Does analysis of literary plots offer anything to the understanding of visual narrative in painting? A journey through some of the best painted stories in quest of the answer.
Veronese
Do Booker’s Seven Basic Plots reduce to a series of events leading to a change in fortune (reversal, peripeteia), and establishing the outcome?
How well do paintings of the stories of Perseus and Theseus fit Booker’s Seven Basic Plots? As he gives these as examples of Overcoming the Monster, do his stages work?
From his battle with the sea monster to the deadly fight at his wedding to Andromeda, paintings by Titian, Veronese, Burne-Jones, Vallotton and others.
A dramatic painting of a scene from a play, a cupola in what’s now Goya’s mausoleum, a woman asleep, and an allegory of Cupid and Psyche.
An overview and contents of the articles outlining the history of the Italian Renaissance, centred on paintings from Florence.
From about 1530, painting started to change. Brushstrokes became visible, anatomy exaggerated, composition less balanced and ideal. First Mannerism, then came the Baroque.
Lucretia’s rape and suicide, painted by Veronese, Artemisia Gentileschi, Rembrandt, and Kneller, and a wonderful David.
Scenes from Perseus and Andromeda, and Orlando Furioso, by Veronese, Moreau, Burne-Jones, Vallotton and others.
Isn’t that a horrific example of racism: a white man standing on the head of a Black man? Not when you read the image carefully.
The Eclectic Light Company 