No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

Picasso painted The Actor over another painting, because he could not afford new canvases at the time. He created the painting over the winter of 1904–1905, at the age of 23. This was during the artist's Rose Period, when he changed his painting style from the downbeat tones of his Blue Period to warmer and more romantic hues. The painting currently resides in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City. It was donated to the museum in 1952 by automobile heiress Thelma Chrysler Foy, daughter of Walter Chrysler, the founder of the Chrysler automobile company. Experts estimate that the painting, which is considered to be one of the biggest from Picasso's Rose Period, is worth more than US$100 million.

Family of Saltimbanques (La famille de saltimbanques) is a 1905 painting by Pablo Picasso. It is considered the masterpiece of Picasso's circus period. The painting depicts six saltimbanques, a kind of itinerant circus performer, in a desolate landscape. The composition groups them together, but they do not seem connected to each other and are not looking at each other.[

In 1907 Picasso joined an art gallery that had recently been opened in Paris by Daniel-Henry Kahnweiler. Kahnweiler was a German art historian, art collector who became one of the premier French art dealers of the 20th century. He was among the first champions of Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and the Cubism that they jointly developed. Kahnweiler promoted burgeoning artists such as André Derain, Kees Van Dongen, Fernand Léger, Juan Gris, Maurice de Vlaminck and several others who had come from all over the globe to live and work in Montparnasse at the time.

No Description

No Description

By 1905 Picasso became a favorite of the American art collectors Leo and Gertrude Stein. Their older brother Michael Stein and his wife Sarah also became collectors of his work. Picasso painted portraits of both Gertrude Stein and her nephew Allan Stein. Gertrude Stein became Picasso's principal patron, acquiring his drawings and paintings and exhibiting them in her informal Salon at her home in Paris. At one of her gatherings in 1905, he met Henri Matisse, who was to become a lifelong friend and rival. The Steins introduced him to Claribel Cone and her sister Etta who were American art collectors; they also began to acquire Picasso and Matisse's paintings. Eventually Leo Stein moved to Italy, and Michael and Sarah Stein became patrons of Matisse; while Gertrude Stein continued to collect Picasso.

No Description

The terracotta shades and heavy monumentality of the figures in Two Nudes derive from Picasso's interest at the time in the ancient Iberian sculpture of his native Spain. Like many artists in the first decades of the twentieth century, Picasso found ancient and non-western art to be fruitful alternatives both to the prescribed forms of academic painting and the visual culture of industrial modernity. These two women are nearly mirror images, but the face of the figure on the left bears a strong resemblance to that of the figure on the far left in Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. Like the woman in Demoiselles, with whom she shares her chiseled nose and dark, hollow eyes, this woman holds open what appears to be a curtain and gazes outward, as though beckoning viewers in.

This is one of the most important of Picasso's Cubist works. He made about seventy sketches and rough drafts for it. The artist took the traditional subject of the Three Graces and reworked it in his own style.

Inspired by ancient art he saw while in Rome, Picasso began painting heavy-set figures in a neoclassical mode. In 1918, having married the Russian dancer Olga Koklova, Picasso was drawn to images of mothers with children.

No Description

The canvas was one of many portraits of Dora Maar painted by Pablo Picasso over their nearly decade-long relationship. Picasso fell in love with the 29-year old Maar at the age of 55 and soon began living with her.

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

Les Demoiselles d'Avignon (The Young Ladies of Avignon, and originally titled The Brothel of Avignon) is a large oil painting of 1907 by the Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973). The work portrays five nude female prostitutes from a brothel on Carrer d'Avinyó (Avinyó Street) in Barcelona. Each figure is depicted in a disconcerting confrontational manner and none are conventionally feminine. The women appear as slightly menacing and rendered with angular and disjointed body shapes. Two are shown with African mask-like faces and three more with faces in the Iberian style of Picasso's native Spain, giving them a savage aura. In this adaptation of Primitivism and abandonment of perspective in favor of a flat, two-dimensional picture plane, Picasso makes a radical departure from traditional European painting. The work is widely considered to be seminal in the early development of both cubism and modern art. Demoiselles was revolutionary and controversial, and led to wide anger and disagreement, even amongst his closest associates and friends. Painted in Paris during the summer of 1907, Picasso had created hundreds of sketches and studies in preparation for the final work. He long acknowledged the importance of Spanish art and Iberian sculpture as influences on the painting. The work is believed by critics to be influenced by African tribal masks and the art of Oceania, although Picasso denied the connection; many art historians remain skeptical about his denials. Several experts maintain that, at the very least, Picasso visited the Musée d'Ethnographie du Trocadéro (known today as Musée de l'Homme) in the spring of 1907 where he saw and was unconsciously influenced by African and Tribal art several months before completing Demoiselles. Some critics argue that the painting was a reaction to Henri Matisse's Le bonheur de vivre and Blue Nude.

No Description

Three Musicians is the title of two similar collage and oil paintings by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso. They were both completed in 1921 in Fontainebleau near Paris, France, and exemplify the Synthetic Cubist style. Each painting features a Harlequin, a Pierrot, and a monk, who are generally believed to represent Picasso, Guillaume Apollinaire, and Max Jacob, respectively.

No Description

Girl Before a Mirror shows Picasso's young mistress Marie-Thérèse Walter, one of his favorite subjects in the early 1930s. Her white-haloed profile, rendered in a smooth lavender pink, appears serene. But it merges with a more roughly painted, frontal view of her face—a crescent, like the moon, yet intensely yellow, like the sun, and "made up" with a gilding of rouge, lipstick, and green eye-shadow. Perhaps the painting suggests both Walter's day-self and her night-self, both her tranquillity and her vitality, but also the transition from an innocent girl to a worldly woman aware of her own sexuality.

This painting depicts Marie-Thérèse Walter (July 13, 1909 – October 20, 1977) who was the French mistress and model of Pablo Picasso from 1927 to about 1935, and the mother of his daughter, Maya Widmaier-Picasso. Their relationship began when she was seventeen years old; he was 45 and still living with his first wife, Olga Khokhlova. It ended when Picasso moved on to his next mistress, artist Dora Maar.

No Description

Grande Odalisque, also known as Une Odalisque or La Grande Odalisque, is an oil painting of 1814 by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres depicting an odalisque, or concubine. Ingres' contemporaries considered the work to signify Ingres' break from Neoclassicism, indicating a shift toward exotic Romanticism. Grande Odalisque attracted wide criticism when it was first shown. It has been especially noted for the elongated proportions and lack of anatomical realism. The work is housed in the Louvre, Paris. This eclectic mix of styles, combining classical form with Romantic themes, prompted harsh criticism when it was first shown in 1814. Critics viewed Ingres as a rebel against the contemporary style of form and content. When the painting was first shown in the Salon of 1819, one critic remarked that the work had "neither bones nor muscle, neither blood, nor life, nor relief, indeed nothing that constitutes imitation".[3] This echoed the general view that Ingres had disregarded anatomical realism.[4] Ingres instead favored long lines to convey curvature and sensuality, as well as abundant, even light to tone down the volume. Ingres continued to be criticized for his work until the mid-1820s.

Liberty Leading the People (French: La Liberté guidant le peuple) is a painting by Eugène Delacroix commemorating the July Revolution of 1830, which toppled Charles X of France. A woman personifying Liberty leads the people forward over the bodies of the fallen, holding the tricolore flag of the French Revolution in one hand and brandishing a bayonetted musket with the other. The painting is perhaps Delacroix's best-known work. Delacroix depicted Liberty, as both an allegorical goddess-figure and a robust woman of the people, an approach that contemporary critics denounced as "ignoble". The mound of corpses acts as a kind of pedestal from which Liberty strides, barefoot and bare-breasted, out of the canvas and into the space of the viewer. The Phrygian cap she wears had come to symbolize liberty during the first French Revolution, of 1789-94. The painting has been seen as a marker to the end of the Age of Enlightenment, as many scholars see the end of the French Revolution as the start of the romantic era. The fighters are from a mixture of social classes, ranging from the bourgeoisie represented by the young man in a top hat, to the revolutionary urban worker, as exemplified by the boy holding pistols (who may have been the inspiration for the character Gavroche in Victor Hugo's Les Misérables). What they have in common is the fierceness and determination in their eyes. Aside from the flag held by Liberty, a second, minute tricolore can be discerned in the distance flying from the towers of Notre Dame.

The Burial, one of Courbet's most important works, records the funeral of his grandfather which he attended in September 1848. People who attended the funeral were the models for the painting. Previously, models had been used as actors in historical narratives, but in Burial Courbet said he "painted the very people who had been present at the interment, all the townspeople". The result is a realistic presentation of them, and of life in Ornans. The vast painting—it measures 10 by 22 feet (3.1 by 6.6 meters)—drew both praise and fierce denunciations from critics and the public, in part because it upset convention by depicting a prosaic ritual on a scale which previously would have been reserved for a religious or royal subject.

A Bar at the Folies-Bergère (French: Un bar aux Folies Bergère), painted and exhibited at the Paris Salon in 1882, was the last major work by French painter Édouard Manet. It depicts a scene in the Folies Bergère nightclub in Paris. The painting is filled with contemporaneous details specific to the Folies-Bergère. The distant pair of green feet in the upper left-hand corner belong to a trapeze artist, who is performing above the restaurant's patrons. The beer which is depicted, Bass Pale Ale (noted by the red triangle on the label), would have catered not to the tastes of Parisians, but to those of English tourists, suggesting a British clientele. Manet has signed his name on the label of the bottle at the bottom left, combining the centuries-old practice of self-promotion in art with something more modern, bordering on the product placement concept of the late twentieth century. One interpretation of the painting has been that far from only being a seller of the wares shown on the counter, the woman is herself one of the wares for sale; conveying undertones of prostitution. The man in the background may be a potential client. But for all its specificity to time and place, it is worth noting that, should the background of this painting indeed be a reflection in a mirror on the wall behind the bar as suggested by some critics, the woman in the reflection would appear directly behind the image of the woman facing forward. Neither are the bottles reflected accurately or in like quantity for it to be a reflection. These details were criticized in the French press when the painting was shown. The assumption is faulty when one considers that the postures of the two women, however, are quite different and the presence of the man to whom the second woman speaks marks the depth of the subject area. Indeed many critics view the faults in the reflection to be fundamental to the painting as they show a double reality and meaning to the work. One interpretation is that the reflection is an interaction earlier in time that results in the subject's expression in the painting's present.

The painting depicts a group of Renoir's friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir's future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog. On the table is fruit and wine. The diagonal of the railing serves to demarcate the two halves of the composition, one densely packed with figures, the other all but empty, save for the two figures of the proprietor's daughter Louise-Alphonsine Fournaise and her brother, Alphonse Fournaise, Jr, which are made prominent by this contrast. In this painting Renoir has captured a great deal of light. The main focus of light is coming from the large opening in the balcony, beside the large singleted man in the hat. The singlets of both men in the foreground and the table-cloth all work together to reflect this light and send it through the whole composition.

