The goddess Diana, Selene, the Virgin and Child, or is it just the moon in the sky of a pastoral landscape? Paintings from Bosch to van Gogh.
Tintoretto
Before photography, the only opportunity to see your face, painters took advantage of the Venus Effect to break optical rules and show faces that couldn’t have been seen in the mirror.
Christian visions of Heaven or Paradise are usually less of a location than an array of figures. Examples from 1475-1916.
Unfinished paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Tintoretto, Bonington, Bazille, Bastien-Lepage, Moreau and others.
Zeus, disguised as a gander, raped Nemesis, who laid Helen as an egg. She became step-sister of Castor and Polydeuces, and went on to be abducted by Paris as Aphrodite’s bribe.
Signatures written on scraps of paper, or in books, with comments, dedications in graffiti, and an apocalyptic vision of Botticelli.
Seen in more complex variants by Tintoretto and Memling, and in modern paintings by Corot and Thomas Hart Benton.
Motion can be implied against the rules we learn about how the world works. It can also be shown in billowing garments.
From the Renaissance, by convention dreams were shown as a dream view set within a framing real view. Examples by Raphael, Tintoretto and others.
Barefoot and sometimes surprising, as Christ washes the disciples’ feet, and other feet are missing altogether. Barefoot means poverty too.
The Eclectic Light Company 