LOOK HERE UPON THIS PICTURE, THEN ON THIS Shakespeare, Art & Music

Hamlet’s demand to his mother, that she hold his dead father’s picture in one hand, and new husband Claudio’s in the other, becomes our cue: Look Here Upon This Picture, Then On This is a weekly opportunity to compare works of art from the world’s great gallery of homage to Shakespeare’s plays. Here, in painting after painting, artists have felt driven to recreate the enduring charisma of the Bard’s most famous characters and so celebrate the dramatic turning-points in the plays which changed lives then and have done so ever since for theatre-goers and readers alike. Opera and music will be featured each week too.

“THAT HANDKERCHIEF WHICH I SO LOV’D AND GAVE THEE” (Othello)

Envy, paranoia, racism and virtue make such a heady brew, painters must have asked themselves how on earth oils can convey the abstract power these words and actions have. And should Iago be invited to appear in any Othello group portrait? French artists like Delacroix, Chassériau and Colin lead the field in watching the tragedy unfold.