Finest stories of the infidelity of wives, four in a bed, Isabella’s ingenious if fatal means of maintaining her chastity, and the madness of Orlando.
narrative
His most famous painting, ‘Work’, inspired by the ideas of Thomas Carlyle, and a possibly unique example of multiplex narrative after William Hogarth.
The leading Saracen knights are at one another’s throats, over stolen swords, stolen horses, even in which order they should fight one another to settle their disputes.
Bad girls whose beautiful voices lured sailors to their deaths, so that the women could eat them. Paintings by Etty, Moreau, Waterhouse, Rae, Nash and others.
Like all the worst men, satyrs were addicted to music, wine and women. Paintings by Piero, Claude, Rubens, Vedder, Moreau and others.
By 1852, he wasn’t making progress. The Pre-Raphaelite sculptor emigrated to Australia, and Brown thought seriously about going to India. Instead he painted ‘The Last of England’.
Zerbino finds a perfect punishment for Odorico’s treachery, but dies of his wounds. A curious episode in which a woman falls in love with Bradamante, almost leading to the death of the latter’s brother.
From Byron’s Faustian play ‘Manfred’ to the effects on family of the Crimean War, his paintings were often richly narrative, and only gently Pre-Raphaelite.
Leading up to the crux of the poem, an old woman’s treachery, the reunion of two couples who thought the other was dead, and heartbreak for Orlando.
Romulus and Remus were abandoned as babies, when the intent had been to kill them. And paintings by Hogarth, and the daughter of a successful foundling.
