13, 2019, heralds the wide cinematic release of the latest exponent of the genre: “The Goldfinch,” based on Donna Tartt’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel. Almost 40 years after Irving Stone wrote his biographical account of the life of Michelangelo, Dan Brown’s “The Da Vinci Code” turned the life and work of the Renaissance master into a romp through the preceding millennia.

The book was subsequently turned into a film starring Scarlett Johansson. Johannes Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring” inspired the novel of the same name by author Tracy Chevalier.

The stories told by works of art-and about them-are, quite literally, the stuff of novels. “If I could say it in words,” he said, “there would be no reason to paint.” Why would someone eschew the written word in favor of paint and canvas? 20th-century American artist Edward Hopper appears to have had the answer. Iconography-the symbolic language of a given work of art-can be sophisticated and complex, reflecting the collective consciousness or drawn from the artist’s personal experience.

Paintings can be far more complicated than they appear at first glance and difficult to decipher if the viewer doesn’t speak the same tongue. 50 famous paintings and the stories behind themĪ picture is worth a thousand words, and like texts, art is often meant to be “read” through critical deconstruction.

Michelangelo dan brown