Mythology and Religion

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Gods, heroes and sacred stories supplied most of the subject matter of art for most of history. Greek potters painted the labours of Herakles on drinking cups, bronze casters in Chola-period southern India shaped Shiva as Nataraja, lord of the dance, and Buddhist sculptors across Asia refined the calm, balanced image of the Buddha.

In Europe, Christian and classical subjects often came from the same workshop. Hubert and Jan van Eyck's Ghent Altarpiece (1432) gathers saints, prophets and angels around the Lamb of God, while Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1485) and the paintings of Ovid's myths that Titian made for Philip II of Spain revived the pagan gods for learned patrons. Later artists invented belief systems of their own: William Blake built a private cosmology in his illuminated books, and Matthew Barney's Cremaster films (1994–2002) spin a mythology from biology and landscape.