As a visual art, painting is all about looking and seeing, and one of its more discomforting themes is that of the voyeur, the eyes that shouldn’t be there, looking at something they really shouldn’t. In these two articles, I first show examples of paintings that explore this in classical myths and Biblical stories, then tomorrow will take that on to more modern subjects.

When Acis, son of the river nymph Symaethis, was only sixteen, Galatea fell in love with him, but the Cyclops Polyphemus fell in love with her. The latter did his best to smarten his appearance for her, but remained deeply and murderously jealous of Acis. Telemus, a seer, visited Sicily and warned Polyphemus that Ulysses would blind his single eye. This upset the Cyclops, who climbed a coastal hill and sat there, playing his reed pipes.

Meanwhile, Galatea was lying in the arms of her lover Acis, hidden behind a rock on the beach. Polyphemus then launched into a long soliloquy imploring Galatea to come to him and spurn Acis. When he saw the two lovers together, Polyphemus grew angry, and shouted loudly at them that would be their last embrace. Galatea dived into the sea, but her lover was crushed to death by the boulder that Polyphemus lobbed at him.

Gustave Moreau’s Galatea from about 1880 shows her resting naked in the countryside with her eyes closed, and the cyclops playing sinister voyeur. Surrounding them is a magical countryside, filled with strange plants recalling anemones, as would be appropriate to a sea-nymph. Polyphemus is shown with two ‘normal’ eyesockets and lids, his single seeing eye staring out disconcertingly from the middle of his forehead.

Odilon Redon’s The Cyclops (c 1914) is one of the masterpieces of Symbolism, and follows Redon’s personal theme of the eye and sight, and further develops that of the voyeurism of Polyphemus. Polyphemus’ face is now dominated by his single eye looking down over Galatea’s naked beauty, with Acis nowhere to be seen.

Van der Werff’s modern reputation includes painting the erotic, and his Amorous Couple in a Park Spied upon by Children, or Paris and Oenone, from 1694, is one of his earlier works exploring the intense relationship of this legendary couple. When he was still a shepherd, Paris of Troy married the nymph Oenone, whom he later abandoned to marry Helen.

The Biblical story of King David and Bathsheba is all about voyeurism and sinister power.

Miniatures, such as Jean Bourdichon’s Bathsheba Bathing from 1498-99, led more private lives and could be considerably more explicit. Here is the most frequently painted moment of the story, with a nude Bathsheba bathing in the foreground, and David in his crown and regal robes watching her from a window in the distance.

In 1714, Adriaen van der Werff painted his traditional version of Bathsheba, who is combing her hair under the distant gaze of King David.

The Scottish artist David Wilkie’s Bathsheba from 1815 is set in the countryside. She is now beside a small stream where she has been bathing, and is just donning a stocking. King David is again shown as a sinister voyeur.

As you might expect, Jean-Léon Gérôme’s Bathsheba (1889) is a literal interpretation of the story. Watching Bathsheba washing in her small roof-garden is the figure of David, leaning forward to get as close a look as he can.

The other related Biblical narrative is that of Susanna and the elders, which opens with the two men watching her bathing in the privacy of her own garden.

In Jacopo Tintoretto’s groundbreaking masterpiece, Susanna is blissfully unaware of being watched by the evil elders. This puts the viewer in the uncomfortable predicament of knowing what’s going on, but also knowing what she doesn’t know.

Susanna herself is caught as she is drying her leg after bathing in the small pool beside her, looking at herself in a rectangular mirror propped up against a rosy trellis in a secluded part of her garden. Scattered in front of her are the tools of grooming, her personal jewellery, and a fine gold-encrusted girdle, behind which appear to be her outer garments.

Peering round each end of the trellis are the two old elders dressed in orange robes, who have entered the garden and crept right up to get a better view of Susanna’s body. To the right are trees, against whose foot Susanna’s back rests. Immediately above her head is a magpie, a bird associated in fables with mischief and theft. In the centre distance, the secluded area opens out to another pond, on which there are ducks and their ducklings, then there is a covered walk beside which is a Herm. In the left distance is a larger pond, at which a stag and a hind are drinking. On the far side are some trees and another Herm.

Unlike other paintings of nudes, where mirrors are often used to extend the view of the figure on display, neither the image seen in the mirror nor the reflection on the water show anything more of Susanna.

Lovis Corinth started painting this story in 1890, when he made two slightly different versions of what was fundamentally the same work. Their only reference to the garden is now a single rose, the flower chosen by Tintoretto for the trellis in front of Susanna, on the floor. The two elders have followed Susanna back inside after her bathing, and are now spying on her from behind a curtain, where only one of them is prominent. In common with Tintoretto, Corinth chooses a moment before Susanna is aware that she is being watched, and long before the elders force themselves on her. Both paintings emphasise her nakedness by including her clothes, and add the jewellery of more traditional depictions.

The previous article looked at paintings of three classical myths which extolled the principle of hospitality to strangers by warning people of the dire consequences of failing to respect it: Atlas was turned to stone, people were drowned in a flood, and others turned into frogs. There are also many examples of hospitality given in the Old and New Testaments, although these start to reflect changing values which perhaps anticipated more modern codes.

