Rediscovering our iconology and visual tradition, starting with a Ship of Fools, Death and the Maiden, Truth coming out of her well, and the wings on angels.
symbol
Well known from language, the scarlet woman should be easy to read in paintings. But all that is scarlet isn’t who you’d expect.
A relatively common motif, it started with the peculiar association of death and the erotic, then changed in the late 19th century.
What was thought to be an unusual painting by Hieronymus Bosch turns out to be part of a triptych. But what is the Ship of Fools about?
Examples from William Blake, Caspar David Friedrich, Delacroix, and an enigmatic painting of Wales.
The use of symbols in paintings from the Renaissance to the start of the nineteenth century, with van Eyck, Rubens, Girodet, and others.
Why are there two tortoises in the foreground of Moreau’s ‘Orpheus’? After a journey through Zen Buddhism, fables, and political allegory, the answer may be more obvious.
Taking stock on which narratives should be used, and what techniques should be used to represent them in paintings.
Painting is one of the oldest and most widely-accessible media for narrative. But narrative painting is also one of the least studied.
Is modernism different with respect to its use of visual tropes such as metonymy? The answer leads us to conclusions about the reliance of language and painting on metaphor and metonymy.
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