Byron, no stranger to forbidden love, swam across the Dardanelles in 1810, retracing the strokes of the legendary Leander who died trying to reach his lover Hero.
Turner
Explaining shade, attached and cast shadows seen in paintings. While the first two have been generally painted faithfully, cast shadows are more complicated.
A visit to Rome, in the paintings of Valenciennes, Turner, Paul Bril, Gérôme, and others, and a little history of landscape painting.
Asphalt has been claimed to be responsible for the slow destruction and loss of many paintings, from the ‘Raft of the Medusa’ on. The evidence is tenuous.
Zeus comes up with a plan to reduce the number of mortals, and completes one of the first two steps, marrying Thetis to a mortal. And what a wedding feast, thanks to Eris.
Painted accounts of the great flood from Genesis, by Michelangelo, Elsheimer, Thomas Cole, JMW Turner and others.
Seen in more complex variants by Tintoretto and Memling, and in modern paintings by Corot and Thomas Hart Benton.
Lake Lucerne by Turner and Alexandre Calame, and a symmetric and rhythmic view of Lake Thun by Ferdinand Hodler.
From Turner, through Calame, John Ferguson Weir, and the last paintings of Gustave Courbet in exile, to Ferdinand Hodler.
A summary history from 1700 to the 20th century, with examples of major paintings, and links to each of the detailed articles in this series.
The Eclectic Light Company 