This is the third of Dido Powell’s Art Museum Tours in 2023, taking place on five Sundays between 5 February and 4 June. All tours take place on a Sunday 11am to 1pm. They cost £12 per tour or £55 if you book all five. See the full list here. Please message Wendy Earle (wendyearle@talktalk.net) to reserve your place.

INTRODUCTION

Since the Renaissance, Greek and Roman myths have been depicted by painters. The myth of Venus enabled artists from Botticelli to the Surrealists to explore the naked female body, with moderated censure due to the suspension of time and place in the painted settings. Objects associated with myths, such as bows and arrows, become signs for stories and appear concurrently in pagan and biblical stories, with religious references adding authority to pagan myths. In the twentieth century ‘bows and arrows’ as symbolic tokens in art, acquired sado-masochistic erotic meanings.

We will investigate how artists, from across the centuries have explored pleasure, punishment, reward and religious morality through depicting and referencing ‘Myths’.