After class, I was interested in looking further into how various artists have illustrated Don Quixote. By doing a few simple Google searches, I found dozens of beautiful pieces of art (and with a lot of thought and indecisiveness, I narrowed it down to 9 images to include in this blog).
The primary commonality that I found in all of them is that they include a man, a horse, and windmill(s). When these three icons appear together, they make a piece of art identifiable as one that relates to Don Quixote. This illustrates to me the importance of knowing the story when creating an image from it. All these artists knew that those were the aspects that stood out in the story, and would therefore be familiar to the audience.
I really appreciate the different styles that each one of the images below have. The fact that they all look so different yet pertain to the same story speaks to how classic the story of Don Quixote is. All of the artists created pictures that are an extension of the story, instead of images that told a story of their own. Because of this, they portrayed the same story, but in the different, unique styles of their respective artists.
Below are the 9 images that I selected. My personal favorite is the very last one because the style is quite similar to my country’s, Tanzania’s, cultural art. Which one is your favorite and why?
