From around 1850 paintings without narrative closure started to become popular, and within a few years those became true ‘problem pictures’ intended to encourage speculation.
narrative
A Trojan, son of the mortal Anchises and Venus, he flees the burning city as it’s being sacked by the Greeks, losing his wife in the process, and starts a journey around the Mediterranean.
A small selection of his instantaneous narrative paintings drawn largely from Tasso’s Jerusalem Delivered, from 1630 to 1651.
The Furies hunt Orestes down, haunting and tormenting him to drive him mad, because of his murder of his mother Clytemnestra and her lover Aegisthus.
A small selection of his instantaneous narrative paintings from 35 years of his career, mainly of Ovid’s myths, and Susanna and Elders.
How the son of Clytemnestra and Agamemnon, heroic commander of the Greeks in the Trojan War, came to murder his mother and her lover, after they killed his father.
A worked example of Poussin’s instantaneous narrative shows how a single image can tell a story, and examples of the fall of Icarus show the importance of timing.
Orpheus’ attempt to take his bride Eurydice back to life from the underworld fails when he looks back at her. He is later torn limb from limb by Bacchantes, and rejoins her.
Examples from Velázquez, Waterhouse, Bosch, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Frith, and Ford Madox Brown of some of the most spectacular narrative paintings.
The great Thracian bard, and accomplished poet and musician, he could charm the animals with his lyre. But when he married Eurydice she died shortly after the ceremony.
