The Annunciation, and myth of Vertumnus and Pomona, a tale from Roman history, a favourite fable, stories of schools and a concert of the birds.
Steen
How expression of pain became stereotyped in narrative paintings from Caravaggio to Böcklin, a very early Rembrandt and the anguish of a ewe on the death of her lamb.
Chaos in the barren classrooms of the 1600s gradually restored to order over the following two centuries as boys and girls learned to read and write.
Although not featured in classical myths, cats have several symbolic associations and their own fables. From a kept woman to a harem, and basking in the sunshine.
Without a title and the story in a fable, paintings can be hard to identify, and even harder to read. Examples from 1500-1751.
Paintings by Botticelli, Raphael, Velázquez, Gerard ter Borch, and Vermeer, including an unusual Madonna in which the Virgin Mary is writing the Magnificat.
Reading and the book in paintings from 1235 to 1849, a period in which they were mainly associated with religious devotion.
Independent and aloof, cats train their humans and think that they’re still large and ferocious. Paintings from Carpaccio to Bonnard.
Like all the worst men, satyrs were addicted to music, wine and women. Paintings by Piero, Claude, Rubens, Vedder, Moreau and others.
Never previously popular except as illustrations, paintings of fables became common in the Dutch Golden Age, and again in the work of a great animal painter around 1750.
The Eclectic Light Company 