Tag: Mythology

Ninfa e pastore (c.1570-1575)

Tiziano (c.1488-1576) Ninfa e pastore (Nymph and shepherd) c.1570–1575 Oil on canvas, 149.6 × 187 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna The theme on which the picture is based has not yet been satisfactorily clarified, but Titian raised it to the mythical level…

Aeolus (early 17th century)

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) Aeolus early 17th century Oil on canvas, 140 x 126 cm Museo del Prado, Madrid This work, together with Vulcano y el fuego (P1717), has been considered part of a possible series of four paintings that would…

Head of Medusa (c.1613)

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) Head of Medusa c.1613 Oil on canvas, 68.5 × 118 × 2 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Perseus cunningly killed the snake-haired Medusa, who had petrified man and animal with her gaze (Ovid, Metamorphoses). The blood dripping from…

Bacchus (1638-1640)

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) Bacchus 1638–1640 Oil on canvas, 191 x 161.3 cm Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg Bacchanalia was a favourite theme in Rubens‘s work, although Bacchus himself was rarely the subject of his paintings. He saw the subject as reflecting…

Venus and Adonis (mid-1630s)

Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) Venus and Adonis probably mid-1630s Oil on canvas, 197.5 x 242.9 cm Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York Rubens took the subject of this painting from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Accidently pricked by one of Cupid’s…

Cupid as Link Boy (1774)

Reynolds, Joshua (1723-1792) Cupid as Link Boy 1774 Oil on canvas, 76.2 x 63.5 cm Buffalo AKG Art Museum, Buffalo Joshua Reynolds’s portrait transforms a sight common to the streets of eighteenth-century London—a child worker lighting torches—into an allegory. “Link boys,”…

Mermaid (1896)

Munch, Edvard (1863-1944) Mermaid 1896 Oil on canvas, 100.3 × 552.5 cm Philadelphia Art Museum, Philadelphia Edvard Munch painted Mermaid during an extended stay in Paris in 1896–97, upon receiving a commission for a large-scale decorative work from Axel Heiberg, a…