The Judaeo-Christian tradition lacks any goddess, unlike its predecessors in Mediterranean cultures. Is there an equivalent among its saints, or the Virgin Mary? An exploration in paintings.
Piero
In the Renaissance, while oil painting was still catching on, many of the greatest masterpieces were painted in egg tempera. How, and to what effect?
Great paintings by Botticelli, Bosch, Titian, Tintoretto, the Carraccis, and others, showing multiplex narrative.
The standard blue pigment for the Renaissance and on, until about 1710, it was used in many Old Masters before disappearing by 1800.
A beautiful, intense green used by the van Eycks, Tintoretto, Domenichino, and Renoir, it was never popular in oil paints, and quietly died out.
What turns statues and copper roofs blue-green? ‘Copper rust’, the basis of the intense green pigment Verdigris, used by all the Masters.
The ultimately disastrous wedding feast ends with its guests killing one another in a series of pitched battles, after one guest tried to abduct the bride.
