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.