No Description

L'Absinthe (English: The Absinthe Drinker or Glass of Absinthe) is a painting by Edgar Degas. Some original title translations are A sketch of a French Café, then Figures at Café, the title was finally changed in 1893 to L’Absinthe (the name the piece is known by today). It is now in the permanent collection of the Musée d'Orsay in Paris. Painted in 1875-1876, it depicts two figures, a woman and man, who sit in the center and right of this painting, respectively. The man, wearing a hat, looks right, off the canvas, while the woman, dressed formally and also wearing a hat, stares vacantly downward. A glass filled with the eponymous greenish liquid sits before her. The painting is a representation of the increasing social isolation in Paris during its stage of rapid growth.

Monet’s technique of “en plein air” painting was hard at work on this painting. Because it necessitated that he work from the same point of view as he painted, he dug a trench for the bottom half of the painting to sit in while he painted the top, due to its large size (it measures 100 by 81 inches). His model for the women of the painting was Camille Doncieux, who would later become his wife, bearing him two sons. To finish the dresses in the most fashionable style, Monet used magazine illustrations to render the clothing.

No Description

No Description

No Description

The Yellow Christ, in addition to The Green Christ, also painted by Gaugin, is said to be one of the key works in Cloisonnism. The Christ in the painting is a direct representation of a crucifix in Pont-Avon, France, where Gaugin visited to paint a number of times. It depicts a yellow form of Christ being crucified in 19th century northern France. French Breton women gather around the cross in prayer. The only shading in the painting is of the women bowed in prayer, the figure of Christ on the cross clearly outlined in black, and his form is flat, typical of the Gaugin’s symbolic style.

No Description

This is Paul Gaugin’s most famous painting, and he considered it his masterpiece, and the culmination of his thoughts. In Tahiti, as he was painting his masterpiece, Gaugin declared that he would commit suicide upon its completion. Although this was something he had previously attempted, this was not the case, as the artist died of syphilis in 1903. The painting was meant to be read from right to left, with the three main figures in the painting representing the three questions of the title. The figures are arranged from the beginning stages of life, from young figures with a child, to the middle aged figure in the middle, to the elder figure on the left of the painting. The idol in the background, situated behind the elder figure, represents the “Beyond.”

No Description

For The Potato Eaters, Van Gogh’s first major work, he wanted to depict peasants as they really were. He thus chose coarse and ugly models, so they would look as natural as possible in the final work. He made sketches of the work and sent them to his brother, who helped Van Gogh make adjustment in the composition. As far as two years after Van Gogh completed this painting, he considered it his finest work. This painting has also been a main target for art thieves, who have stolen it not once, but twice times. An early version of the painting was stolen in 1988, but later returned with no ransom, and again in 1991, when it was abandoned by the thieves and recovered.

Portrait of Dr. Gachet is one of the most revered paintings by Dutch artist Vincent van Gogh. It depicts Dr. Paul Gachet, who took care of him during the final months of his life. It was the only portrait painted by van Gogh during his stay at the doctor's home in Auvers-sur-Oise (27.2 km outside Paris), a 70 day period from May to July 1890. In 1990, it fetched a then-record price of $82.5 million ($75 million, plus a 10 percent buyer's commission) when sold at auction in New York

No Description

No Description

Seurat spent over two years painting A Sunday Afternoon, focusing meticulously on the landscape of the park. He reworked the original as well as completed numerous preliminary drawings and oil sketches. He would go and sit in the park and make numerous sketches of the various figures in order to perfect their form. He concentrated on the issues of colour, light, and form. Motivated by study in optical and colour theory, Seurat contrasted miniature dots of colors that, through optical unification, form a single hue in the viewer's eye. He believed that this form of painting, now known as pointillism, would make the colors more brilliant and powerful than standard brush strokes. To make the experience of the painting even more vivid, he surrounded it with a frame of painted dots, which in turn he enclosed with a pure white, wooden frame, which is how the painting is exhibited today at the Art Institute of Chicago. In creating the picture, Seurat employed the then-new pigment zinc yellow (zinc chromate), most visibly for yellow highlights on the lawn in the painting, but also in mixtures with orange and blue pigments. In the century and more since the painting's completion, the zinc yellow has darkened to brown—a colour degeneration that was already showing in the painting in Seurat's lifetime.

The Card Players is a series of oil paintings from the French Post-Impressionist artist Paul Cézanne. Painted during Cézanne's final period in the early 1890s, there are five paintings in the series. The versions vary in size and in the number of players depicted. The series is considered by critics to be a cornerstone of Cézanne's work during the early-to-mid 1890s period, as well as a "prelude" to his final years, when he painted some of his most acclaimed work. Each painting depicts Provençal peasants immersed in smoking their pipes and playing cards. The subjects, all male, are displayed as studious within their card playing, eyes cast downward, intent on the game at hand. Cézanne adapted a motif from 17th century Dutch and French genre painting which often depicted card games with rowdy, drunken gamblers in taverns, replacing them instead with stone-faced tradesmen in a more simplified setting. Whereas previous paintings of the genre had illustrated heightened moments of drama, Cézanne's portraits have been noted for their lack of drama, narrative, and conventional characterization. Other than an unused wine bottle in the two-player versions, there is an absence of drink and money, which were prominent fixtures of the 17th century genre. A painting by one of the Le Nain brothers depicting card players at a museum in Aix-en-Provence, near the artist's residence, is widely believed to have been an inspiration for Cézanne.

Munch had a troubled familial past. In addition to his overbearing pietist father, his mother died of tuberculosis when he was a small child, and his sister died nine years later of the same disease. This painting is an image of Munch’s older and favorite sister Sophie lying in bed, dying of tuberculosis when she was 15 years old. Munch created many reproductions of this painting, including one that was held in Dresden, Germany. In the 1930’s and 40’s Nazi’s deemed Munch’s art as “degenerate art” and removed all of them from Germany to be sold at auction. This piece was bought and later donated to the Tate Gallery in London, where it remains today.

No Description

Scream,/em> (Norwegian: Skrik; created in 1893–1910) is the title of expressionist paintings and prints in a series by Norwegian artist Edvard Munch, showing an agonized figure against a blood red sky. The landscape in the background is the Oslofjord, viewed from the hill of Ekeberg, in Oslo (then Kristiania), Norway. Edvard Munch created several versions of Scream in various media. The Munch Museum holds one of two painted versions (1910, see gallery) and one pastel. The National Gallery of Norway holds the other painted version (1893, shown to right). A fourth version, in pastel, is owned by Norwegian businessman Petter Olsen. Munch also created a lithograph of the image in 1895. Scream has been the target of several high-profile art thefts. In 1994, the version in the National Gallery was stolen. It was recovered several months later. In 2004, The Scream and Madonna were stolen from the Munch Museum. Both paintings were recovered in 2006. They had sustained some damage and went back on display in May 2008, after undergoing restoration.

Puberty is a painting created by Edvard Munch. Munch is an artist native to Norway and is widely known for his role in expressionistic art. Puberty has also been done as a lithograph and an etching by Munch. Upon observation of Puberty one of the strongest points in the piece to most is first the adolescent female who is placed mid-center of the painting. The second almost 'haunting' point in this painting is the shadow the female is meant to be casting. It has been speculated, because of the current sexual mind Munch was in during the time in which he painted this, that the shadow may be a hovering male genital. The thought of male genitalia to a young woman during this time of her own rapidly changing body creates a stench of tension within the piece. Another thought on the shadow is that it suggests the symbolic meaning of death. Both of these speculations on the shadow in this piece reflect well upon what Munch is known for symbolically portraying in his artwork. The female in Puberty had originally been thought to have been a model of Munch's while he was in Berlin. The strong detail used in the collar bones of her body suggests that he very well might have used a model. Either way this young lady is trapped in a space that alludes to much controversy within her mind and surroundings.

Madonna is a painting by the Norwegian expressionist Edvard Munch. Munch painted five versions of the Madonna between 1894 and 1895, using oils on canvas. Although it is a highly unusual representation, nevertheless, this painting is of Mary, the mother of Jesus. True to the Norwegian cultural beliefs and way of life, the painting is a strong dose of conceivable realism.

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

The Thinker is a bronze and marble sculpture by Auguste Rodin, whose first cast, of 1902, is now in the Musée Rodin in Paris; there are some twenty other original castings as well as various other versions, studies, and posthumous castings. It depicts a man in sober meditation battling with a powerful internal struggle. It is often used to represent philosophy.

No Description

No Description

Les Bourgeois de Calais is one of the most famous sculptures by Auguste Rodin, completed in 1889. It serves as a monument to an occurrence in 1347 during the Hundred Years' War, when Calais, an important French port on the English Channel, was under siege by the English for over a year.

The Kiss is an 1889 marble sculpture by the French sculptor Auguste Rodin. Like many of Rodin's best-known individual sculptures, including The Thinker, the embracing couple depicted in the sculpture appeared originally as part of a group of reliefs decorating Rodin's monumental bronze portal The Gates of Hell, commissioned for a planned museum of art in Paris. The couple were later removed from the Gates and replaced with another pair of lovers located on the smaller right-hand column.

The Kiss is a sculpture by Constantin Brâncuşi. It is an example of his abstracted, non-literal representation style. He created many versions of The Kiss, further simplifying forms to geometrical and sparse objects in each version.

No Description

Le bonheur de vivre (The joy of Life), is a painting by Henri Matisse. In the central background of the piece is a group of figures that is similar to the group depicted in his painting The Dance (second version). According to Hilton Kramer "Le bonheur de vivre owing to its long sequestration in the collection of the Barnes Foundation, which never permitted its reproduction in color, is the least familiar of modern masterpieces. Yet this painting was Matisse's own response to the hostility his work had met with in the Salon d'Automne of 1905, a response that entrenched his art even more deeply in the esthetic principles that had governed his Fauvist paintings which had caused a furor and which did so on a far grander scale, too."

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

Oath of the Horatii (French: Le Serment des Horaces), is a work by French artist Jacques-Louis David painted in 1784. It depicts a scene from a Roman legend about a dispute between two warring cities; Rome and Alba Longa, when three brothers from a Roman family, the Horatii, agree to end the war by fighting three brothers from an Alba Longa family, the Curiatii. The three brothers, all of which appear willing to sacrifice their lives for the good of Rome, are shown saluting their father who holds their swords out for them. The principal sources for the story behind David's Oath are the first book of Livy (sections 24-6) which was elaborated by Dionysius in book 3 of his Roman Antiquities. However, the moment depicted in David's painting is his own invention. It grew to be considered a paradigm of neoclassical art. The painting increased David's fame, allowing him to rear his own students.

