A banquet with a river god, a pitched battle at his friend’s wedding which turned into a full-scale war, a relationship involving incest, suicide and violent death, and the abduction of Helen – quite the career of a Greek hero.
Rubens
Rubens as a landscape painter influenced by the Brueghels, and the changing horizons seen in Dutch Golden Age paintings.
From his battle with the sea monster to the deadly fight at his wedding to Andromeda, paintings by Titian, Veronese, Burne-Jones, Vallotton and others.
A series to examine visual development of figures within narrative paintings, according to their type of plot. The fall of Icarus used as an example.
Miniature landscape views embedded in more conventional paintings were not uncommon during the Renaissance, before landscape was established as a genre.
Marking 300 years since the woefully early death of the master of the Rococo. Early paintings show the development of the fête galante, and its zenith in ‘Embarkation for Cythera’.
Palaces of Albert VII, Rubens’ own Het Steen, an imposing Swiss castle, Wivenhoe Park in hiding, and an Australian pastoral station.
From Apelles, in around 330 BCE, the personification of Truth has had particular importance to painters, in the faithfulness and accuracy of their work. Here she is.
Seashells appear in Turner’s myths, Dyce’s fresco for Queen Victoria, twice in Elihu Vedder’s work, and in Odilon Redon’s. And a story from Rubens about seashells and colour.
Huge clam shells were a common feature in paintings of the birth of Venus, and other classical myths. They also feature in many ‘vanitas’ paintings.
