The Loves of the Gods – Greek and Roman Myths in Great Art

 According to the myths of the ancient Greco/Roman period, many of the gods – such as Zeus (Jupiter) and Aphrodite (Venus) – indulged in lusty love-making with other deities and/or with mortals.  These episodes were often depicted on Greek vases and on Roman wall paintings.  After a hiatus of about 1400 years, these amorous adventures were enthusiastically revived as subject matter for wonderful paintings commissioned by well-to-do patrons during the Italian Renaissance.

We will view delightful paintings by great 15th and 16th century Italian artists such as Botticelli, Titian, Tintoretto, Correggio, Leonardo and Michelangelo. Also we’ll see how 17th century artists in northern Europe, such as Rubens and Rembrandt, interpreted these same passionate, adulterous affairs of the ancient gods.  Come and enjoy witnessing “Gods Behaving Badly”!

A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, Roberta Shaw graduated with Honors from Stanford University in History and Humanities, and then earned a Master of Arts from the University of California, Berkeley, in Art History.  She has spent a total of 14 years of her adult life outside of the U.S.A. – about 5 of those years in India – in Kolkata, Trivandrum, and Chandigarh.  She has enjoyed living and traveling in many areas of the world, learning about and appreciating the diverse arts, cultures, religions, and history of our world.  She has taught Art History in several U.S. colleges and organized and conducted numerous Art & History tours abroad to European and Asian countries.  For the past nineteen years she has been teaching courses for retired people at Institutes for Lifelong Learning in the San Francisco area, always with an emphasis on the relationship between the visual arts and their historical and cultural context.

Her husband, Dr. Frederick Shaw, is the founder and CEO of the NGO, Developing Indigenous Resources (DIR), a health and education program which has operated in bustees on the outskirts of Chandigarh since 2005 for the benefit of low income residents.