Two masterpieces of the Western canon turn a minor tale about a nymph into major narratives: Botticelli and Poussin explored.
Poussin
The god of transitions, gates and doorways, who may have lent his name to the month of January. Paintings by Rubens, Poussin and Mengs.
Modigliani’s tragically early death, the American Benjamin West, who painted almost entirely in England, Raphael, Ingres, and John Singer Sargent. What a year!
They range in number from 3 to more than a dozen, have various names and roles, but in paintings are most commonly followers of the sun chariot.
Key parts of the background of paintings of the story of the rape of the Sabine Women, this hill was originally a fortress, then the major temple to Jupiter.
A saint banished to the island of Patmos, a history wound around a column, and a megalomaniac emperor strangled in his bath by a professional wrestler.
A nymph cursed by Hera to repeat the words just spoken to her, and a youth who falls in love with his own image. Together the result in some of the finest narrative paintings.
Known in one spectacular myth, in which he brings the chariot of the sun crashing down to scorch the earth. Paintings by Poussin, Tintoretto, Rubens and Moreau.
The way that distant hills fade in contrast, detail and colour, and how their hue shifts towards cooler colours. From Antonello (1475) to Thomas Girtin.
Whether gentle, young and pipe-playing or hoary and older, he had the body of a man and the legs of a goat. Is he tender, or ribald?
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