Henry Ossawa Tanner’s painting of Abraham’s Oak (1905) shows an ancient oak tree that died as recently as 1996. Tradition holds this to mark the place where three angels appeared to Abraham, or Abraham pitched his tent. The location is just southwest of Mamre, near Hebron, and its story runs that Abraham washed the feet of three strangers who appeared there, and showed them hospitality. They revealed themselves to be angels, and informed Abraham that his wife would become pregnant and bear him a son.

Perhaps the most revealing stories are those in the teachings of Jesus Christ, concerning Israelites whose origins were in Samaria, the Samaritans, who by that time had become shunned by the Jews, hardly in accordance with the ancient code of hospitality.

In Maximilien Luce’s Good Samaritan (1896), for example, the artist combines a brilliantly colourful dusk landscape with a classical narrative painting, showing the well-known parable of the Good Samaritan from the New Testament, in which a Samaritan gives aid to a traveller who has been robbed and beaten up on the roadside. Jesus uses this to explain who your ‘neighbour’ is, a key point in the obligation of hospitality.

Less known is the story of Jesus and the Samaritan woman at the well, told in the Gospel of John, chapter 4, verses 4-26, in which Christ arrived at a well in Samaria, tired and thirsty after his journey. A Samaritan woman came to draw water, and Jesus asked her to give him a drink. That surprised her, as at that time most Jews wouldn’t have spoken to a Samaritan like her. They then became involved in conversation, in which Jesus preached to her, and revealed himself as the Messiah.

Henri-Jean Guillaume Martin’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman (1894) depicts this using fine brushstrokes to build colour and form, and in places those strokes have become organised in the way that Vincent van Gogh’s rather coarser strokes did.

More startling still is Odilon Redon’s Christ and the Samaritan Woman (The White Flower Bouquet) from about 1895. In this unique interpretation, Christ appears to be holding a bouquet of white flowers for the woman. There are other adornments, such as the elaborate floral object between the two, and a bright blue object high above Christ’s head. Both the figures have their eyes closed.

The brilliant Polish artist Jacek Malczewski cast himself in the title role of his Christ and the Samaritan Woman from 1911.

Hospitality to strangers has been a recurrent theme in the lives of many different saints.

Bartolomé Esteban Murillo painted a particularly apposite scene in his Saint Thomas of Villanueva (Villanova) Dividing his Clothes among Beggar Boys from about 1667. This shows a story from the childhood of Saint Thomas of Villanueva de los Infantes (1488-1555), claiming that when he was a child, he often came home naked, having given all his clothing to poorer children. Thomas became a friar of the order of Saint Augustine, and was famed for his care of the poor when he later became the Archbishop of Valencia.

Thomas is the boy in the clean white shirt to the right of centre, who has just given his jacket to the boy to the left, who is dressed in dirty rags. It looks like Thomas is preparing to part with his trousers too.

Early paintings of hospitals also stress their original role in hospitality.

The sick have traditionally been cared for by their families. But for those without families, particularly anyone away from home, there have long been charitable institutions and others prepared to offer hospitality. They could have been slaves in the Roman empire, soldiers in mediaeval Baghdad, those returning from the Crusades in Europe, or refugees crossing mountainous areas through passes.

Few early hospitals provided much in the way of medical care, which was generally expensive and in any case ineffective. Most were little more than large inns, and any care staff were usually members of religious orders. A few took in cases of transmissible diseases which had become proscribed locally, conditions such as leprosy, and plague, in an attempt to confine the disease and prevent spread. The richer you were, though, the greater the chance and desire of being nursed at home.

Jacopo Pontormo’s fresco showing an Episode from Life in Hospital from 1514 shows nuns from a religious order caring for other women, perhaps the sick from their own convent.

The rise of social realism and Naturalism during the nineteenth century provides insights into contemporary society, and its attitudes to strangers and those outcast from society.

Évariste Carpentier’s The Foreigners from 1887 shows the arrival of outsiders in a close-knit community. At the right, sat at a table under the window, a mother and daughter dressed in the black of recent bereavement are the foreigners looking for some hospitality. Instead, everyone in the room, and many of those in the crowded bar behind, stares at them as if they have just arrived from Mars. Even the dog has come up to see whether they smell right.

Although many of the paintings of vagrants made by Augustus Edwin Mulready appear over-sentimental or even disingenuous, and his models are invariably sparklingly clean and well cared-for, some had more worthy messages. His Uncared For from 1871 shows a young girl with exceptionally large brown eyes staring straight at the viewer as she proffers a tiny bunch of violets.

Behind her and her brother are the remains of posters: at the top, The Triumph of Christianity is attributed to the French artist and illustrator Gustave Doré, who illustrated an edition of the Bible in 1866, visited London on several occasions afterwards, and in 1871 produced illustrations for London: A Pilgrimage, published the following year, showing London’s down and outs.

Naturalists like Jean-Eugène Buland took on challenging motifs with challenging readings. In Alms of a Beggar (1880), a young woman dressed immaculately in white is sat outside a church seeking charity. Approaching her, a coin in his right hand, is a man who can only be a beggar himself. His clothes are patched on patches, faded and filthy, and he wears battered old wooden shoes. Yet he is about to give the young woman what is probably his last coin. And we don’t doubt that she accepted it.