The crusaders start their march on the Holy City of Jerusalem, going from Tartus to reach Emmaus, just as all able-bodied Christians are banished from the city by its ruler Aladine.
Tasso
A mystic dies from burns after an ordeal by fire, Jerusalem is put under siege, then on 13 July they take the Holy City and start massacring its inhabitants. Few return alive to Europe.
Pope Urban II’s plan to maintain the Peace of God calls on the faithful to fight for their lives in Jerusalem. The rival People’s Crusade pillages and slaughters all non-Christians, and few survive by the time they’ve left Antioch for Jerusalem.
After the Bible and Ovid’s Metamorphoses, the most popular literary source for paintings before 1900, yet hardly anyone knows this epic today. The introduction to a new series.
A fun scene from Orlando Furioso, Ophelia’s death, two scenes from Jerusalem Delivered, one of the earliest works painted from a photo, and small boats in rough seas.
A senior in three generations of German painters, who is notable for his paintings of the victorious Arminius, or ‘Hermann the German’.
When completely blind, likely to be arrested and sentenced to death, with the remains of the English state around him, John Milton wrote one of the greatest works in English.
At his third attempt, the young Poussin made it to Rome, where he found an unusual patron who was an obsessive collector and friend of Galileo.
Shepherds and shepherdesses painted in stories, from classical myth, through the Bible and Christ’s nativity, to epic poetry, including Milton’s Paradise Lost.
Review of paintings and related articles published here in the second half of 2018, starring Tintoretto, Gérôme. Bonnard, Schiele, and Poussin.
