In classical times, they were strummed like a guitar rather than plucked. Apollo, Orpheus and lyric poets from Raphael, Rubens, Waterhouse and others.
Rubens
Young Phaëthon challenges the god of the sun, Phoebus, to prove he is his father, and takes his chariot on a ride to disaster and death.
Jupiter wants Io, but after raping her turns her into a cow for safe-keeping. Juno suspects, though, and puts the cow under the watchful hundred eyes of Argus.
Paintings of telescopes less then ten years after they became available, as symbols of mariners, and microscopes in medical research around 1900.
Jupiter wipes out unworthy humans in a flood. One pious couple survive, and go on to re-create humanity transformed from stones. This leaves the monstrous Python to be killed by Apollo.
Rubens’ hunting scenes and Delacroix, the last of his shipwrecks, Sorolla’s fishing scenes, Arthurian legend, the story of Salome, and more.
The wedding feasts of Peleus and Thetis, Pirithous and Hippodame, Perseus and Andromeda, and a more peaceful banquet thrown by Achelous.
A simple story of an unsuccessful attempt at abduction and rape becomes a compositional struggle. It also results in the death of Heracles.
How Perseus comes to the aid of Andromeda as she’s left chained to a rock, awaiting her fate as the next meal of Cetus the sea-monster.
How some landscape painters blurred the view to paint, while others have depicted motion blur, depth of field effects, or an edge hierarchy. Links to each article in the series.
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