The portrait of Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière was painted in 1806 by the French Neoclassical artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres, and today hangs in the Louvre. It is the third of three portraits of the Rivière family the artist painted that year. Caroline's father, Philibert Rivière, was a successful court official under Napoleon's empire, and sought to commemorate himself, his wife and daughter through a commission with the then young and rising artist - his portraits of Philibert and his wife are also still extant. Although Ingres favoured subject matter drawn from history or Greek legend, at this early stage in his career he earned his living mainly through commissions from wealthy patrons.[1] The family lived outside Paris, at St. Germain-en-Laye, and Mademoiselle Caroline Rivière would have been between 13 and 15 at the time she was portrayed; according to Ingres the "ravishing daughter". The younger Rivière's portrait describes slightly-built and youthful femininity and hints at a hesitant openness. The painting is rendered in bright hues and set against a serene white–blue early spring landscape, the freshness of which was intended to reflect the youth of the sitter. The background is not deeply portrayed; the perspective is shallow and rises—according to the art historian Robert Rosenblum—in "flattened horizontal tiers against which the figure seems crisply silhouetted as if in low relief." Typical of portraits by Ingres of the time, Caroline Rivière is drawn with a disregard for anatomical accuracy. Her neck is overly elongated, and the bridge of her nose extends too far.Rivière is portrayed with a stiffness and awkwardness typical of her age, and shown in a manner which was intended to emphasise a sense of the nascent purity and simplicity of her youth. Yet the painting is generally seen in the light of pathos and tragedy, as the sitter died within a year of the work being completed

Baronne de Rothschild is a 1848 oil and canvas portrait by the French Neoclassical artist Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. The sitter, Betty de Rothschild (1805-1886) had married banker James Mayer de Rothschild and was one of the wealthiest women in northern Europe, and one of the foremost Parisian patrons of the arts. Her beauty and elegance were widely known and celebrated, and inspired Heinrich Heine's poem The Angel. For her portrait, Ingres sought to infuse symbols of her material wealth with the dignity, grace and beauty of Renaissance art, especially that of Raphael, while at the same time adhering to the command of line as practiced by Jan van Eyck. It is this combination which, according to art historians, places Ingres' so far apart from his early modernist contemporaries. Betty de Rothschild's portrait is regarded as one of Ingres' most accomplished works, and has been described as "perhaps the most sumptuous yet approachable image of mid-nineteenth-century opulence."

Death of Sardanapalus (La Mort de Sardanapale) is an oil painting on canvas, dated 1827 by Eugène Delacroix. Its dominant feature is a large divan, with its golden elephants, on which a nude prostrates herself and beseeches the apathetic Sardanapalus for mercy. Sardanapalus (Detail) had ordered his possessions destroyed and sex slaves murdered before immolating himself, once he learned that he was faced with military defeat.

No Description

In the 1860’s Courbet began painting erotic nudes scenes, including depictions of female genitalia, nude women in erotic poses, and this painting, depicting lesbianism. Courbet gained much notoriety for his erotic nudes, which he displayed alongside hunting scenes, ensuring a sales and a reputation. Le Sommeil was commissioned by the Turkish diplomat Khalil Bey, who also commissioned The Origin of the World, to include his private collection of erotic paintings. This particular painting was also part of a police report in 1872 when a painting dealer held in it an exhibition. It was not allowed to be displayed publicly until 1988.

No Description

The Third-Class Carriage evidences Daumier's interest, as also seen in his graphic works, in the lives of working-class Parisians. Third-class railway carriages were cramped, dirty, open compartments with hard benches, filled with those who could not afford second or first-class tickets. In the bench facing the viewer are seated, from left, a woman holding her baby, an older woman with her hands clasped atop a basket, and a young boy asleep. Seated behind them are anonymous rows of women and men.

Arrangement in Grey and Black: The Artist's Mother, famous under its colloquial name Whistler's Mother, is an 1871 oil-on-canvas painting by American-born painter James McNeill Whistler. It occasionally tours worldwide. Although an icon of American art, it rarely appears in the United States.

Renoir labored over this painting for a period of three years before he was happy with its composition. Along with at least two full-sized figure drawings of the models, Renoir also created many preparatory drawings for each of the figures before eventually putting brush to canvas. Due to the criticism he received for the painting’s sculptural smoothness and a change in the artist’s perceived style, Renoir, who was exhausted by the effort, claimed that he would never again devote such a long period of time for a single piece of work.

Degas’ early masterpiece, The Bellelli Family depicts his aunt, her husband and their two little girls. It is believed that the artist drew each of the figures individually, later combining them in this unique portrayal of their family dynamic. The woman, Degas’ aunt Laura, wears a black dress in mourning for her recently deceased father, whose portrait hangs on the wall behind her. It is likely that this portrait hung at the Paris Salon of 1867, but it was badly hung and as a result was largely ignored by the critics. As a result, Degas kept it in his personal collection, where it remained until he left it to his dealer in 1913. In 1918, after his death, it was revealed an exhibition of the artist’s estate, and was immediately bought for 400,000 by the Luxembourg Museum.

This painting depicts the Viscount Ludovic-Napoleon Lepic and his two daughters, strolling through the Place de la Concorde in Paris, France. For four decades after World War II, this painting was considered lost. It was found when it was put on display at the Hermitage Museum in Russia, where it still remains. It was later discovered that the Russians had seized the painting from the collections of Otto Gerstenberg during the Soviet occupation of Germany following World War II. The composition, with a large amount of negative space, is thought by art historians to be based off of a photograph, which was an interest of Degas’ in his later life.

Young Spartans Exercising, also known as Young Spartans, is an oil on canvas painting by French impressionist artist Edgar Degas. The work depicts two groups of male and female Spartan youths exercising, though the subject matter of the painting has, in recent times, been challenged.

No Description

No Description

Degas, in the Classic line of descent from Ingres as a draughtsman--and one of the greatest in Europe since the giants of the Renaissance--exchanged oil paint for pastel, as in this example, with a sense of greater freedom in being able to draw in the medium as well as to apply color. The word "classic" refers to his preoccupation with the human figure but not to any desire to depict an ideal type of humanity. Remarking that "la femme en général est laide" he showed no disposition to modify this supposed ugliness. He quickly abandoned the antique subject-matter of pictorial composition after his few early essays.

Little Dancer of Fourteen Years ("French: La Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans") is a c. 1881 sculpture by Edgar Degas of a young dance student named Marie van Goethem. The sculpture was originally made in wax before it was cast in 1922 in bronze. It is built from wax, an unusual choice of material for a sculpture of this time, dressed in a cotton skirt with a hair ribbon, sitting on a wooden base. The exact relationship between Marie van Goethem and Edgar Degas is a matter of debate. It was usual in 1880 for the 'Petits Rats' of the Opera of Paris to seek protectors from among the wealthy visitors at the back door of the opera.

No Description

The Child's Bath (or The Bath) is an 1893 oil painting by American artist Mary Cassatt. The subject matter and the overhead perspective were inspired by Japanese woodblocks. It shows dignity in motherhood and has a style similar to that of Degas. The Art Institute of Chicago acquired the piece in 1910. It has since become one of the most popular pieces in the museum.

Spirit of the Dead Watching (Manao tupapau) is an 1892 oil on burlap canvas painting by Paul Gauguin, depicting a nude Tahitian girl lying on her stomach. An old woman is seated behind her. In Tahitian mythology the title may refer to either the girl imagining the ghost, or the ghost imagining her. The subject of the painting was Gauguin's Tahitian wife Tehura, then 14 years old, who one night, according to Gauguin, was lying in fear when he arrived late home: "immobile, naked, lying face downward on the bed with the eyes inordinately large with fear . . . Might she not with her frightened face take me for one of the demons and spectres of the Tupapaus, with which the legends of her race people sleepless nights?" The spirit she fears is personified by the old woman seated at left. The strong colors are symbolic of the native Polynesian belief that phosphorescent lights were manifestations of the spirits of the dead.

The Luncheon on the Grass (Le déjeuner sur l'herbe) was rejected by the Paris Salon in 1863 but Manet exhibited it at the Salon des Refusés (Salon of the Rejected) later in the year. Emperor Napoleon III had initiated The Salon des Refusés after the Paris Salon rejected more than 4,000 paintings in 1863. The painting's juxtaposition of fully dressed men and a nude woman was controversial, as was its abbreviated, sketch-like handling, an innovation that distinguished Manet from Courbet. At the same time, Manet's composition reveals his study of the old masters, as the disposition of the main figures is derived from Marcantonio Raimondi's engraving of the Judgement of Paris (c. 1515) based on a drawing by Raphael. Two additional works that are cited by scholars as important precedents for Le déjeuner sur l'herbe are Pastoral Concert (c. 1510, The Louvre) and The Tempest (Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice), both of which are attributed variously to Italian Renaissance masters Giorgione or Titian. The Tempest is an enigmatic painting that features a fully dressed man and a nude woman in a rural setting. The man is standing to the left and gazing to the side, apparently at the woman, who is seated and is breastfeeding a baby; the relationship between the two figures is unclear. In Pastoral Concert, two clothed men and a nude woman are seated on the grass, engaged in music making, while a second nude woman stands beside them.

Woman with a Hat (La femme au chapeau) is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1905. It is believed that the woman in the painting was Matisse's wife, Amelie. It was exhibited with the work of other artists, now known as "Fauves" at the 1905 Salon d'Automne. Critic Louis Vauxcelles described the work with the phrase "Donatello au milieu des fauves!" (Donatello among the wild beasts), referring to a Renaissance-type sculpture that shared the room with them. His comment was printed on 17 October 1905 in Gil Blas, a daily newspaper, and passed into popular usage. The pictures gained considerable condemnation, such as "A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public" from the critic Camille Mauclair, but also some favorable attention. The painting that was singled out for attacks was Matisse's Woman with a Hat, which was bought by Gertrude and Leo Stein: this had a very positive effect on Matisse, who was suffering demoralisation from the bad reception of his work.

Symphony in White, No. 1, also known as The White Girl, is a painting by James Abbott McNeill Whistler. The work shows a woman in full figure standing on a wolf skin in front of a white curtain with a lily in her hand. The colour scheme of the painting is almost entirely white. The model is Joanna Heffernan, the artist's mistress. Though the painting was originally called The White Girl, Whistler later started calling it Symphony in White, No. 1. By referring to his work in such abstract terms, he intended to emphasise his "art for art's sake" philosophy. Whistler created the painting in the winter of 1861–62, though he later returned to it and made alterations. It was rejected both at the Royal Academy and at the Salon in Paris, but eventually accepted at the Salon des Refusés in 1863. This exhibition also featured Édouard Manet's famous Déjeuner sur l'herbe, and together the two works gained a lot of attention. The White Girl shows clearly the influence of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, with whom Whistler had recently come in contact. The painting has been interpreted by later art critics both as an allegory of innocence and its loss, and as a religious allusion to the Virgin Mary.

The Artist's Studio: A Real Allegory of a Seven Year Phase in my Artistic and Moral Life is an allegory of Coubet's life as a painter, seen as an heroic venture, in which he is flanked by friends and admirers on the right, and challenges and opposition to the left. Friends on the right include the art critics Champfleury, and Charles Baudelaire, and art collector Alfred Bruyas. On the left are figures (priest, prostitute, grave digger, merchant and others) who represent what Courbet described in a letter to Champfleury as "the other world of trivial life, the people, misery, poverty, wealth, the exploited and the exploiters, the people who live off death." In the foreground of the left-hand side is a man with dogs, who was not mentioned in Courbet's letter to Champfleury. X-rays show he was painted in later, but his role in the painting is important: he is an allegory of the then current French Emperor, Napoleon III, identified by his famous hunting dogs and iconic twirled moustache. By placing him on the left, Courbet publicly shows his disdain for the emperor and depicts him as a criminal, suggesting that his "ownership" of France is an illegal one.

