Picasso, Pablo (1881-1973) La Vie (Life) 1903 Oil on canvas, 196.5 x 129.2 cm Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland In 1901, depressed over the suicide of a close friend, Picasso launched into the melancholic paintings of his Blue period (1901–4). Only…
Perugino (c.1446-1523) San Sebastiano (Saint Sebastian) c.1493 Metalpoint, 25.6 x 14.6 cm Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland The Florentine painter Perugino made drawings to record figural types and poses that could be repeated throughout his finished paintings. He used the elegant,…
Munch, Edvard (1863-1944) The Sin (Woman with Red Hair and Green Eyes) 1901 Color lithograph, 69.8 x 40.2 cm Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland The fatal women and embracing couples in Picasso’s art of the early 1900s exhibit striking affinities with…
Manet, Édouard (1832-1883) Olympia 1867 Etching Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland Manet‘s model, Victorine Meurent, was herself a successful painter who showed her work at Paris‘s salon. When Edouard Manet’s painting Olympia was exhibited in Paris in 1865, it was met by…
Ingres, Jean Auguste Dominique (1780-1867) Persée et Andromède (Perseus and Andromeda) c.1819 Oil on canvas, 19.7 × 16.2 cm Detroit Institute of Arts, Detroit Ingres‘s vulnerable figure of Andromeda is the “classic” idealized figure study. The fact that she is being…
Parmigianino (1503-1540) Cupido che fabbrica l’arco (Bowcarving Cupid) 1534–1539 Oil on lime, 135.5 × 65 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna The inspiration for this painting may have come from a sculpture that Parmigianino may have seen in the Grimani Collection in Venice in…
Rubens, Peter Paul (1577-1640) The Four Rivers of Paradise c.1615 Oil on canvas, 208 × 283 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna According to the conventional interpretation, the four continents are depicted here as female allegoric figures paired with the gods of their…
Tintoretto, Jacopo (1518-1594) Susanna e i vecchioni (Susanna and the Elders) c.1555–1556 Oil on canvas, 146 × 193.6 cm Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna In the Old Testament, it is told how Susanna receives lewd proposals from two men who have secretly intruded…
Tiziano (c.1488-1576) Bacco e Arianna (Bacchus and Ariadne) 1520–1523 Oil on canvas, 176.5 x 191 cm National Gallery, London Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne is one of the finest and most famous paintings in the National Gallery. The Cretan princess Ariadne has…
Delacroix, Eugène (1798-1863) Mort de Sardanapale (Death of Sardanapalus) 1827 Oil on canvas, 392 cm × 496 cm Musée du Louvre, Paris “The rebels besieged him in his palace… Lying on a superb bed, at the top of an immense pyre,…