National Gallery Pocket Guides – Allegory - Softcover

Langmuir, Erika

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1857091663 ISBN 13: 9781857091663

Publisher: Yale University Press, 1997

Synopsis

When we say that 'Love is blind' or 'Time flies' - making disembodied ideas sound like living beings - we are using the language of allegory, and incidentally bringing abstract notions within the scope of the visual arts. Painters in the past, and commercial artists in our own day, have relied on allegory to create 'message pictures'. Once thought to rival literary works or political oratory in influence and prestige, such paintings, with their references to ancient myth, the Bible or medieval astrology, all too often puzzle modern viewers. This Pocket Guide illustrates and explains the main types of visual allegory in Western art, and the contexts in which they were originally created and viewed, through some of the most beautiful and intriguing pictures in the National Gallery, London.

About this title

About the Author

Erika Langmuir was formerly Head of Education at the National Gallery.

Edition details

• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1857091663
• ISBN 13: 9781857091663
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 64