How many verbal stories or movies tell dozens of different stories? Here are paintings that are not only so rich in narrative, but tell all those stories at the same time.
Poussin
Does analysis of literary plots offer anything to the understanding of visual narrative in painting? A journey through some of the best painted stories in quest of the answer.
Until the 19th century, narrative paintings showed stories which the viewer already knew, ideally at the moment of change or transformation.
It’s a good story that the first month of the year is named January after the two-faced god of transitions, Janus. It’s a shame that isn’t exactly true.
From Giorgione, Dürer and Altdorfer to Turner, Pissarro, Monet and Renoir: landmarks in the composition of landscape paintings.
Before the 19th century, most paintings of deserts were imaginary. Then artists started to paint them at first hand. Paintings up to 1864.
From Dürer and Poussin to Cézanne and Hodler, reflections have been important in many landscape paintings.
Paintings of knights in armour from Raphael in c 1502, through Ingres’ rescue of Angelica, to Arthurian legends and the Pre-Raphaelite movement.
Telling a story using shadows, and the nineteenth century controversy over the colour of shadows.
The fourth ‘basic plot’ is the story of voyage and return, for which we turn to Ovid’s account of this couple, and a dozen superb paintings. But does the model fit?
The Eclectic Light Company 