No Description

No Description

No Description

The Kiss (original Der Kuss) was painted by Gustav Klimt, and is probably his most famous work. He began work on it in 1907 and it is the highpoint of his so-called 'Golden Period', when he painted a number of works in a similar style. It depicts a couple embracing, their bodies largely hidden by elaborate robes decorated in a style that bears little relation to any historical textile designs. As well as conventional oil paint, gold leaf has been used, one of the aspects of the work that gives it a strikingly modern appearance, while evoking memories of much earlier art. The painting is now in the Österreichische Galerie Belvedere museum, in the Belvedere palace, in Vienna, Austria. When he painted The Kiss Klimt was 45 and still lived at home with his mother and two unmarried sisters - but behind the respectable facade he was a man with a ferocious sexual appetite. Klimt fathered at least three illegitimate children and probably many more. He was obsessed by women and he had a fixation with redheads. It is no surprise that the woman in The Kiss has red hair. According to writer Frank Whitford: "Together the man and the woman form the shape of a penis and I think that is intentional - it's about sex and about the fulfillment of sex between a man and a woman."

No Description

No Description

No Description

Alexej Jawlensky resigned his position as an officer in the Russian army to become a painter. His style was influenced both by the brilliant colors of the Fauve painters and by the way actors in the theater transform themselves using makeup, costumes, and lighting. Here is a portrait of an exotically costumed model with a fan. Her yellow-green face appears as it might look under stage lighting and is complemented and intensified by the surrounding reds. “Schokko” (the model’s nickname because she loved hot chocolate) radiates a powerfully artificial and theatrical presence. In November 2003 this painting sold for US$ 8,296,000 and in February 2008 for GB£ 9,400,000 (US$ 18.4 million).

Although Rousseau completed more than twenty-five jungle paintings in his career, he never traveled outside France. He instead drew on images of the exotic as it was presented to the urban dweller through popular literature, colonial expositions, and the Paris Zoo. The lush jungle, wild animals, and mysterious horn player featured in this work were inspired by Rousseau's visits to the city's natural history museum and Jardin des plantes (a combined zoo and botanical garden). Of his visits the artist said, "When I am in these hothouses and see the strange plants from exotic lands, it seems to me that I am entering a dream." The nude model in this painting reclines on a sofa, mixing the domestic and the exotic.

Rousseau described the subject of The Sleeping Gypsy: “A wandering Negress, a mandolin player, lies with her jar beside her (a vase with drinking water), overcome by fatigue in a deep sleep. A lion chances to pass by, picks up her scent yet does not devour her. There is a moonlight effect, very poetic.” A toll collector for the city of Paris, Rousseau was a largely self-taught painter, although he had ambitions of entering the Academy. This goal was never realized, but his sharp colors, fantastic imagery, and precise outlines—derived from the style and subject matter of popular print culture— struck a chord with a younger generation of avant-garde painters, including Pablo Picasso, Vasily Kandinsky, and Frida Kahlo.

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

As he had in Luncheon on the Grass, Manet again paraphrased a respected work by a Renaissance artist in the painting Olympia (1863), a nude portrayed in a style reminiscent of early studio photographs, but whose pose was based on Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538). The painting is also reminiscent of Francisco Goya's painting, The Nude Maja (1800). Manet embarked on the canvas after being challenged to give the Salon a nude painting to display. His uniquely frank depiction of a self-assured prostitute was accepted by the Paris Salon in 1865, where it created a scandal. According to Antonin Proust, "only the precautions taken by the administration prevented the painting being punctured and torn" by offended viewers. The painting was controversial partly because the nude is wearing some small items of clothing such as an orchid in her hair, a bracelet, a ribbon around her neck, and mule slippers, all of which accentuated her nakedness, sexuality, and comfortable courtesan lifestyle. The orchid, upswept hair, black cat, and bouquet of flowers were all recognized symbols of sexuality at the time. This modern Venus' body is thin, counter to prevailing standards; the painting's lack of idealism rankled viewers. The painting's flatness, inspired by Japanese wood block art, serves to make the nude more human and less voluptuous. A fully dressed black servant is featured, exploiting the then-current theory that black people were hyper-sexed. That she is wearing the clothing of a servant to a courtesan here, furthers the sexual tension of the piece. Olympia's body as well as her gaze is unabashedly confrontational. She defiantly looks out as her servant offers flowers from one of her male suitors. Although her hand rests on her leg, hiding her pubic area, the reference to traditional female virtue is ironic; a notion of modesty is notoriously absent in this work. A contemporary critic denounced Olympia's "shamelessly flexed" left hand, which seemed to him a mockery of the relaxed, shielding hand of Titian's Venus.Likewise, the alert black cat at the foot of the bed strikes a sexually rebellious note in contrast to that of the sleeping dog in Titian's portrayal of the goddess in his Venus of Urbino.

It is an early example of Manet's painterly style, inspired by Frans Hals and Diego Velázquez, and it is a harbinger of his life-long interest in the subject of leisure.

No Description

The Railway, widely known as The Gare Saint-Lazare, was painted in 1873. The setting is the urban landscape of Paris in the late 19th century. Using his favorite model in his last painting of her, a fellow painter, Victorine Meurent, also the model for Olympia and the Luncheon on the Grass, sits before an iron fence holding a sleeping puppy and an open book in her lap. Next to her is a little girl with her back to the painter, who watches a train pass beneath them. Instead of choosing the traditional natural view as background for an outdoor scene, Manet opts for the iron grating which "boldly stretches across the canvas". The only evidence of the train is its white cloud of steam. In the distance, modern apartment buildings are seen. This arrangement compresses the foreground into a narrow focus. The traditional convention of deep space is ignored.

Bathers at Asnières (French: Une Baignade, Asnières) is an oil-on-canvas painting by the French artist Georges-Pierre Seurat, the first of his two masterpieces on the monumental scale. Seurat borrowed from sources such as those of the fresco painters of the 15th century, the French classicism of Nicolas Poussin, and of contemporary Impressionism to create a unified canvas of a suburban, but placid Parisian riverside scene. The isolated figures and their clothes piled sculpturally on the riverbank, together with the trees, and austere boundary walls and buildings, are presented in a formal layout. A combination of complex brushstroke techniques, and a meticulous application of contemporary colour theory bring to the composition a sense of gentle vibrancy and timelessness. Seurat was twenty-four years old when he painted Bathers at Asnières, and he was to live for just another seven years. The Bathers puzzled many of Seurat’s contemporaries, and the picture was not widely acclaimed during his lifetime. An appreciation of it grew, however, during the twentieth century, and today it hangs in the National Gallery, London, where it is considered one of the highlights of the gallery’s collection of paintings.

No Description

No Description

No Description

In the fall of 1866 Cézanne painted nine portraits of his maternal uncle, Dominique Aubert. The forty-nine-year-old bailiff indulged his nephew with multiple sittings and agreed to pose in various costumes. Whereas he is shown here in the habit of a Dominican monk, in another likeness of this date, also in the Metropolitan's collection, he wears a tassled cap and robe.

The Large Bathers (French: Les Grandes Baigneuses) is an oil painting by French artist Paul Cézanne first exhibited in 1906. The painting is the largest of a series of "Bather" paintings by Cézanne; the others are in the Museum of Modern Art in New York City and the National Gallery, London. Occasionally referred to as the Big Bathers or Large Bathers to distinguish it from the smaller works, the painting is considered one of the masterpieces of modern art, and is often considered Cézanne's finest work. Cézanne worked on the painting for seven years, and it remained unfinished at the time of his death in 1906. The painting was purchased in 1937 for $110,000 with funds from a trust fund for the Philadelphia Museum of Art by their major benefactor Joseph E. Widener. It was previously owned by Leo Stein. The abstract nude females present in Large Bathers give the painting tension and density. It is exceptional among his work in symmetrical dimensions, with the adaption of the nude forms to the triangular pattern of the trees and river. Using the same technique as employed in painting landscapes and still lifes, Large Bathers is reminiscent of the work of Titian and Peter Paul Rubens. Comparisons are also often made with the other famous group of nude women of the same period, Picasso's Les Demoiselles d'Avignon.

No Description

No Description

No Description

No Description

Dance at Moulin de la Galette is one of Impressionism’s most highly revered masterpieces. The scene is of a Sunday afternoon at Moulin de la Galette, where Parisians would typically dress up and spend all day dancing, drinking, and eating galettes, or flat cakes. The painting was in the collection of Gustave Caillebotte, but it was claimed by the French government upon his death due to the non payment of death duties. It was later transferred from the Luxembourg Museum, to the Louvre, and then later to the Musee d’Orsay. Its sale price at auction in 2009 was the fifth highest price ever paid for a painting at auction.

Portrait of Madame Cézanne with Loosened Hair (or Madame Cézanne with Unbound Hair) is an oil-on-canvas painting by French artist Paul Cézanne, variously dated from the mid 1870s to the early 1890s. Although the model, his wife Hortense Fiquet, was not supportive and did not understand or take an interest her husband's work, this is one of forty-four portraits in which she sat for him from 1869, a period during which she progressed from mistress, to wife, to ex-wife. Something of a socialite, Cézanne latterly found Fiquet often fickle and shallow, and once remarked, "My wife only cares for Switzerland and lemonade". The sensitivity and depth ascribed to her in this work, is likely drawn from his own personality, projected onto her image.

Madras Rouge (The Red Madras Headress) is a painting by Henri Matisse from 1907. The woman depicted is the painter's wife, Amélie Noellie Parayre Matisse.

There are two versions of The Dance, the first, painted in March of 1909, is the study for the second one, completed in 1910. The large work, painted along the lines of William Blake’s painting Oberon, Titania and Puck with Fairies Dancing, was painted along with its companion piece, Music, which depicts nudes playing music in a similar setting. The pieces were specially created for Russian businessman and art collector Sergei Shchukin, who was a long-time associate of Matisse’s. This painting is often recognized as a key point in the development of Matisse’s artwork, as well as in the development of modern painting. It is also often associated with “Dance of the Young Girls,” in The Rite of Spring by Igor Stravinsky.

The work had tremendous appeal for the time. Before the opening of the Salon, the French Revolution had begun. The National Assembly had been established, and the Bastille had fallen. The royal court did not want propaganda agitating the people, so all paintings had to be checked before being hung. David’s portrait of Lavoisier, who was a chemist and physicist as well as an active member of the Jacobin party, was banned by the authorities for such reasons. When the newspapers reported that the government had not allowed the showing of The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons, the people were outraged, and the royals were forced to give in. The painting was hung in the exhibition, protected by art students. The painting depicts Lucius Junius Brutus, the Roman leader, grieving for his sons. Brutus's sons had attempted to overthrow the government and restore the monarchy, so the father ordered their death to maintain the republic. Thus, Brutus was the heroic defender of the republic, at the cost of his own family. On the right, the Mother holds her two daughters, and the servant is seen on the far right, in anguish. Brutus sits on a klismos on the left, alone, brooding, but knowing what he did was best for his country. The whole painting was a Republican symbol, and obviously had immense meaning during these times in France. Note Brutus' tense, crossed feet in the picture, the sharp scissors that lay dead in the center of the painting, and the use of light and dark to draw a distinction between Brutus and his wife. Brutus does not even look back as his headless sons are brought into the room.

The Death of Marat (French: La Mort de Marat) is a 1793 painting in the Neoclassical style by Jacques-Louis David, and is one of the most famous images of the French Revolution. This work depicts the radical journalist Jean-Paul Marat lying dead in his bath on 13 July 1793 after his murder by Charlotte Corday. Corday, who was from a minor aristocratic family, blamed Marat for the September Massacres and feared an all out civil war, claimed "I killed one man to save 100,000." It has been described as the first modernist painting.

