Why did the Countess of Mercia ride naked through the streets of an Anglo-Saxon town? And who was Peeping Tom?
painting
The first of two looking at the telling of English legends in paintings: Robin Hood and his ‘Merry Men’, popular for the last 500 years.
Six mythological works, which culminate in what is probably his finest of all: the Origin of the Milky Way, analysed in detail here.
The story of a Renaissance city-state on Sardinia, a good mother, and the state funeral of a great Greek general on Sicily – some of the paintings shown.
An overview of more than fifty years of his magnificent landscapes, from the rolling countryside of Isère, in the east of France, to the heat of Le Cannet in the south.
Major works for the ceiling of the Sala superiore in the Scuola Grande di San Rocco, centred on ‘The Brazen Serpent’, ‘Moses Striking the Rock’, and ‘Gathering of the Manna’.
One of Rome’s greatest generals, he was consul for a record seven times, but died in the throes of the First Civil War, his hands covered with the blood of good Roman citizens.
In the nineteenth century, with the decline of patronage and changed art markets, fables become more popular among painter, at least before they gained patrons.
Never previously popular except as illustrations, paintings of fables became common in the Dutch Golden Age, and again in the work of a great animal painter around 1750.
Two more informal Last Suppers, a votive of the Doge who ruled Venice at the time, and the perils of black grounds.
The Eclectic Light Company 