Three brothers discover their unmarried sister’s secret lover. They take him to the country, kill him and bury his body. She exhumes him, and takes his head away to hide in a pot of basil.
Strudwick
Scylla accosted by the grotesque sea-god Glaucus. When she runs away from him, he seeks the help of Circe, only for her to turn Scylla into a pack of hounds, then into a hazard to navigation.
A popular theme for paintings only after Keats’ poem was published shortly after his death in 1821. A gruesome love tragedy beloved of the Pre-Raphaelites.
She fell in love with Sir Lancelot, nursed him back to health after he was badly wounded, but he refused to marry her, or even take her as his lover.
Unwittingly, and outside their manifesto, the Pre-Raphaelite Brethren developed a new British narrative painting.
Painting time as a concept is very difficult. Once solution is to show the Fates, as depicted by Rubens, Goya, Burne-Jones, Jacek Malczewski and others.
Epitomising human attitudes to life and death for millennia, they spin the thread of life, measure the length allotted to each person, and cut that length with shears.
Hosting Lord Byron’s Alpine Witch, as the birth canal for Thomas Cole’s ‘Voyage of Life’, and an attempt by Courbet to return to the womb? The versatility of caves.
Three brothers murder their sister’s lover. A grisly story turned into a poem by John Keats, and a formative painting for the Pre-Raphaelites, and others.
Glaucus’ attempt to get Circe to put a spell on Scylla, to make her love him, backfires. Wonderful paintings by Waterhouse, van der Neer, Henry Fuseli, and others.
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