Hands are rarely covered in paintings. Examples include outdoors in winter, armoured gloves for crossbows, a sommelier, and fashion.
Velázquez
As a Cyclops, Polyphemus had only one eye, whereas Juno’s servant Argus had a hundred or more. Here they are in paintings.
After being entertained by Demodocus’ tale of Venus and Mars, Odysseus is delivered in the dead of night, still asleep, to a hidden harbour on Ithaca.
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.
Long before they were turned into chocolate, they were coloured, and hunted on Easter Sunday. Paintings by Claude Monet, Diego Velázquez, and others.
In Rome, in search of the temple of Aesculapius, and in the Gardens of the Villa Borghese, with Corot, Velázquez, Valenciennes, and others.
From the tribute to a dead colleague, and a record of an important exhibition, to the downright enigmatic embedded paintings of Velázquez, Courbet and others.
Spinning natural fibres like wool into yarn was “women’s work” and had several connotations, here explored in paintings, and the origin of the word ‘spinster’.
Ignored bodies, a complex chain from the head of John the Baptist, and Velazquez’s royal portrait which omits the King and Queen,
Paintings by Joseph Wright of Derby, William Dyce, Walter Crane, JW Waterhouse, Velázquez and others with allusions to the thread of time.
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