How Lycurgus got the Spartans to keep his laws, the 300 at Thermopylae, a Spartan poet supporting warriors in the 2nd Messenian War, and the role of Sparta in the start of the war against Troy.
Tintoretto
Gravediggers, Christ as a gardener, itinerant foresters, road workers, snow-clearers, a vegetable gardener plagued by moles, and sandcastles on the beach.
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.
A natural mineral, it was unpopular in oil paint because of its coarse granules, but worked well in water-based media. It faded from use after a brief revival in the 19th century.
Dante and Virgil enter the first circle of Hell, Limbo, where those who never sinned but weren’t baptised in the Christian faith are confined.
The Renaissance provided the tools of realist painting, but remained largely bound to religious and mythical motifs. Seventy years later, many new genres had appeared.
If there’s one book every head of state and leader should read, it’s Dante’s Inferno. Introduction to a new series showing paintings of this first part of his Divine Comedy.
The red that lasts hundreds of years without fading, but it’s a highly toxic salt of mercury. Used in European paintings from the Romans to the late 19th century.
Perseus and Andromeda, the death of Medusa, Proserpine abducted by Pluto to Hades, weaving contest between Minerva and Arachne, Lycians turned into frogs, Marsyas flayed, Jason and the Golden Fleece, and the origins of Theseus.
The scales of justice, prominent on many courts of law, and Vedders’ warning of corrupt legislation, for weighing souls entering paradise, or apples in a Brittany market.
The Eclectic Light Company 