How can visual artists express non-visual concepts like the senses, virtues, the struggle between good and evil? Examples from Botticelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, and others.
Rubens
Look at statues of the Virgin Mary, and they often show her with a foot on a snake. What has that to do with the Immaculate Conception? Rubens, Tiepolo and Caravaggio have the answer.
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.
Every lightning bolt tells a story, with paintings by Rubens, Richard Wilson, Poussin, John Martin, Adam Elsheimer, William Blake, and more.
From the funerary portraits of Fayum, through the work of Jan van Eyck, to Leonardo, Rubens and Botticelli, many of the greatest paintings are on wood panels.
4500 years of paintings of geese, from Rubens’ flock seen at harvest time, to Gauguin’s complement to his landlady. And some superb paintings of wild geese on the wing.
Formerly a beautiful young woman, she was turned into a monster by Minerva, and painted by Caravaggio, Rubens, Klimt, and others.
Since the decline of egg tempera and fresco in the Renaissance, oil paints have predominated. They rely on drying oils as their binder, which give them longevity and versatility.
Two lost paintings – a mural of the Battle of Anghiari in Florence, and a possible work showing Leda, plus his later Virgin and Child with St Anne.
With a binder of gum arabic, watercolours came into use in the Renaissance, and have steadily increased in popularity.
