The story of Dido and Aeneas summarised in seven lines, and a strange account of the origin of the apes. Paintings by Guérin, Cézanne, Tiepolo, and Fuseli.
narrative
Glaucus’ attempt to get Circe to put a spell on Scylla, to make her love him, backfires. Wonderful paintings by Waterhouse, van der Neer, Henry Fuseli, and others.
Was he a monster or a god? When Glaucus rises from the surface of the sea, Scylla runs away in terror. With a superb painting by JMW Turner.
A story of murder by a would-be lover, or perhaps of voyeuristics obsession. How Polyphemus murdered Acis, as shown by Claude, Tischbein, Moreau, Redon, and others.
Aeneas’ first port of call is the island of Delos, where its king and priest tells the story of his four daughters turned into white doves. With a superb landscape by Claude.
With Troy ablaze, Aeneas prepares to flee the city. He and his wife persuade Aeneas’ father to be carried on his son’s back.
A predatory wolf was troubling a town in the Apennine Mountains one winter. Its delightful story is the basis of a superb painting by Luc-Olivier Merson, famous for his mosaic in the Basilica of the Sacré-Cœur in Montmartre.
Troy is sacked and burning, and its women being taken away as trophies. Two stories stress the horror, as a princess is sacrificed for fair winds, and a callous murder is avenged.
He was remarkably successful, a truly self-made artist, who rose from nothing to international renown. But did he ‘occasion a revolution in the art’?
In the hands, and brushes, of great artists, a religious set-piece becomes a succession of marvellous and highly innovative paintings.
The Eclectic Light Company 