Some of the greatest paintings forming the zeitgeist of the genre, from Poussin, Rubens, Valenciennes, Turner, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, and others.
Poussin
The first of two articles about painting trees, featuring Rubens, Poussin, Gainsborough, Constable, Corot and others.
From Hannibal crossing the Alps with his war elephants, through the temptation of St Anthony, to the circus and an imaginary India.
Played for the Danse Macabre in the Middle Ages, a favourite of Hieronymus Bosch, and Joseph Stella in the early 20th century.
Pan pipes, in paintings by Mikhail Vrubel, Poussin, JW Waterhouse, Franz von Stuck, Titian, and others.
Waved by Circe and Medea, later in Tasso’s ‘Jerusalem Delivered’, and by Morgan le Fay in Arthurian legend. Paintings by Poussin, Waterhouse and others.
Poussin, Church, Grimshaw, Peterssen, Bierstadt, Turner, Cézanne, Klimt and Hodler paint lakes.
When the nymph Salmacis falls in passionate love with the son of Hermes and Aphrodite, he resists, and they are joined together in single body.
The earliest known story in the Western canon to end with the suicide of frustrated lovers, it was the precursor to Romeo and Juliet, and extensively depicted.
Linked stories of Tiresias, the trans-gender soothsayer, Narcissus who fell in love with himself, and Echo who could only repeat what others said.
