How a shunned bride consummates her marriage without her husband being aware, and tricks him out of the ring he insists he’d never give her.
painting
Children on the cabbage patch, those toiling with the potatoes, digging beetroots, and a couple of unusual paintings with cucumbers and the true vegetable gardener.
Caillebotte’s gardening almost stopped him from painting, and Vincent van Gogh shows vegetable gardens on the hill of Montmartre.
Pierrot and Harlequin went on to be clowns in the circus, and Pulcinella became Mr Punch in popular Punch and Judy shows. And they live on still.
Clown figures including Harlequin, Pulcinella and Pierrot are derived from the commedia dell’arte, a favourite of Watteau and other painters.
Unwittingly, and outside their manifesto, the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren developed a new British narrative painting.
A controversial story of a moneylender getting revenge when a borrower defaults, and demanding a pound of flesh.
The heavily embroidered story of Cossack hetman Ivan Mazepa was turned into a narrative poem by Lord Byron, and inspired paintings by Géricault, Delacroix, Vernet, and others.
Weren’t Cossacks Russian? Well, some were, but they may also have founded Ukraine following the Great Revolt of 1648. Here’s the evidence in paintings.
From Venus covering herself with her hair, to combing through the hair for nits and lice. Artists include Botticelli, Rossetti and Degas.
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