The Intervention of the Sabine Women is a 1799 painting by the French painter Jacques-Louis David. The work was considered when Jacques-Louis David was imprisoned in the Luxembourg Palace in 1795; he hesitated between representing either this subject or that of Homer reciting his verses to the Greeks. He finally chose to make a canvas representing the Sabine women interposing themselves to separate the Romans and Sabines, as a 'sequel' to Poussin's The Rape of the Sabine Women. Its realization took him nearly four years.

Napoleon Crossing the Alps (also known as Napoleon at the Saint-Bernard Pass or Bonaparte Crossing the Alps) is the title given to the five versions of an oil on canvas equestrian portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte painted by the French artist Jacques-Louis David between 1801 and 1805. Initially commissioned by the king of Spain, the composition shows a strongly idealized view of the real crossing that Napoleon and his army made across the Alps through the Great St. Bernard Pass in May 1800.

The Coronation of Napoleon (French: Le Sacre de Napoléon) is a painting completed in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David, the official painter of Napoleon. The painting has imposing dimensions, as it is almost ten metres wide by approximately six metres tall. The crowning and the coronation took place at Notre-Dame de Paris, a way for Napoleon to make it clear that he was a son of the Revolution.

The painting depicts two topless women, one holding mango blossoms, on the Pacific Island of Tahiti. Currently, the painting is housed at the National Gallery of Art, on loan from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Although Tahiti is depicted as an innocent paradise, the two women in the painting confront the viewer in a way similar to that in Manet's Le déjeuner sur l'herbe (1863) or Olympia (1863), and follow an artistic tradition of comparing woman's breasts to flowers or fruit. The women in the painting also appear in two other works by Gauguin, Faa Iheihe (Tahitian Pastoral) (1898) and Rupe, Rupe (1899).

The Roulin Family is group of portrait paintings Vincent van Gogh executed in Arles in 1888 and 1889 on Joseph, his wife Augustine and their three children: Armand, Camille and Marcelle. This series is unique in many ways. Although Van Gogh loved to paint portraits, it was difficult for financial and other reasons for him to find models. So, finding an entire family that agreed to sit for paintings, in fact for several sittings each was a bounty. Joseph Roulin became a particularly good, loyal and supporting friend to Van Gogh during his stay in Arles. To represent a man he truly admired was important to him. The family, with children ranging in age from four months to seventeen years, also gave him the opportunity to produces works of individuals in several different stages of life. Rather than making photographic-like works, Van Gogh used his imagination, colors and themes artistically and creatively to evoke desired emotions from the audience.

This painting is a typical representation of Klimt’s stylized eroticism, and portrays the subject of Danae, which has been a popular theme throughout painting, having been painted before by Corregio, Rembrandt, and Titian. Danae was the symbol of divine love, transcendence, and sensational beauty. By positioning the model with a raised leg, this painting pays tribute to the Titian series of paintings by the same name. As the story goes, while Danae was imprisoned by her father, she was visited by Zeus, in the form of the golden rain flowing between her legs. Soon after Zeus’ visit, Danae became pregnant and gave birth to her son Perseus.

This painting, which took three years to complete, was commissioned by the wealthy industrialist Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer, who made his money in the sugar industry. Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer favored the arts, especially Klimt, and commissioned him to complete another portrait of his wife Adele in 1912. Adele Bloch-Bauer was the only person to be painted twice by Klimt. This painting is perhaps most famous not for its artistic quality, but because of its scandalous history since inception. Upon her death, Adele Bloch-Bauer wished the painting to be given to the Austrian State Gallery, but it was seized by advancing German forces in World War II. In 1945, Ferdinand Bloch-Bauer designated the paintings to be the property of his nephew and nieces, including Maria Altmann. Nonetheless, the Austrian government retained ownership of the painting, and was not returned to the Altmann family until 2006 after a long court battle. The painting was then sold at auction for $135 dollars, which is said to be the highest price paid at auction for a painting. It is now displayed the Neue Art Gallery in New York.

No Description

The Green Line (La Raie Verte) also known as The Green Stripe or Mme Matisse, is a portrait of Henri Matisse's wife, Amélie Noellie Matisse-Parayre. He painted it in 1905, just prior to such work being labeled as that of Les Fauves (the wild beasts).

The Expulsion from the Garden of Eden is a fresco by the Italian Early Renaissance artist Masaccio. The fresco is a single scene from the cycle painted around 1425 by Masaccio, Masolino and others on the walls of the Brancacci Chapel in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence. It depicts the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the garden of Eden, from the biblical Book of Genesis chapter 3, albeit with a few differences from the canonical account.

The Tribute Money is a fresco by the Italian renaissance painter Masaccio, located in the Brancacci Chapel of the basilica of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence, and completed by his senior collaborator, Masolino. Painted in the 1420s, it is widely considered among Masaccio's best work, and a vital part of the development of renaissance art. The painting is part of a cycle on the life of Saint Peter, and describes a scene from the Gospel of Matthew, in which Jesus directs Peter to find a coin in the mouth of a fish in order to pay the temple tax. It owes its importance in particular to its revolutionary use of perspective and chiaroscuro.

The Holy Trinity, with the Virgin and Saint John and donors (Italian: Santa Trinità ) is a fresco by the Early Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio. It is located in the Dominican church of Santa Maria Novella, in Florence. It is thought to have been created by Masaccio sometime between 1425-1427. He died in late 1428 at the age of 26, or having just turned 27, leaving behind a relatively small body of work. This painting was one of his last major commissions, and is considered to be one of his masterpieces.

The Madonna and Child with Angels is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Masaccio, who worked in collaboration with his brother Giovanni and with Andrea di Giusto. The painting is the central panel of the Pisa Altarpiece, a large multi-paneled altarpiece executed for the chapel of St. Julian, owned by the notary Giuliano di Colino in the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The painting is in a very damaged state, the altarpiece having been cut up and sold in pieces long ago. Today the panel is smaller than its original state; it has lost perhaps as much as 8 cm. at the bottom and 2-2.5 cm. at each side. Eleven surviving panels of the altarpiece, which is the only documented work by Masaccio, are in various museums.

Madonna with Child is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Filippo Lippi, executed around 1465. It is one of the few works by Lippi which was not executed with the help of his workshop and was an influential model for later depictions of the Madonna and Child, including those by Sandro Botticelli.

The Coronation of the Virgin (in Italian Incoronazione Maringhi) is a painting of the Coronation of the Virgin by the Italian Renaissance master Filippo Lippi, in the Uffizi, Florence.

Adoration in the Forest is a painting completed before 1459 by the Carmelite friar, Filippo Lippi, of the Virgin Mary and the newly born Christ Child lying on the ground, in the unusual setting of a steep, dark, wooded wilderness. There are no shepherds, kings, ox, ass – there is no Joseph. It was painted for one of the wealthiest men in Renaissance Florence, the banker Cosimo de Medici. In later times it had a turbulent history. Hitler ordered it to be hidden in WW2 and it became part of the story of a mutiny in the U.S. Army.

The Baptism of Christ was commissioned presumably some time about 1440 by the Camaldolese Monastery of Sansepolcro in Tuscany, originally part of a triptych. Its dating to Piero della Francesca's early career is evidenced by the strong relationship with the "light painting" of his master, Domenico Veneziano. It portrays Christ being baptised by John, his head surmounted by a dove representing the Holy Spirit. Christ, John's hand, the bird and the bowl form an axis which divides the painting in two symmetrical parts. A second division is created by the tree on the left, which instead divides it according to the golden ratio.

The Flagellation of Christ is a painting by Piero della Francesca in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche in Urbino, Italy. Called by one writer an "enigmatic little painting," the composition is complex and unusual, and its iconography has been the subject of widely differing theories. Kenneth Clark placed The Flagellation in his personal list of the best ten paintings, calling it 'the greatest small painting in the world'.

The Resurrection is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance master Piero della Francesca, painted around 1463-65. Though documentation is lacking, the gothic Residenza, the communal meeting hall in which it was painted, was returned by Florentine authorities to the citizens of Sansepolcro, Tuscany, 1 February 1459, as a sign of the restoration of some measure of autonomy to the Borgo; today the civic structure houses the Museo Civico of Sansepolcro, the artist's hometown. Now placed high on the interior wall facing the entrance, the fresco has for its subject an allusion to the name of the city (meaning "Holy Sepulchre"), derived from the presence of two relics of the Holy Sepulchre carried by two pilgrims in the 9th century. Piero's Christ is also present on the town's Coat of Arms.

The Lamentation of Christ is a painting of about 1480 by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. While the dating of the piece is debated, it was completed between 1475 and 1501, probably in the early 1480s. It portrays the body Christ supine on a marble slab. He is watched over by the Virgin Mary and Saint John whose cut-off profile is behind the Virgin Mary, who are weeping for his death.

St. Sebastian is the subject of three paintings by the Italian Early Renaissance master Andrea Mantegna. The Paduan artist lived in a period of frequent plagues; Sebastian was considered protector against the plague as having been shot through by arrows, and it was thought that plague spread abroad through the air.

The Presentation at the Temple is painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna. Dating to c. 1455, it is housed in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin, Germany. The date of the painting is unknown, but it belongs to the painter's youth in Padua. Date ranges from 1453, when Mantegna married Nicolosia Bellini, daughter of painter Giovanni, and 1460 when he left for Mantua. Bellini's Presentation at the Temple, explicitly inspired by Mantegna's, dates to around the latter year.

Primavera, also known as Allegory of Spring, is a tempera panel painting by Italian Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. Painted ca. 1482, the painting is described in Culture & Values (2009) as "[o]ne of the most popular paintings in Western art". It is also "one of the most written about, and most controversial paintings in the world." While most critics agree that the painting, depicting a group of mythological figures in a garden, is allegorical for the lush growth of Spring, other meanings have also been explored. Among them, the work is sometimes cited as illustrating the ideal of Neoplatonic love. The painting itself carries no title and was first called La Primavera by the art historian Giorgio Vasari who saw it at Villa Castello, just outside Florence, in 1550.

The Birth of Venus is a 1486 painting by Sandro Botticelli. Botticelli was commissioned to paint the work by the Medici family of Florence, specifically Lorenzo di Pierfrancesco de' Medici under the influence of his cousin Lorenzo de' Medici, close friend to Botticelli . It depicts the goddess Venus, having emerged from the sea as a fully grown woman, arriving at the sea-shore (which is related to the Venus Anadyomene motif).The painting is on display at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence, Italy.

Venus and Mars is a c. 1483 painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Roman gods Venus and Mars in an allegory of Beauty and Valour. Venus watches Mars sleep while two infant satyrs play carrying his armour as another rests under his arm. A fourth blows a small conch shell in his ear in an effort to wake him. The scene is set in a forest, and the background shows, in the distance, the sea from which Venus emerged. A swarm of wasps hover around Mars' head, possibly as a symbol that love is often accompanied by pain. Another possible explanation is that the wasps represent the Vespucci family that may have commissioned the painting; the symbol of the Vespucci house is the wasp. The painting is thought originally to have been the back of a lettuccio, a wooden sofa.

