A simple story of an unsuccessful attempt at abduction and rape becomes a compositional struggle. It also results in the death of Heracles.
narrative
What time of day is it? How cast shadows can help or confound, a painting showing Donati’s comet that can be timed precisely, and difficulties with indoor paintings.
The sun is near the horizon, but is it dawn or dusk? How to tell them apart without trusting a title that may not be the artist’s.
The dying king is taken on a barge with Morgan le Fay, two other queens, and Nyneve, to Avalon. Later his body is returned for burial in a chapel by the lake.
How Ruggiero comes to the aid of Angelica, who has been kidnapped and left chained so can form the orc’s next meal.
How Perseus comes to the aid of Andromeda as she’s left chained to a rock, awaiting her fate as the next meal of Cetus the sea-monster.
When the queen is abducted, Lancelot rescues her, only to see her prepared to be burned at the stake. Arthur and Lancelot go to war against one another, and Arthur against Mordred, the usurper.
Born in Scotland, worked much of his career in Rome, he mentored Benjamin West, worked with Piranesi, and bought Leonardo’s Virgin of the Rocks.
In chiaroscuro, for enlightenment, at the centre of family and friends at dinner, and in special safety lamps carried underground by coal miners.
the personification of vigilance, Mary Magdalen, in shadowplay, held by Florence Nightingale ‘the lady of the lamp’, and associated with overwork and tiredness.
The Eclectic Light Company 