Curtains around 4-poster beds, revealing hidden opinions, framing a cameo landscape, showing time and place, and in a trompe l’oeil still life.
narrative
Curtains in Raphael’s remarkable trompe l’oeil, concealing a nude, opened by the peeping tom, revealing a lost lover, and as separator between players and spectators.
The start of fighting in the Trojan War, how the prettiest girl in Thessaly became its toughest warrior, and the wedding feast that became all-out war.
Giorgione’s Tempest, Cuyp’s Thunderstorm over Dordrecht, Delacroix, a prairie on fire, and viewing lightning safely indoors.
Jupiter’s bundle of thunderbolts that have survived into computer technology, lightning in great floods, in the destruction of Tyre, and the three witches in Macbeth.
The Greek fleet is stuck in the port of Aulis due to strong winds and heavy seas. A seer tells Agamemnon the only solution is to sacrifice his daughter to Diana.
By the late 19th century, presses were churning out posters promoting events and products. Some came to appear in paintings of Paris and other places.
Popularised with large-format colour printing in the middle of the 19th century, there appear in several paintings where they contribute to the reading.
How Daedalion was turned into a hawk, a wolf was turned into marble, King Ceyx and his wife became kingfishers, and Aesacus was turned into a diver.
The deaths of Demosthenes and Themistocles, Cleopatra’s experimental toxicology, and Tristan and Isolde – was it poison or a love potion?
