If you are an art lover or just an artistic painting enthusiast, you should explore our in-depth articles about famous artists, movements, painting styles and iconic artworks. Learn about the lives of some of the most famous artists, their inspirations, influences, the record-breaking sales prices of their works, and sometimes even about a specific piece of artwork.
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Courtauld Institute Gallery A man and a woman are occupying a box at the theatre but one feels that they are more intent on the social aspects of theatregoing than what is happening on stage. Certainly the man, training his opera glasses upwards, is absorbed in scanning the audience. Similarly, it seems that the rather … Read more
London, National Gallery Julius appears as the quintessential worldly pope, hands encrusted with bejewelled rings. He has chosen to be portrayed sitting in a chair adorned not with any papal emblem, but with the acorn, his personal device, a reference to his family name della Rovere, meaning ‘oak’ in Italian. And indeed he really was … Read more
London, National Gallery The drama occurs within sight of the walls of a most extraordinary city — Jerusalem has been transformed into a pink fairytale confection but, being Mantegna, it is a confection with a very hard edge. The architecture of the city is a composite of Roman and Renaissance styles featuring a structure which … Read more
London, Courtauld Institute of Art The 1880s saw Monet at the height of his powers — he was creating some of his finest and most satisfying compositions, this being a very good example. During the decade he made many painting trips to the coast — to various locations in Normandy and to Belle Île in … Read more
Paris, Musée du Louvre According to his biographer, Claude Gellée received little education as a youth but was instead trained as a pastry cook. Luckily, fate had more in store for this young peasant from Lorraine. He would end up in Rome where he became a painter known as Claude ‘le Lorrain’. He studied the … Read more
Barber Institute of Fine Arts, Birmingham One of the most gorgeous Rossetti portraits you will ever see was commissioned by a dealer as Rossetti wrote in April 1865: ‘I’ve begun an oil-picture all blue, for Gambert, to be called “the Blue Bower”’. It features his housekeeper and mistress, Fanny Cornforth whose famous shock of flame-golden … Read more
New York, Frick Collection Piero della Francesca, one of the most innovative artists of the 15th century, worked for some of the most powerful figures in Italy, from Frederico de Montefeltro, the Duke of Urbino, to Pope Nicolas V in Rome. Yet Piero always maintained links with his hometown of Borgo Sansepolcro in Tuscany, where … Read more
New York, Metropolitan Museum of Art It is probable that this painting originally hung in the Antwerp residence of Niclaes Jongelinck, a prosperous, well-educated merchant. He had commissioned a series of six paintings from Pieter Bruegel, a successful local artist. Jongelinck knew he was getting a master’s work but what he would not have realized … Read more
Vienna, Kunsthistorisches Museum Giorgione is famous for his enigmatic pastoral canvases. Though fewer than a dozen extant works can be definitively attributed to his hand, his dreamy melancholic images, like poesia, or painted poems, fascinated his contemporaries and would directly influence Venetian art for a century. The Three Philosophers is one of these mysterious works. It … Read more
Paris, Musée du Louvre Boucher was a master of playful eroticism. His works for the French court were designed to titillate; yet they always maintain a light, almost innocent tone, regardless of the numbers of nubile girls and cavorting couples that fill his canvases. He also produced a large body of more homely work, depicting … Read more