Narrative

Art that tells a story, through a single decisive scene, a cycle of images, a scroll or a sequence of prints.

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About

Pictures have told stories in several ways. A single scene can hold a whole plot, as in Masaccio's The Tribute Money (c. 1425), where Saint Peter appears three times in one landscape. Cycles spread a story across walls, as in Giotto's frescoes for the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua (c. 1305), and the reliefs of Trajan's Column (AD 113) wind a campaign upward in one continuous band. In Japan, handscrolls of The Tale of Genji (12th century) unfold episode by episode as they are unrolled.

William Hogarth gave the story a modern, satirical turn with A Rake's Progress (engraved 1735), eight scenes tracing a young heir's ruin. Comics, film and animation carried sequential storytelling into mass culture, and artists such as Paula Rego and Kara Walker have built unsettling tales from fairy stories, memory and history. Look for repeated characters and details that hint at what came before and what follows.