He started painting popular equestrian scenes and social realist works, but after the Franco-Prussian War turned increasingly to old French history.
narrative
They meet a mysterious knight and his squire, whose boasts about beating Don Quixote de la Mancha don’t ring true. So off to combat.
A banquet with a river god, a pitched battle at his friend’s wedding which turned into a full-scale war, a relationship involving incest, suicide and violent death, and the abduction of Helen – quite the career of a Greek hero.
Every 9 years, 9 of the finest young men and 9 young maidens from Athens were sent to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. Then Theseus joined them to kill the monster.
From abandonment by his father, to the reunion in which Medea tried to poison him, Theseus was a true and thoroughly flawed hero.
During the winter of 1824-25, when in Bordeaux, he painted about 40 remarkable miniatures on slivers of ivory. Here are nine of the survivors.
First Sancho convinces Don Quixote that an ugly peasant girl stinking of garlic is Lady Dulcinea, then they bump into a troupe of actors and nearly get stoned again.
From his battle with the sea monster to the deadly fight at his wedding to Andromeda, paintings by Titian, Veronese, Burne-Jones, Vallotton and others.
From conception in the rape of Danaë by Zeus, to his mission to bring the head of Medusa to King Polydectes, paintings by Klimt, Burne-Jones, and others.
The remaining seven Black Paintings, a double portrait of the artist with the doctor who had saved his life, and a heartfelt painting of Saint Peter.
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