Sacred and Profane Love was Titian’s early period work that depicted the beauty of female. This Renaissance painting was based on a story in Greek mythology about the meeting of Medea and Venus. To recapture the throne occupied by his uncle, Iason decided to capture the god’s holy things—golden fleece. Aphrodite, the god of love, made Arcas’s Princess Medea lose her heart to Iason at first sight. With the help of Medea, Iason and his friends overcame all difficulties and finally killed the guard dragon and got the Golden Fleece. Later, Medea and Iason got together.

The young girl in Sacred and Profane Love with white and blue dress on the left side was Medea, she sat on a marble pool, and looked a little bit worried and scruples. She hugs a black magnetic tank that filled with dazzling pearl. While Aphrodite bared her plump figure and sat casually along the upper right side of the pool, which contrast to Medea’s reserve. Her blond hair blowing in the back of the head, and her left hand held a vial. In the middle of them, Small Cupid played the roses in the pool. The background of this Titian painting is a typical Italian countryside style, crossed the trees, the distant ancient castle, lakes and medieval tower-shaped church were visible before our eyes. It seemed that it was the setting sun that made the sky shrouded in the sunset glow.

This painting means a lot. It was said that the love of heaven stands for Eros’s unreal love, while man’s love represents the worldly love that the beauty loved the hero.

Starry Night is painted by Vincent Van Gogh in the year 1889 when he was in the mental hospital. As a representative work of Van Gogh, the post-Impressionist painter, his painting has strong brush strokes.

In this painting, the main color is blue that means unhappy and sullen, while the thick brush strokes on behalf of sorrow and worry. What Starry Night portrayed is the scene that can be seen when looked out of the window, the cypress painted like black flames straight on the clouds, expressed a feeling of unease. The lines of the sky seem like Whirlpool Galaxy with stars, while the moon appeared in the form of eclipse. In the whole picture, the bottom of the village was drawing by flat and stubby line that shows a kind of halcyon, which made a strong contrast with the stubby and crooked lines in the upper part. All the highly exaggerated deformation and strong visual contrast reflects the artist’s restless emotions and psychedelic imagery world.

Starry Night is a landscape painting, under the spire of the church set a village, and the stars flowed as vortex. What Van Gogh painted was his imagination, because that’s exactly what he saw. His brush stroke was bold and unrestrained, which seems to be irrational, but it doesn’t matter if it is serious or not, maybe at that time, he just closed his eyes, tasted his painfulness and followed his inclinations of squandering intuitively.

John William Waterhouse was an English painter. His artworks were known for their depictions of women from both ancient Greek mythology and Arthurian legend. Boreas was the purple-winged god of the north wind, one of the four directional Anemoi (wind-gods).

In this Waterhouse painting, Boreas, a girl is in a spring landscape decorated by yellowish daffodils. She stands in sea of flowers. Her head is slumped to the side, with her left hand put in the neck, which wears clothes, while her right hand is bare, holding her

Wind cannot be seen, however, the girl’s waving clothes and trees tell us that it is a windy day. As mentioned above, the scenery can strengthen the emotion in this figure painting, the same with the wind. In the painting, wind is an important feature. The girl’s sad feelings are strengthened by the depiction of wind.

The whole life of Rembrandt Van Rijin, he painted more than 500 famous artworks. His works are closely associated with his life’s experience.

In Greek mythology, Danae was a daughter of King Acrisius of Argos and his wife Queen Eurydice. Eurydice never ever had born a boy. Disappointed by his lack of male heirs, Acrisius asked an oracle whether this would change. The oracle told him that he would be killed by his daughter’s son. Nevertheless, Danae was childless. In order to keep her so, he close her down in a bronze tower or cave. But Zeus came to her in the form of golden rain, and impregnated her. Therefore, she was pregnant in the bronze of tower or cave. In this baroque painting, Danae is lying on her in the bed, naked. It is obvious that she is pregnant. Her left hand is on the pillow, but she stretches forth right hand, which seems that she is waiting something or hopes someone can save her. Her eyes are full of eagerness. At the same time, in the deep of her eyes, we can find her desperation. She doesn’t know who can help her and what she can do. The only thing she can do is waiting. Refer to Rembrandt’s life at that time, his painting The Nightwatch offended the rich and powerful families so that less and less people

bought his paintings. As a result, he could not make ends meet. For him, he had the same situation with Danae. He didn’t know how to change the situation. He was also looking forward to changing. This great job shows his mood and situation at that time.

Redon liked painting flowers very much. The reason why Odilon Redon loved painting flowers was that he was able to see people from the flowers. He once said, “The flowers are similar to the people’s faces. A flower is a mystery. It is the reflection of the soul.”This painting was made in the four years before his death. Various bright colors picked from the field in the long necked vase released the gorgeous and dazzling brilliance, showing enthusiasm, gentle, pure and noble beauty. It was the embodiment of pure personality and a song’s Lyric ebullience. Wild Flowers In A Long Necked Vase was made in 1912 and collected in France Orsay Museum in Paris. The flowers appeared in an indefinite space with no fixed position. The flower in the painting was a garden in the dream. The flowers in the painting were bright and colorful and not like the nature of the plant, but a bouquet full of mysterious artistic conception which embodied the painter’s innermost feelings. This reflected his heart was deeply intoxicated and immersed in the nature and quietness.

Wild Flowers In A Long Necked Vase was a representative work. The white vase was inserted a bunch of varieties of hybrid apricot and colorful wildflowers. The painter excluded the light role and made the bright colored flowers with a strong color show in front of people. For the sketches with an emphasis on light and color effect, it was a very novel creation. From the painting, we could see this pursuit of Redon. Various flowers were treated so harmonious and coordinated in the painting that they seemed to form a symphony of each part and various instruments. Therefore, some people also called Redon “mystery color composer”.

