Paintings aren’t made in an artistic vacuum. Part of the purpose is to please a patron, donor or dealer. Examples from Leonardo, Raphael, Tintoretto.
Tintoretto
Independent and aloof, cats train their humans and think that they’re still large and ferocious. Paintings from Carpaccio to Bonnard.
Telling a more complex story such as the Passion is more demanding. This traces how it broke out of frames, ultimately into Tintoretto’s masterpiece.
Fra Bartolomeo, Tintoretto, Blake, Merson, Tanner, and a very special nocturne by Adam Elsheimer show this popular story.
Painting dreams relies on a compositional convention to show both the viewer’s image of the dream, and that of the dreamer.
Illustrated table of contents to all the articles here describing Dante’s Divine Comedy and the great paintings and prints that accompany it.
Feet playing major roles in paintings by Gustave Moreau, Tintoretto, Rembrandt, Böcklin, Lovis Corinth, and others.
Tintoretto to a friend, Antonello’s cartellini, Alma-Tadema’s dedication of a wedding present in some graffiti, and some mysterious Venetians.
Rembrandt’s Belshazzar’s Feast, Tintoretto, William Blake, and Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s painting of Sappho each rely on words.
How can visual artists express non-visual concepts like the senses, virtues, the struggle between good and evil? Examples from Botticelli, Tintoretto, Rubens, and others.
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