This painting is an outstanding example of the abstract elegance characteristic of Rogier’s late portraits. Although the identity of the sitter is unknown, her air of self–conscious dignity suggests that she is a member of the nobility.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Jan Steen’s paintings encompass a wide range of moods and subjects, from intimate scenes of a family saying grace before a meal to festive village celebrations, yet all of his paintings elicit a warm reaction to the lives of ordinary people. All five senses are represented in this work in which two young musicians play for a dancing couple while other people in the vine-covered arbor flirt, eat, drink, or smoke, and children amuse themselves with their toys.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Venus, as if filled with foreboding about Adonis’s fate, desperately clings to her lover, while he pulls himself free of her embrace, impatient for the hunt and with his hounds straining at the leash. The goddess’s gesture is echoed by that of Cupid, who anxiously watches the lovers’ leave-taking while clutching a dove—a creature sacred to Venus.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Although Nicolas Poussin’s work exerted an enormous influence on the development of French seventeenth-century painting, the artist perfected his style in Rome, incorporating the lessons of Renaissance and contemporary Italian painters into his own idiom. Poussin’s Baptism of Christ is one of a series of canvases illustrating the Seven Sacraments executed from 1638-1642 for his friend and patron Cassiano dal Pozzo.
„Pictures lost to the Nation.“
Guitarist Sonia De Los Santos hails from Mexico, where as a child she was exposed to different musical influences. In Auguste Renoir’s Young Spanish Woman with a Guitar De Los Santos sees echoes of her younger self. Her song „Sueña“ is an ode to dreams.
version is the only one in which the sitter wears a Spanish costume (Spain being the nation
This painting is based on a true account of a shark attack in Havana Harbor in 1749. John Singleton Copley depicts a critical moment in the attempted rescue of 14-year-old Brook Watson.
Art for the Nation no. 68 (Spring 2024): 2-3, fig. 1, 6, fig. 4, 8, fig. 7, 10, fig
There is little doubt that these two portraits by Rembrandt van Rijn (see also NGA 1942.9.67) were conceived as pendants, or companion pieces. In both, light illuminates the subjects from exactly the same angle.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
The obscure iconography of Dosso’s canvas has caused much speculation. In the past it has been titled simply Scene from a Legend and, more often, Departure of the Argonauts.
Art for the Nation no. 64 (Fall 2021): 20-21, repro.
Isabella Brant was the first wife of the Antwerp master Peter Paul Rubens, whom she married shortly after his return from Italy in 1609. Just before Anthony van Dyck, one-time protégé and frequent collaborator of Rubens, left Antwerp in October 1621 for his own extended stay in Italy, he apparently presented this portrait to his mentor.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
Dürer was born in Nuremberg and received a typical medieval training from his goldsmith father and from the Nuremberg painter Michael Wolgemut. Yet he was one of the major transmitters of the ideas of the Italian Renaissance to artists in the North.
America’s National Gallery of Art: A Gift to the Nation.
