After a short story of Hercules saving Myscelus, Ovid presents the doctrines of Pythagoras, including advocacy of vegetarianism, and philosophy of change. Raphael and Rubens.
Rubens
Take some blue glass, grind it, and turn it into paint: Smalt is one of the strangest of pigments. It extensively used until replaced by Prussian Blue in the early 1700s, and is making a comeback.
How Vertumnus tried to trick Pomona into loving him, then told her a threatening story. Neither worked: it was being himself that won her in the end.
Boy meets girl but has to swim a mile in treacherous waters to keep meeting her. When she tells him how she burns with passion, he pushes his luck in the sea.
Used since Roman times, it was common in the dress of saints. Highly toxic, it was progressively replaced by cadmium red in the late 19th century.
He was remarkably successful, a truly self-made artist, who rose from nothing to international renown. But did he ‘occasion a revolution in the art’?
On 22 August 1911, he went to the Louvre to paint the Mona Lisa. It had gone missing, though, and didn’t show up for another 2 years.
A curious short tale of an unfortunate death, then the divine conspiracy which led to the death of its greatest warrior, Achilles, in the Trojan War. More Rubens…
Before the 19th century, his paintings were more popular than those of Velázquez. Why are they far less well known now? Take a look and see for yourself.
The ultimately disastrous wedding feast ends with its guests killing one another in a series of pitched battles, after one guest tried to abduct the bride.
The Eclectic Light Company 