versions of the Flight to Egypt, including one by William Blake, and more.
Paintings from a century ago by Fortescue-Brickdale, Franz von Stuck, George Bellows, and John Godward, who committed suicide because of Picasso’s success.
Emperors Galba, Otho, Vitellius, and finally Vespasian before stability was restored. Painted stories of the Batavians, final minutes of Vitellius, and the destruction of Pompeii.
Known in one spectacular myth, in which he brings the chariot of the sun crashing down to scorch the earth. Paintings by Poussin, Tintoretto, Rubens and Moreau.
Five years into Nero’s reign as emperor, he had his mother murdered. It was all downhill from there: Rome burned, and so did many Christians.
How her abduction by Hades to the underworld brought the seasons. Paintings by Rembrandt, Rubens, Rossetti, and others.
A battle in which the Romans were overwhelmingly defeated, used later as an icon of German nationalism. And the vicious murder of the wife of the emperor Claudius.
Absent from Classical art, she first appears in Apuleius’ ‘The Golden Ass’, which was written in the 2nd century. Wonderful paintings, particularly from women artists, of this novel.
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