The Painting: In 1873, the great opera baritone Jean-Baptiste Faure commissioned from Degas a picture depicting ballerinas of the Opera ballet corps at an examination or dance class (Pantazzi 1988)
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Catherine Benincasa was born in Siena about 1347, died in 1380, and was canonized in 1461. She was a member of the Dominican order, a mystic, and minister to the poor and plague-stricken. This picture illustrates Saint Catherine’s miraculous levitation and exchange of her bloody heart with Christ
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The Artist: For a biography of Jan van Eyck, see the Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History.The Paintings: In unusually tall, narrow paintings, the Crucifixion and Last Judgment emphasize the narrative features of these well-known biblical themes prophesied in Isaiah and related in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John for the Crucifixion, and in Deuteronomy and the Book of Revelation for the Last Judgment
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The Background: Between 1649 and 1651, Velázquez travelled to Italy for the second and last time in his life. The main purpose of the trip was to buy paintings and sculptures for King Philip IV of Spain, and while he was in Rome, the painter also received the prestigious commission to portray Pope Innocent X (the canvas is now in the Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome)
B. Ponfredi sobre la pintura española].
Georges de La Tour’s Fortune Teller is one of the painter’s early masterpieces. It has been variously dated between 1620 and 1639, and it is most likely from the 1630s. The canvas is signed at top right: G
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The Artist: Giotto is the key figure of Western painting. His emphasis on solidly described figures and his exploration of a rational pictorial space set the course of European art for the next five hundred years
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Circus Sideshow and Seurat’s Career: Circus Sideshow is one of only six major figure paintings Seurat created during his short but influential career. Born and raised in Paris as the son of a customs official, he pursued classical art training, including at least three years at the École des Beaux-Arts, and spent a year (1879–80) in military service in Brest before establishing himself as a professional artist in France’s capital city
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Attribution, Date, and Bruegel’s Working Methods: When The Met acquired The Harvesters in 1919, the extraordinarily low sale price in part had to do with the art market that had virtually collapsed during World War I
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Watteau did not participate in public exhibitions, nor title his pictures, whose meaning is often difficult to fathom. This late work is clearly a theatrical subject, and as he is known to have made drawings of comic actors and quacks from an early age, he must have been interested in the theater throughout his short life
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