Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) San Girolamo (St. Jerome) c.1482 Oil on panel, 103 x 74 cm Pinacoteca Vaticana, Vaticano No information is available as to the destination of the painting and who it was commissioned by. Still in the sketch state it…
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Adorazione dei Magi (Adoration of the Magi) c.1482 Drawing in charcoal, watercolour ink and oil on wood, 244 x 240 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze A document from July 1481 states that Leonardo da Vinci had received a…
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Annunciazione (Annunciation) c.1472 Oil on panel, 90 x 222 cm Galleria degli Uffizi, Firenze A flourishing enclosed garden, in front of a Renaissance palace, evokes the hortus conclusus that alludes to the purity of Mary. Archangel Gabriel…
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) Madonna Litta mid 1490s Tempera on canvas (handed over from panel), 42 x 33 cm Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg This painting would seem to have been produced in Milan, where the artist moved in 1482. It was one…
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo (1598-1680) Il Ratto di Proserpina (The Rape of Proserpina) 1621–1622 Marble, 255 cm Galleria Borghese, Roma The work portrays the abduction of Proserpine by Pluto, god of the underworld. Narrated by both Claudian and Ovid, the myth tells…
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo (1598-1680) Enea, Anchise e Ascanio (Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius) 1619 Marble, h. 220 cm Galleria Borghese, Roma This is the first large sculpture group produced by Gian Lorenzo Bernini for Scipione Borghese, for which a payment receipt dating…
Bernini, Gian Lorenzo (1598-1680) Apollo e Dafne (Apollo and Daphne) 1622–1625 Carrara marble, h. 243 cm Galleria Borghese, Roma Apollo here is depicted in the act of running, with his right foot touching the ground and his left raised; the garment…
Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903) Femmes de Tahiti, ou Sur la plage (Tahitian Women on the Beach) 1891 Oil on canvas, 69 x 91.5 cm Musée d’Orsay, Paris In 1891, Gauguin went to Tahiti, an island he imagined to be a primitive paradise. The…
Gauguin, Paul (1848-1903) Van Gogh peignant des tournesols (Van Gogh Painting Sunflowers) 1888 Oil on canvas, 73 x 91 cm Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam Was Van Gogh really painting a vase of sunflowers when his friend Gauguin produced this portrait of him?…
Caravaggio (1571-1610) San Francesco in meditazione (Saint Francis in Meditation) c.1606 Oil on canvas, 130 x 90 cm cm Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona The subject represents a Saint Francis “in desperate meditation on the Crucifix” (Longhi 1943), the penitent saint is…