Fantasy sights: Nicolai Abraham Abildgaard
Abildgaard was one of the Danish representatives of the neo-classical movement in the 18th century. He did several notorious paintings.
Several were, of course, Greco-Roman in subject, such as his "Amor and Psyche"...
Odysseus takes counsel with Tiresias (from the Odyssey)
Lucius turning into a donkey, from "The Golden Ass" (he did two versions of the scene, this is but one)
Jupiter weighing the fate of humanity (a scene inspired by The Iliad)
But Abildgaad also did several Shakespearian pieces, such as a "Richard III" portrait:
Hamlet showing his mother the ghost of his father... (yes you can throw your booty-cheeks joke here)
Richard III before the Battle of Bosworth
He also had a cycle of Ossianic works. For example, "Fingal sees the Ghosts of his Forefathers by Moonlight".
"The ghost of Culmin appearing to his mother"
Beyond these thematic series, Abildgaard had an interest in various other subjects.
He dealt with Norse mythology, with his "Audhumla feeding Ymir" (curse Tumblr for not allowing high-resolution picture and only letting me put small blurry pieces)
He tackled the Bible with his piece "The archangel Michael and Satan disputing over Moses's body"
And he also painted his own variant of the very famous painting-subject, "The Nightmare".
Finally, he did a series of ten paintings based on a well-known Danish literary work, "The Underground Travels of Niels Klim". Niels Kim's Underground Travel is an 18th century novel published in Latin by a Danish-Norwegian author, Ludvig Holberg. It is considered one of the earliest European examples of a "fantasy" or "science-fiction" novel, since its entire story is about a man falling down a grotto, "underground", but this underground turns out to be a sky above another realm filled with all sorts of wondrous sights and beings: gryphons, tree-people, talking monkeys... This novel is deeply satirical in tone, as the presentation to Niels Klim of various alternate, utopian societies, is constantly ruined by him bringing from the "above" all the prejudices, problems and stereotypes of 18th century Northern Europe, resulting in him being basically kicked out of every realm he ends up in, until he finally is sent back to his home.