The Mystical Nativity is a painting of circa 1500–1501 by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, in the National Gallery in London. Botticelli built up the image using oil paint on canvas. It is his only signed work, and has a very unusual iconography for a Nativity. It has been suggested that the painting may be connected with the influence of Savonarola, whose influence appears in a number of late paintings by Botticelli, though the contents of the image may have been specified by the person commissioning it.

The Adoration of the Magi is a painting by the Italian Renaissance master Sandro Botticelli, dating from 1475 or 1476. It is housed in the Uffizi of Florence. Botticelli was commissioned to paint at least seven versions of The Adoration of the Magi. The Adoration of the Magi theme was popular in the Renaissance Florence. The work was commissioned by Gaspare di Zanobi del Lama, a banker of humble origins and dubious morality connected to the House of Medici, for his chapel in the church of Santa Maria Novella (now destroyed). In the scene are present numerous characters among which are several members of the Medici family: Cosimo de' Medici (the Magus kneeling in front of the Virgin, described by Vasari as "the finest of all that are now extant for its life and vigour"), his sons Piero (the second Magus kneeling in the centre with the red mantle) and Giovanni (the third Magus), and his grandsons Giuliano and Lorenzo. The three Medici portrayed as Magi were all dead at the time the picture was painted, and Florence was effectively ruled by Lorenzo.

The Delivery of the Keys, or Christ Giving the Keys to St. Peter is a fresco by the Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino, executed in 1481-1482 and located in the Sistine Chapel, Rome. The scene, part of the series of the Stories of Jesus on the chapel's northern wall, is a reference to Matthew 16 in which the "keys of the kingdom of heaven" are given to St.Peter. These keys represent the power to forgive and to share the word of God thereby giving them the power to allow others into heaven.

The Madonna in Glory with Saints is a painting by the Italian Renaissance painter Pietro Perugino, dating to c. 1500-1501. It is housed in the Pinacoteca Nazionale of Bologna, Italy. It was originally located in the Scarani Chapel of the church of San Giovanni in Monte. The scheme of the composition, typical of Perugino's mature works (based on the lost Assumption of the Sistine Chapel and used in numerous works of the period, such as the San Francesco al Prato Resurrection and the Vallombrosa Altarpiece), includes two different levels. The Madonna with Child, depicted within an almond in the upper part; and a group of four saints above a hilly landscape in the lower one.

The Portrait of Francesco delle Opere is a painting by the Italian Renaissance artist Perugino, dating to 1494 and housed in the Uffizi Gallery, Florence. Francesco delle Opere is portrayed from three-quarters, with a black beret and a mantle of the same color, a red blouse under which is a white shirt. His hand holds a cartouche with the words Timete Devm ("Beware of God"), the beginning of a famous preaching by Girolamo Savonarola. The hands lie on an invisible parapet which coincides with the painting's lower border, as in Flemish contemporary works such as Hans Memling's Man with a Letter.

The Virgin of the Rocks (sometimes the Madonna of the Rocks) is the name used for two paintings by Leonardo da Vinci, of the same subject, and of a composition which is identical except for several significant details. The version generally considered the prime version, that is the earlier of the two, hangs in the Musée du Louvre in Paris and the other in the National Gallery, London. The paintings are both nearly 2 metres (over 6 feet) high and are painted in oils. Both were painted on wooden panel; that in the Louvre has been transferred to canvas. Both paintings show the Madonna and Christ Child with the infant John the Baptist and an angel, in a rocky setting which gives the paintings their usual name. The significant compositional differences are in the gaze and right hand of the angel. There are many minor ways in which the works differ, including the colours, the lighting, the flora, and the way in which sfumato has been used. Although the date of an associated commission is documented, the complete histories of the two paintings are unknown, and lead to speculation about which of the two is earlier.

This is a painting of the traditional subject of the Annunciation, by the Italian Renaissance artists Leonardo da Vinci and Andrea del Verrocchio, dating from circa 1472–1475[1] and housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy. The angel holds a Madonna lily, a symbol of Mary's virginity and of the city of Florence. It is supposed that Leonardo originally copied the wings from those of a bird in flight, but they have since been lengthened by a later artist.

Ginevra de’ Benci was an aristocrat from 15th-century Florence, admired for her intelligence by Florentine contemporaries. She is the subject of a portrait painting by Leonardo da Vinci. The oil-on-wood portrait was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., in 1967, for US$5 million paid to the Princely House of Liechtenstein, a record price at the time, from the Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund. It is the only painting by Leonardo on public view in the Americas.

The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne is an oil painting by Leonardo da Vinci depicting St. Anne, her daughter the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus. Christ is shown grappling with a sacrificial lamb symbolizing his Passion as the Virgin tries to restrain him. The painting was commissioned as the high altarpiece for the Church of Santissima Annunziata in Florence and its theme had long preoccupied Leonardo.

The Mona Lisa (or La Gioconda) is a half-length portrait of a woman by the Italian artist Leonardo da Vinci, which has been acclaimed as "the best known, the most visited, the most written about, the most sung about, the most parodied work of art in the world." The painting, thought to be a portrait of Lisa Gherardini, the wife of Francesco del Giocondo, is in oil on a poplar panel, and is believed to have been painted between 1503 and 1506. It was acquired by King Francis I of France and is now the property of the French Republic, on permanent display at the Musée du Louvre in Paris since 1797. The ambiguity of the subject's expression, which is frequently described as enigmatic, the monumentality of the composition, the subtle modeling of forms and the atmospheric illusionism were novel qualities that have contributed to the continuing fascination and study of the work.

St. John the Baptist is an oil painting on walnut wood by Leonardo da Vinci. Completed from 1513 to 1516, when the High Renaissance was metamorphosing into Mannerism, it is believed to be his last painting. The original size of the work was 69x57 cm. It is now exhibited at the Musée du Louvre in Paris, France. The piece depicts St. John the Baptist in isolation. St. John is dressed in pelts, has long curly hair, and is smiling in an enigmatic manner which is reminiscent of Leonardo's famous Mona Lisa. He holds a reed cross in his left hand while his right hand points up toward heaven (like St Anne in Leonardo's cartoon The Virgin and Child with St Anne and St John the Baptist). It is believed that the cross and wool skins were added at a later date by another painter.

The Doni Tondo, sometimes called The Holy Family, is the only finished panel painting by the mature Michelangelo to survive. Now in the Uffizi in Florence, Italy, and still in its original frame, the painting was probably commissioned by Agnolo Doni to commemorate his marriage to Maddalena Strozzi, the daughter of a powerful Tuscan family. The painting is in the form of a tondo, or round frame, which is frequently associated during the Renaissance with domestic ideas. The work was most likely created during the period after the Doni's marriage in 1503 or 1504, as well as after the excavation of the Laocoön about 1506, yet before the Sistine Chapel ceiling frescoes were begun in 1508, dating the painting to approximately late 1506 or 1507. The Doni Tondo features the Christian Holy family (the child Jesus, Mary, and Saint Joseph) along with John the Baptist in the foreground and contains five ambiguous nude male figures in the background. The inclusion of these nude figures has been interpreted in a variety of ways.

The Creation of Adam is arguably the most famous section of Michelangelo's fresco Sistine Chapel ceiling painted circa 1511–1512. It is traditionally thought to illustrate the Biblical creation narrative from the Book of Genesis in which God breathes life into Adam, the first man. Chronologically the fourth in the series of panels depicting episodes from Genesis on the Sistine ceiling, it was among the last to be completed. It is the most well-known of the Sistine Chapel fresco panels, and its fame as a piece of art is rivaled only by the Mona Lisa by Leonardo da Vinci. The image of the near-touching hands of God and Adam has become one of the single most iconic images of humanity and has been reproduced in countless imitations and parodies. Along with Leonardo da Vinci's The Last Supper, The Creation of Adam and the other Sistine Chapel panels are the most replicated religious paintings of all time.

On the five pendentives along each side of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel and the two at either end, Michelangelo painted the largest figures on the ceiling: twelve people who prophesied or represented some aspect of the Coming of Christ. Of those twelve, seven were Prophets of Israel and were male. The remaining five were prophets of the Classical World, called Sibyls and were female. The Libyan Sibyl, named Phemonoe, was the prophetic priestess presiding over the Zeus Ammon Oracle (Zeus represented with the horns of Ammon) at Siwa Oasis in the Libyan Desert.

The Madonna of the Meadow is also known as Madonna del prato. In it, the three figures in a calm green meadow are linked by looks and touching hands. The Virgin Mary is shown in a contrapposto pose, wearing a gold-bordered blue mantle set against a red dress and with her right leg lying along a diagonal. The blue symbolizes the church and the red Christ's death, with the Madonna the uniting of Mother Church with Christ's sacrifice. With her eyes fixed on Christ, her head is turned to the left and slightly inclined, and in her hands she holds up Christ, as he leans forward unsteadily to touch the miniature cross held by John. The poppy refers to Christ's passion, death and resurrection.

The Deposition, also known as the Pala Baglione, Borghese Deposition or The Entombment, is an oil painting by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. Signed and dated "Raphael Urbinas MDVII (1507)", the painting is in the Galleria Borghese in Rome. It is the central panel of a larger altarpiece commissioned by Atalanta Baglioni of Perugia in honor of her of fallen son, Grifonetto Baglioni. Like many works, it shares elements of the common subjects of the Deposition of Christ, the Lamentation of Christ, and the Entombment of Christ.

The Portrait of a Young Woman, also known as La Muta, is a portrait by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael, c. 1507-1508. It is housed in the Galleria Nazionale delle Marche, in Urbino. The picture portrays an unknown noblewoman over a near-black background, showing some Leonardesque influences. Although only recently attributed to Raphael, it is ranked among the best portraits by his hand.

The Portrait of Maddalena Doni is an oil painting by Italian Renaissance master Raphael, executed between 1506 and 1507. The portrait is one of a pair that depict a recently married merchant and his wife. Agnolo Doni married Maddalena Strozzi in 1503, but Raphael's portraits were probably executed in 1506, the period in which the painter studied the art of Leonardo da Vinci most closely. The composition of the portraits resembles that of the Mona Lisa: the figures are presented in the same way in respect to the picture plane, and their hands, like those of the Mona Lisa, are placed on top of one another. But the low horizon of the landscape background permits a careful assessment of the human figure by providing a uniform light which defines surfaces and volumes. This relationship between landscape and figure presents a clear contrast to the striking settings of Leonardo, which communicate the threatening presence of nature.

The Madonna del cardellino or Madonna of the Goldfinch is a painting by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael, from c. 1505-1506. A 10-year restoration process was completed in 2008, after which the painting was returned to its home at the Uffizi in Florence. In this painting, as in most of the Madonnas of his Florentine period, Raphael arranged the three figures - Mary, Christ and the young John the Baptist - to fit into a geometrical design. Though the positions of the three bodies are natural, together they form an almost regular triangle. The Madonna is shown young and beautiful, as with Raphael’s various other Madonnas. She is also clothed in red and blue, also typical, for red signifies the passion of Christ and blue was used to signify the church. Christ and John are still very young, only babies. John holds a goldfinch in his hand, and Christ is reaching out to touch it. The background is one typical of Raphael. The natural setting is diverse and yet all calmly frames the central subject taking place.

