Axes for human sacrifice, execution, demolition of a bridge to save the city of Rome, as symbols of authority leading to Fascism, and cleaving a hazelnut for fairies.
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Wood nymphs or Dryads, with Hamadryads being bonded to a tree. Painting by Evelyn De Morgan, Félicien Rops, Walter Crane, JW Waterhouse and others.
Pope Urban II’s plan to maintain the Peace of God calls on the faithful to fight for their lives in Jerusalem. The rival People’s Crusade pillages and slaughters all non-Christians, and few survive by the time they’ve left Antioch for Jerusalem.
Greatest master in Ancient Greece, but all his works are lost. Several views of him painting Alexander the Great’s former mistress Campaspe, and an elaborate allegory of Calumny by Botticelli.
After the Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular literary source for paintings before 1900, yet hardly anyone knows this epic today. The introduction to a new series.
Pygmalion painted by Edward Burne-Jones and Gérôme, the painted frieze of the Parthenon, Eakins and the sculptor Rush, Lovis Corinth’s portrait, and a cheeky monkey by Watteau.
The 101st story, buried in the start of the fourth day, about a father who turns hermit with his young son after his wife’s early death, and a derived fable told by La Fontaine.
Typically by a road junction outside a town, they are a grim reminder of the brutal consequences of even petty crimes, and significant to the reading of paintings shown.
The tenth story on the tenth day, Griselda suffered a harrowing life with her husband, with mock killings of their children and a feigned divorce before they’re reconciled.
January is named after the Roman god of transitions, Janus, and is the first month of the New Year. Or is it? Classical civilisations more usually started their year in Spring, and what’s this about Juno?
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