Based on Plutarch’s Lives, this play contains some of the most memorable quotations in English, and has been painted quite frequently.
Sirani
Should chiaroscuro paintings show much in the way of colour, given that in the dark only the rods in our retinas function, giving us monochrome vision?
Judith Leyster, Elisabette Sirani, Maria Sibylla Merian, Rosalba Carriera, Angelica Kauffmann, Mary Moser, Anne Vallayer-Coster and Louise Élisabeth VigĂ©e Le Brun – pioneers every one.
How Odysseus and his crew escaped the one-eyed giant Polyphemus, then became turned into pigs by the sorceress Circe.
Absent from Classical art, she first appears in Apuleius’ ‘The Golden Ass’, which was written in the 2nd century. Wonderful paintings, particularly from women artists, of this novel.
Caesar and Cleopatra in Egypt, the suicide of Cato the Younger, Caesar’s triumphs, and the development of a conspiracy to assassinate Caesar.
Even the boldest of artists has avoided painting abandoned babies, except in the Biblical story of Moses. Veronese, Poussin, Sirani, Moreau and more.
A whirlwind trip through the history of compositional chiaroscuro, from the Renaissance, through Caravaggio and Artemisia Gentileschi, to Rembrandt.
Biography to the death of Darius the King of Persia, with superb paintings by Degas, Elisabetta Sirani, Altdorfer, Jan Brueghel the Elder, and more.
Ulysses sojourn with Circe, from the Odyssey, as an inset to Virgil’s Aeneid, as retold by Ovid in his Metamorphoses. A first-hand account of transformation.
The Eclectic Light Company 