In the weaving contest between Arachne and Minerva, used by the Fates, cropped to weaken Samson, in the Annunciation, or simply for cutting.
narrative
A mystic dies from burns after an ordeal by fire, Jerusalem is put under siege, then on 13 July they take the Holy City and start massacring its inhabitants. Few return alive to Europe.
Axes for human sacrifice, execution, demolition of a bridge to save the city of Rome, as symbols of authority leading to Fascism, and cleaving a hazelnut for fairies.
Wood nymphs or Dryads, with Hamadryads being bonded to a tree. Painting by Evelyn De Morgan, Félicien Rops, Walter Crane, JW Waterhouse and others.
Pope Urban II’s plan to maintain the Peace of God calls on the faithful to fight for their lives in Jerusalem. The rival People’s Crusade pillages and slaughters all non-Christians, and few survive by the time they’ve left Antioch for Jerusalem.
Greatest master in Ancient Greece, but all his works are lost. Several views of him painting Alexander the Great’s former mistress Campaspe, and an elaborate allegory of Calumny by Botticelli.
After the Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular literary source for paintings before 1900, yet hardly anyone knows this epic today. The introduction to a new series.
Pygmalion painted by Edward Burne-Jones and Gérôme, the painted frieze of the Parthenon, Eakins and the sculptor Rush, Lovis Corinth’s portrait, and a cheeky monkey by Watteau.
The 101st story, buried in the start of the fourth day, about a father who turns hermit with his young son after his wife’s early death, and a derived fable told by La Fontaine.
Typically by a road junction outside a town, they are a grim reminder of the brutal consequences of even petty crimes, and significant to the reading of paintings shown.
The Eclectic Light Company 