Having murdered his own mother in revenge for her murder of Agamemnon, Orestes is hounded down and driven mad by the Furies.
narrative
The story of Orestes, son of Agamemnon, King of Mycenae and commander of the Greek forces in the Trojan War, who was murdered by his wife.
The pair meet a Duke and Duchess who have already read the adventures of Don Quixote, and play the game that he’s a knight errant.
An early photo by Julia Margaret Cameron, and paintings by Vasnetsov, Rochegrosse, Walter Crane and a whole series by Lovis Corinth.
Paintings of knights in armour from Raphael in c 1502, through Ingres’ rescue of Angelica, to Arthurian legends and the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Comedy is unusual in paintings, and where it occurs, it’s more usually a visual joke. But there are exceptions in a tale-within-a-tale from Homer.
Finding an empty boat on the bank of the Ebro, the pair drift out on a new adventure to rescue a knight or queen in distress. The result is disaster.
Don Quixote runs amok at a puppet show, destroying all the puppets, then has to beat a hasty retreat when Sancho brays out of turn.
The fourth ‘basic plot’ is the story of voyage and return, for which we turn to Ovid’s account of this couple, and a dozen superb paintings. But does the model fit?
How paintings of the Aeneid, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and Homer’s Odyssey match up with the basic plot of The Quest.
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