January is named after the Roman god of transitions, Janus, and is the first month of the New Year. Or is it? Classical civilisations more usually started their year in Spring, and what’s this about Juno?
narrative
John Singer Sargent’s huge murals of classical myths, two last narrative paintings by Lovis Corinth, modern style in portraits by Anita Rée, and Oleksandra Ekster’s ‘Theatrical Composition’.
Successful on his 4th attempt at the Prix de Rome, he became the leading Neoclassical painter and painted history and other narratives. Then he became embroiled in the French Revolution.
A faithful wife is being pestered by another man. She sets him an impossible task, of creating an enchanted Spring garden in the January snow.
Innovative interpretations from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Vittorio Corcos, Oleksandr Murashko, JW Waterhouse, and Jacek Malczewski.
Fine paintings from Jan van Eyck, Leonardo da Vinci, Fra Bartolomeo, Gerard David, Beccafumi, Lavinia Fontana, Tintoretto, El Greco and Murillo.
A man furtively making off with two loaves, Vermeer’s Milkmaid, baking bread in rural Sweden, a traditional baking oven, and glistening alongside mackerel and glassware.
Cimon is a problem child until he sees Iphigenia. He reforms, but her parents refuse his proposal. When he abducts her as she is being taken to be married off, everything goes wrong.
The goddess Ceres, The Last Supper, and the supper at Emmaus, Easter Sunday bread in Ukraine, bread as charity and the daily bread.
The Annunciation, and myth of Vertumnus and Pomona, a tale from Roman history, a favourite fable, stories of schools and a concert of the birds.