The Alba Madonna is a painting by the Italian High Renaissance artist Raphael, depicting Mary, Jesus and John the Baptist, in a typical Italian countryside. John the Baptist is holding up a cross to Jesus, which the baby Jesus is grasping. All three figures are staring at the cross. The three figures are grouped to the left in the round design, but the outstretched arm of the Madonna and the billowing material of her cloak balance the image.

The School of Athens is one of the most famous frescoes by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael. It was painted between 1509 and 1511 as a part of Raphael's commission to decorate with frescoes the rooms now known as the Stanze di Raffaello, in the Apostolic Palace in the Vatican. The Stanza della Segnatura was the first of the rooms to be decorated, and The School of Athens the second painting to be finished there, after La Disputa, on the opposite wall. The picture has long been seen as "Raphael's masterpiece and the perfect embodiment of the classical spirit of the High Renaissance."

Sistine Madonna is an oil painting by the Italian artist Raphael. Commissioned in 1512 by Pope Julius II as an altarpiece for the church of San Sisto, Piacenza, it was one of the last Madonnas painted by the artist. Relocated to Dresden from 1754, the well-known painting has been particularly influential in Germany. After World War II, it was relocated to Moscow for a decade before it was returned to Germany. There, it resides as one of the central pieces in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister. The painting has been highly praised by many notable critics, and Giorgio Vasari called it a "a truly rare and extraordinary work".

The Madonna of the Chair or the Madonna della seggiola is a Madonna painting by the Italian renaissance artist Raphael, dating to c. 1513-1514 and housed in the Palazzo Pitti collection in Florence. It depicts Mary embracing the child Christ, while the young John the Baptist devoutly watches. Painted during his Roman period, this Madonna does not have the strict geometrical form and linear style of his earlier Florentine treatments of the same subject. Instead, the warmer colors seem to suggest the influence of Titian and Raphael's rival Sebastiano del Piombo.

The Veiled Woman or La donna velata is one of the most famous portraits by the Italian Renaissance painter Raphael. The subject of the painting appears in another portrait, La Fornarina, and is traditionally identified as the fornarina (bakeress) Margherita Luti, Raphael's Roman mistress.

The Portrait of Bindo Altoviti is a painting finished around 1515 by the Italian High Renaissance painter Raphael. Bindo Altoviti was a rich banker born in Rome in 1491, but of Florentine origin. He was a cultured man who loved the arts. The graceful, almost effeminate position of the subject along with the heavy contrast between light and shadow are atypical of Raphael's work, particularly of his portraits of men, demonstrating the artist's experimentation with different styles and forms in his later Roman period. The influence of the works of Leonardo, which Raphael studied astutely during this period of his career, are strikingly evident in this particular piece.

This portrait was eloquently described by Giorgio Vasari in his 1568 biography of Titian. He identified the man as a member of the Barbarigo, an aristocratic Venetian family. The most likely candidate is Gerolamo, who was 30 years old in 1509. He had numerous political and literary contacts and would have helped the young Titian on his path to success.

Flora is an oil painting by Italian late Renaissance painter Titian, dated to around 1515 and now held at the Uffizi Gallery in Florence. The work was reproduced in numerous 16th century etchings. It portrays an idealized beautiful woman, a model established in the Venetian school by Titian's master Giorgione with his Laura. Her left hands holds a pink-shaded mantle, while another holds a handful of flowers and leaves. The meaning of the painting is disputed: some, basing for example to inscriptions added to the 16th century reproductions, identifies the woman as a courtesan; other consider it a symbol of nuptial love, although her dress is not a dressing one. The identification with Flora, the ancient goddess of Spring and vegetation, derives from the presence of Spring flowers in her hands.

Bacchus and Ariadne (1520–23)[1] is an oil painting by Titian. It is one of a cycle of paintings on mythological subjects produced for Alfonso d'Este, the Duke of Ferrara, for the Camerino d'Alabastro – a private room in his palazzo in Ferrara decorated with paintings based on classical texts. An advance payment was given to Raphael, who originally held the commission for the subject of a Triumph of Bacchus. At the time of Raphael's death in 1520, only a preliminary drawing was completed and the commission was then handed to Titian. In the case of Bacchus and Ariadne, the subject matter was derived from the Roman poets Catullus and Ovid. The painting, considered one of Titian's greatest works, now hangs in the National Gallery in London.

The Cardsharps (painted around 1594) is a painting by the Italian Baroque artist Caravaggio. The work represents an important milestone for Caravaggio. He painted it when he was attempting an independent career after leaving the workshop of the Cavaliere Giuseppe Cesari d'Arpino, for whom he had been painting "flowers and fruit", finishing the details for the Cavaliere's mass-produced (and massive) output. The painting shows an expensively-dressed but unworldly boy playing cards with another boy. The second boy, a cardsharp, has extra cards tucked in his belt behind his back, out of sight from the mark but not the viewer, and a sinister older man is peering over the dupe's shoulder and signaling to his young accomplice. The second boy has a dagger handy at his side, and violence is not far away.

The Calling of Saint Matthew is a masterpiece by Caravaggio, depicting the moment at which Jesus Christ inspires Matthew to follow him. It was completed in 1599-1600 for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of the French congregation, San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome, where it remains today. The painting depicts the story from the Gospel of Matthew (Matthew 9:9): "Jesus saw a man named Matthew at his seat in the custom house, and said to him, "Follow me", and Matthew rose and followed Him." Caravaggio depicts Matthew the tax collector sitting at a table with three other men. Jesus Christ and Saint Peter have entered the room, and Jesus is pointing at Matthew. A beam of light illuminates the faces of the men at the table who are looking at Christ.

The Supper at Emmaus is a painting by the Italian Baroque master Caravaggio, and now in the National Gallery in London. The painting depicts the moment when the resurrected but incognito Jesus, reveals himself to two of his disciples (presumed to be Luke and Cleopas), only to soon vanish from their sight. Cleopas wears the scallopshell of a pilgrim. The other apostle wears torn clothes. Cleopas gesticulates in a perspectively-challenging extension of arms in and out of the frame of reference. The standing groom, forehead smooth and face in darkness, appears oblivious to the event. The painting is unusual for the life-sized figures, the dark and blank background. The table lays out a still-life meal. The basket of food teeters perilously over the edge.

The Judgement of Paris produced by Peter Paul Rubens is one of two very similar paintings. Both show Rubens' version of idealised feminine beauty, with the goddesses Venus, Minerva and Juno on one side and Paris accompanied by Mercury on the other.

Charles I with M. de St is an Flemish oil painting on canvas by Anthony van Dyck, depicting Charles I on horseback, accompanied by his riding master, Pierre Antoine Bourdon, Seigneur de St Antoine. Charles is depicted as a chivalrous knight and sovereign. He rides a large and heavily muscled white horse - possibly a Lipizzaner - under a neoclassical triumphal arch, from which fall hangings of green silk. He is clad in parade armour with the blue sash of the Order of the Garter and carries a baton of military command.

The Five Children of King Charles I by Sir Anthony Van Dyck. In it, the five children of Charles I are shown left to right: Princess Mary, (later Princess of Orange and mother of William III); James, Duke of York, (later James II); Prince Charles, (later Charles II); Princess Elizabeth and, in her sister's lap, Princess Anne. The future Charles II rests his hand on the head of an enormous mastiff. The mastiff had been a guard dog since Roman times and appears here as a protector for the royal children at a time of civil unrest. Nonetheless, the position of the young Prince's hand suggests that he is capable of ruling this powerful beast and, by implication, his country. The original of this group portrait was painted for Charles I in 1637, and is still in the Royal Collection. It shows the children at full length with two dogs, the mastiff depicted here and a small 'King Charles' spaniel at the right. Along with Van Dyck's earlier picture of the three eldest children, it was an immensely popular composition, and was copied many times. Van Dyck's relatively informal group of royal children contrasts markedly with the stiff, formal portraits of a generation earlier.

Las Meninas (Spanish for The Maids of Honour) is a 1656 painting by Diego Velázquez, the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age, in the Museo del Prado in Madrid. The work's complex and enigmatic composition raises questions about reality and illusion, and creates an uncertain relationship between the viewer and the figures depicted. Because of these complexities, Las Meninas has been one of the most widely analyzed works in Western painting. The painting shows a large room in the Madrid palace of King Philip IV of Spain, and presents several figures, most identifiable from the Spanish court, captured, according to some commentators, in a particular moment as if in a snapshot. Some look out of the canvas towards the viewer, while others interact among themselves. The young Infanta Margaret Theresa is surrounded by her entourage of maids of honour, chaperone, bodyguard, two dwarfs and a dog. Just behind them, Velázquez portrays himself working at a large canvas. Velázquez looks outwards, beyond the pictorial space to where a viewer of the painting would stand. In the background there is a mirror that reflects the upper bodies of the king and queen. They appear to be placed outside the picture space in a position similar to that of the viewer, although some scholars have speculated that their image is a reflection from the painting Velázquez is shown working on.

The Rokeby Venus is a painting by Diego Velázquez (1599–1660), the leading artist of the Spanish Golden Age. Completed between 1647 and 1651, and probably painted during the artist's visit to Italy, the work depicts the goddess Venus in a sensual pose, lying on a bed and looking into a mirror held by the Roman god of physical love, her son Cupid. Numerous works, from the ancient to the baroque, have been cited as sources of inspiration for Velázquez. The nude Venuses of the Italian painters, such as Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (c. 1510) and Titian's Venus of Urbino (1538), were the main precedents. In this work, Velázquez combined two established poses for Venus: recumbent on a couch or a bed, and gazing at a mirror. She is often described as looking at herself on the mirror, although this is physically impossible since viewers can see her face reflected in their direction. This phenomenon is known as the Venus effect. In a number of ways the painting represents a pictorial departure, through its central use of a mirror, and because it shows the body of Venus turned away from the observer of the painting.

The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is a 1632 oil painting by Rembrandt housed in the Mauritshuis museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. Dr. Nicolaes Tulp is pictured explaining the musculature of the arm to medical professionals. Some of the spectators are various doctors who paid commissions to be included in the painting. The painting is signed in the top-left hand corner Rembrant. This may be the first instance of Rembrandt signing a painting with his forename (in its original form) as opposed to the monogramme RHL (Rembrant Harmenszoon of Leiden), and is thus a sign of his growing artistic confidence.

The Prodigal Son in the Brothel is a painting by the Dutch master Rembrandt. It is housed in the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister of Dresden, Germany. It is signed "REMBRANDT F.". It portrays two people who had been identified as Rembrandt himself and his wife Saskia. In the Protestant contemporary world, the theme of the prodigal son was a frequent subject for works of art due to its moral background.

The Return of the Prodigal Son is an oil painting by Rembrandt. It is among the Dutch master's final works, likely completed within two years of his death in 1669. Depicting the moment of the prodigal son's return to his father in the Biblical parable, it is a renowned work described by art historian Kenneth Clark as "a picture which those who have seen the original in Leningrad may be forgiven for claiming as the greatest picture ever painted".