Odilon Redon (1840-1916) was an outstanding French symbolism painter. From 1870 until he was 50 years old, he only used two colors (white and black) for painting. His charcoal drawings and flat paintings developed a very unique style: the paintings with strong fantastic colors; the body or a part of the human body was blended together with the plant, animal or something like that. The Cyclops was the work created during his second artistic creation period (new Redon period). The Cyclops in the Greek mythology was climbing out from the ground. He used an eye watching a naked woman that was buried deep in the ground. The naked woman was the symbol of the joyfulness, but she seemed to be sleeping. The giant’s savage fierce heart also still had the requirement of desire and joy. Redon used this giant image to symbolize the great power of primitive desire.

The Cyclops

What the painting showed was the Cyclops grown from the earth. It gave people a gentle and amiable feeling with no fear although its image was bizarre. Some people said that once the monster of the painting appeared in the world, it seemed to coexist with people. This suggested that the monster that Redon created was the imagination in line with humans. Redon had the natural feeling for music and had studied biology because the influence of the poet. Many aspects of self-cultivation made his works have a poetic and elegant atmosphere. Redon’s art creation made a great influence on the modern art, so he was regarded as the founder of surrealism.

Gustav Klimt was born in Vienna and when he was 14 years old, he entered Vienna Austria Museum of Arts and Crafts School to receive 17-year academic basic painting training. After graduation, he, his brother and his friend opened a design studio to paint the murals at home and abroad. His early works basically adopted the methods of traditional expression, which was featured by the rigorous style and strong color. After the establishment of the separatists, he began the exploration of the combination of symbolic and decorative phase style. Judith Ii Salome was based on the biblical story: on the Jewish King Herod’s birthday, the niece Judith Ii Salome danced for his birthday. He had promised to agree to her any request. The niece was ordered by her mother to require baptizing the head of John (because her mother and Herod were accused of adultery, her mother grudged and wanted to revenge). Thus the king beheaded John.

The image of Judith Ii Salome in the painting was placed in a long composition, surrounded by two distinct arc lines. The upper two breasts were full of sexy sense. While the stiff hands showed the murderous look. Her beautiful face implied the remorse. This was a very complex and contradictory artistic image. In the lower painting, the half head of John appeared indistinctly. The painter realistically portrayed the cold face and the bare chest shoulder of Judith Ii Salome and made the rest of the painting filled with various shapes and colorful patterns. This decorative painting hided a tragic impact, intertwined with the contradiction between love and death. Coquettish, death and dream were filled with this decorative space.

Hieronymus Bosch‘s The Garden of Earthly Delights was riotous with colors, and portray the elements in details, followed the tradition of the Northern Renaissance. Although it was based on the theme of Bible, it had strong secular. We can not help but praise the colorful scene and dazzling objects.

In this oil painting, there were a variety of exotic fauna and flora. In the upper part of it, the tree with sword shape branches was dracaena that wrapped around by vines. At that time, people believed that dracaena’s red juice has magical healing power, and the grapes means wine, so that it metaphor the blood of Christ. In the upper right corner of the central pool, there existed a jujube tree which wrapped around a black poisonous snake. At the foot of the tree, some ugly creatures, such as snake, fro,climbing out from the pond. In the center of it has a pink living fountain, whose color looked like the robe o f Christ. The shape of this fountain is very strange, its color and texture were similar with crab that represents the moon—source of strength for alchemist in astrology. In addition, the root of the fountain had many rare stones, while a lot of birds perched on the residence. If we have a closer look, we could see an owl peeped out from a black hole in the center of fountain’s circular base. The owl is the symbol of stupidity and evil in Netherlands legend, it represents the man that stubbornly resisted the will of god or turned a blind eye on the darkness of this world.

In the background of The Garden of Earthly Delights, we could see exotic creatures, elephants and giraffes were some of them. May be Bosch knew these animals from the manuscripts of his generation. Eden seemingly calm, as a matter of fact, the contest of sin and righteousness has begun.

Tintoretto completed The Miracle of St Mark Freeing The Slave in 1548 and finished Finding of The Body of St Mark between 1562 and 1566. About St Mark, there was no complete record in the Bible. According to The Book of Acts, Letters of Paul, First Epistle of Peter and so on, the disciple of Jesus was very young when Jesus lived. He had written Gospel of Mark based on Peters’ narration. All the painting deeds about Mark were from the Jesus’s missionary miracles on the Three Gospels, which were also called the miracle of the gospel. This painting referred to St Mark’s remains after being killed there when Mark did missionary work in Alexandria. Under Christ’s guidance, several martyrs relics including remains of Mark were found in a temple.

These paintings related to St Mark created by Tintoretto had a close relationship with St Mark Scuola. And this Scuola was a half-secular and half-religious charity guild in Venice. The participants were mostly the middle and lower handicrafts-man and businessmen. The democratic tendency of this organization was obviously better than any other guilds. A series of St.

Mark’s Christian martyr stories with the relics showed by Tintoretto were in line with some poor believers there. In 1563, when the St. Mark’s guild required the decorative paintings of the zenith, the painters only submitted the drafts for approval, but Tintoretto submitted the completed manuscript. The guild thought that it did not meet the rule and refused to pay the remuneration. Tintoretto did not care about that and still completed the work and gave it to the church. He had created more than 50 works for St Mark Scuola and the theme was St. Mark’s miracle. This painting Finding of The Body of St Mark was one of these.