A small selection of favourites from its huge and eclectic collection, from Duccio in about 1310 to Joseph Wright of Derby and a gem from Thomas Jones.
Rubens
One of Ovid’s weirdest tales, in which Juno convinces the pregnant Semele to demand her lover Jupiter reveals himself, resulting in her death, caesarian section and his surrogate pregnancy.
In landscapes by Rubens, Constable, Ford Madox Brown, Frederic Edwin Church, Millet, Pissarro, Breton, and Prendergast.
The primary attribute of Iris, with the soothing song of Amphitrite, bearing the Norse deities to Valhalla, the sign of God’s covenant after the Flood, and at the Last Judgement.
Europa’s brother Cadmus is told to found a new city wherever a cow leads him. After killing a man-eating dragon, he sows its teeth in the soil.
Left as a cliffhanger ending to Book 2, Jupiter assumes the form of a white bull, and lures Europa to sit astride his back before whisking her away across the sea.
First fully developed in the Dutch Golden Age, here are Constable’s storms, Turner’s vortices, Boudin’s textured dusk, ending in Paul Nash’s imagination.
Carrying infants, including Moses, figs with a few asps, the master’s dinner, Manet’s luncheon on the grass, snacks, banquets, and fruit.
The raven’s feathers are changed from white to black, the crow replaced by an owl originally threatened by Neptune’s rape, and more.
Ursa Major, often the only constellation people know today, the Milky Way, the Pleiades, and Sagittarius.