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.
narrative
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?
John Singer Sargent’s huge murals of classical myths, two last narrative paintings by Lovis Corinth, modern style in portraits by Anita Rée, and Oleksandra Ekster’s ‘Theatrical Composition’.
Successful on his 4th attempt at the Prix de Rome, he became the leading Neoclassical painter and painted history and other narratives. Then he became embroiled in the French Revolution.
A faithful wife is being pestered by another man. She sets him an impossible task, of creating an enchanted Spring garden in the January snow.
Innovative interpretations from Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Henry Ossawa Tanner, Vittorio Corcos, Oleksandr Murashko, JW Waterhouse, and Jacek Malczewski.
The Eclectic Light Company 