The Milkmaid is an oil-on-canvas painting of a "milkmaid", in fact a domestic kitchen maid, by the Dutch artist Johannes Vermeer. It is now in the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, Netherlands, which regards it as "unquestionably one of the museum's finest attractions". The painting is strikingly illusionistic, conveying not just details but a sense of the weight of the woman and the table. "The light, though bright, doesn't wash out the rough texture of the bread crusts or flatten the volumes of the maid's thick waist and rounded shoulders", wrote Karen Rosenberg, an art critic for The New York Times. Yet with half of the woman's face in shadow, it is "impossible to tell whether her downcast eyes and pursed lips express wistfulness or concentration," she wrote.

Girl with a Pearl Earring is one of Johannes Vermeer's masterworks and, as the name implies, uses a pearl earring for a focal point. Today the painting is kept in the Mauritshuis gallery in The Hague. It is sometimes referred to as "the Mona Lisa of the North" or "the Dutch Mona Lisa". More recent Vermeer literature points to the image being a tronie, the Dutch 17th-century description of a head that was not meant to be a portrait. After the most recent restoration of the painting in 1994, the subtle colour scheme and the intimacy of the girl’s gaze toward the viewer have been greatly enhanced.

The Art of Painting is a famous 17th century oil on canvas painting by Dutch painter, Johannes Vermeer. Many art historians believe that it is an allegory of painting, hence the alternative title of the painting. After Vermeer's The Procuress it is the largest work by the master. Its composition and iconography also make it the most complex Vermeer work of all.

The Love Letter is a 17th-century genre painting by Jan Vermeer. The painting shows a servant maid handing a letter to a young woman with a cittern. The tied-up curtain in the foreground creates the impression that the viewer is looking at an intensely private, personal scene. There is also an element of trompe l'oeil as Dutch paintings were often hung with little curtains to conserve them, and the device of painted curtains is seen in other Dutch works of the period. The diagonals on the chequered floor create the impression of depth and three-dimensionality. The fact that it is a love letter that the woman has received is made clear by the fact that she is carrying a lute (more specifically, a cittern, a member of the lute/guitar family). The lute was a symbol of love - often carnal love; luit was also a slang term for vagina. This idea is further reinforced by the slippers at the very bottom of the picture. The removed slipper was another symbol of sex. The floor brush would appear to represent domesticity, and its placement at the side of the painting may suggest that domestic concerns have been forgotten or pushed aside.

Jeanne Antoinette Poisson, Marquise de Pompadour, otherwise known as Madame de Pompadour, was the mistress of King Louis XV, as well as a prominent patron of Francois Boucher. Unlike the many other mistresses of the king, Madame de Pompadour continued to be a presence at the court by creating a cordial relationship with the Queen, by accompanying the King on hunting trips and social gatherings, and commissioning paintings of herself, which hid her aging looks. Although she did commission works from other artists, the majority of her portraits were done by Boucher.

Boucher’s popularity during his career was matched only by his artistic versatility. In addition to theatre costumes and set designs, tapestries, and designs and decorations for court celebrations, he also dabbled in gouache. This piece is one of only three gouache paintings by the artist. This piece, which was probably produced as an independent work, rather than as a study for a painting, bears a striking resemblance to another one of his paintings, Venus on the Waves. Boucher was a master at depicting idyllic classical scenes, and in this one we see his adeptness at portraying the mythical scene of impassive Venus, surrounded by nymphs and tritons, all paying tribute to the goddess of love.

The Age of Innocence is an oil on canvas picture by Sir Joshua Reynolds, painted in either 1785 or 1788 and measuring 765 x 638 mm. The sitter is unknown, but was possibly Reynolds's great-niece Theophila Gwatkin (who was three in 1785), or Lady Anne Spencer (1773–1865), the youngest daughter of the 4th Duke of Marlborough. The picture is a character study, or, in 18th-century terms, a fancy picture, and was painted over another Reynolds work, A Strawberry Girl, perhaps because Strawberry had suffered some paint losses. Only the hands remain in their original state. Innocence itself has deteriorated since 1859. The picture was presented to the National Gallery in 1847 by Robert Vernon, and has hung in the Tate since 1951. The picture became a favourite with the public, and was copied hundreds of times.

Shows the aristocratic Montgomery sisters – Barbara, Elizabeth and Anne. Their father was the Irish aristocrat Sir William Montgomery and they were known as the Irish Graces. They are shown gathering flowers to decorate a statue of Hymen, the Roman god of marriage.

Mr and Mrs Andrewsis an oil on canvas portrait by Thomas Gainsborough in the National Gallery, London. Today it is one of his most famous works. Thomas Gainsborough was twenty-one when he painted Mr and Mrs Andrews in 1750.

The Blue Boyis an oil painting by Thomas Gainsborough. Perhaps Gainsborough's most famous work, it is thought to be a portrait of Jonathan Buttall (1752–1805), the son of a wealthy hardware merchant, although this has never been proven. It is an historical costume study as well as a portrait: the youth in his 17th-century apparel is regarded as Gainsborough's homage to Anthony Van Dyck, and in particular is very close to Van Dyck's portrait of Charles II as a boy.

Sarah Siddons was the outstanding tragic actress of her time. Reynolds and other artists also painted her portrait. Gainsborough is reported to have had difficulties with the nose.

Mrs. Richard Brinsley Sheridan is an oil on canvas portrait painted by Thomas Gainsborough between 1785 and 1787. It was acquired by the National Gallery of Art in 1937. Mrs. Sheridan (Elizabeth Ann Linley) was a talented musician who enjoyed professional success in Bath and London before marrying Richard Brinsley Sheridan in 1773 and abandoning her career. She was 31 when she sat for Gainsborough. She died from tuberculosis at the age of thirty-eight.

The Venus of Urbino is a 1538 oil painting by the Italian master Titian. It depicts a nude young woman, identified with the goddess Venus, reclining on a couch or bed in the sumptuous surroundings of a Renaissance palace. It hangs in the Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence. The figure's pose is based on Giorgione's Sleeping Venus (c. 1510), which Titian completed. In this depiction, Titian has domesticated Venus by moving her to an indoor setting, engaging her with the viewer, and making her sensuality explicit. Devoid as it is of any classical or allegorical trappings – Venus displays none of the attributes of the goddess she is supposed to represent – the painting is unapologetically erotic.

Christ's Entry Into Brussels in 1889 (also known as Entry of Christ into Brussels) is an 1888 painting by James Ensor. The painting is on permanent exhibition at the Getty Center in Los Angeles.

The painting appears, after cleaning, to be an autograph replica of a picture, the original of which was painted in Brussels in 1782 in free imitation of Rubens's 'Chapeau de Paille', which Vigée Le Brun had seen in Antwerp. It was exhibited in Paris in 1782 at the Salon de la Correspondance. Vigée Le Brun's original is recorded in a private collection in France.

The Proposition is a genre painting of 1631 by Judith Leyster, now in the Mauritshuis in The Hague, who title it Man offering money to a young woman. It depicts a woman, sewing by candlelight, as a man leans over her, touching her right shoulder with his left hand. He is offering her coins in her right hand, but she is apparently ignoring the offer and concentrating intently upon her sewing.

Judith Slaying Holofernes is a painting by the Italian early Baroque artist Artemisia Gentileschi completed between 1611–12. The work shows an apocrypha scene from the Old Testament Book of Judith which details the delivery of Israel from the Assyrian general Holofernes. In this scene, Judith and her maidservant behead the general after he has fallen asleep drunk. The painting is relentlessly physical, from the wide spurts of blood to the energy of the two women as they try to wield the large dagger. The effort of the women's struggle is most finely represented by the delicate face of the maid, which is grasped by the oversized, muscular fist of Holofernes as he desperately struggles to survive. Although the painting depicts a classic scene from the Bible, Gentileschi drew herself as Judith and her mentor Agostino Tassi, who was tried in court for her rape, as Holofernes.

The Lamentation of Christ is a very common subject in Christian art from the High Middle Ages to the Baroque. After Jesus was crucified, his body was removed from the cross and his friends and family mourned over his body. This is perhaps the most famous of Giotto's scenes from the Life of Christ in the Scrovegni Chapel in Padua.

Madonna Enthroned, also known as the Ognissanti Madonna, is a painting by the Italian late medieval artist Giotto di Bondone, housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy. It is generally dated to around 1310. The painting has a traditional Christian subject, representing the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child seated on her lap, with saints surrounding the two. It is celebrated often as the first painting of the Renaissance due to its newfound naturalism and escape from the constraints of Gothic art.

Portrait of the Artist Holding a Thistle is an oil painting on parchment pasted on canvas by German artist Albrecht Dürer, painted in 1493. It is the earliest of Dürer's painted self-portraits and has been identified as one of the first self-portraits painted by a Northern artist. The date, and the plant in the artist's hand, seem to suggest that this is a betrothal portrait.

Melencolia I is a 1514 engraving by the German Renaissance master Albrecht Dürer. It is an allegorical composition which has been the subject of many interpretations. One of the most famous old master prints, it has sometimes been regarded as forming one of a conscious group of Meisterstiche ("master prints") with his Knight, Death and the Devil (1513) and Saint Jerome in his Study (1514).

Landscape with the Fall of Icarus is a painting in oil on canvas long thought to be by Pieter Bruegel, although following technical examinations in 1996, that attribution is regarded as very doubtful, and it is now usually seen as a good early copy by an unknown artist of Bruegel's original, perhaps painted in the 1560s, although recent technical research has re-opened the question.

Netherlandish Proverbs (also called Flemish Proverbs, The Blue Cloak or The Topsy Turvy World) is a 1559 oil-on-oak-panel painting by the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder that depicts a scene populated with literal depictions of Dutch language proverbs current in the Low Countries at the time. Critics have praised the composition for its ordered portrayal and integrated scene. There are approximately 112 identifiable idioms or proverbs in the scene, although Bruegel may have included others which cannot be determined.

The Peasant Wedding is a 1567 painting by the Flemish Renaissance painter and printmaker Pieter Bruegel the Elder, one of his many depicting peasant life. It is currently housed in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

The Madonna of the Long Neck (Italian: Madonna dal collo lungo), also known as Madonna and Child with Angels and St. Jerome, is an Italian Mannerist oil painting by the painter Parmigianino, dating from c. 1535-1540 and depicting Madonna and Child with angels. The painting was begun in 1534 for the church of the Servites in Parma, but remained incomplete on Parmigianino's death in 1540.

The Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo and Her Son is a painting by the Italian artist Agnolo di Cosimo, known as Bronzino, finished ca. 1545. One of his most famous works, it is housed in the Uffizi Gallery of Florence, Italy and is considered one of the preeminent examples of Mannerist portraiture. The painting depicts Eleanor of Toledo, the wife of Cosimo I de' Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, sitting with her hand resting on the shoulder of one of her sons. This gesture, as well as the pomegranate motif on her dress, referred to her role as mother. Eleanor wears a heavily brocaded dress with black arabesques. In this pose, she is depicted as the ideal woman of the Renaissance.

Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time is an allegorical painting by the Florentine artist Agnolo Bronzino. It is now in the National Gallery, London.

The Burial of the Count of Orgaz is a painting by El Greco, a painter, sculptor, and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. Widely considered among his finest works, it illustrates a popular local legend of his time. An exceptionally large painting, it is very clearly divided into two sections, heavenly above and terrestrial below, but it gives little impression of duality. The upper and lower sections are brought together compositionally.