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.
Teniers
Later examples as it declined in popularity, from David Teniers the Younger, Gerard ter Borch, and most recently from Claude-Joseph Vernet and Joseph Stella.
Paintings by David Teniers the Younger, Domenicus van Wijnen, Tiepolo, Fantin-Latour, Cézanne, Félicien Rops and Lovis Corinth.
Guards throwing dice in the Crucifixion, gambling in Bosch’s vision of Hell, in a dingy tavern, losing an entire estate, and being played by young street urchins.
From dice shooters in a rough tavern, through Bastien-Lepage’s Little Chimneysweep, to poverty in Catania, and destitution in Paris.
Milkmaids milking cows in the shed, a farmer threshing and winnowing grain, churning butter, and a young couple courting by the back-ends of cows.
Their use by armies of the distant past, in the war against Troy, the sack of Rome, the Battle of Issus, by Alexander the Great, and in Crusades.
Myths of Perseus and Atlas, Philemon and Baucis, and the peasants of Lycia teach the ancient code of hospitality to strangers.
Just monkeying about in the Dutch Golden Age, with cats in a barbershop, as a sculptor, and the amazing paintings of Gabriel von Max.
Goddess Latona gives birth to twins Apollo and Diana, but local peasants refuse to let her drink from their lake, so they’re turned into frogs.
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