Art collector and benefactor.
George Salting
1835 - 1909
This person is the subject of ongoing research. We have started by researching their relationship to the enslavement of people.
Biographical notes
Slavery connections
Salting inherited substantial wealth from his father Severin Salting, a partner in Flower, Salting & Co., who had made his money through ‘his firm, sheep stations, sugar plantations, and wide investments’. (A.F. Pike, ‘Salting, Severin Kanute (1805–1865)’, Australian Dictionary of Biography, Carlton, Victoria, 1967, <https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/salting-severin-kanute-2626> accessed 5 August 2021.) Severin Salting may have been connected with the Australian Sugar Company, which imported raw sugar from Manila. The Philippines and Indonesia were under Spanish and Dutch rule in the 19th century, both countries which still utilized slave labour in their colonies, even if it may not have been African labour. George Salting owned shares in the Colonial Sugar Refining Company, which began milling and refining sugar cane in Queensland, Australia, and Fiji from the 1870s, where there may be no connection with slavery.
Abolition connections
No known connections with abolition.
National Gallery painting connections
Donor: presented in 1889: NG1282; in 1894, NG1430; in 1907, NG2118.
Donor: bequeathed in 1910: NG2482–2673.
Bibliography
S. Coppel, 'Salting, George', in C. Matthew et al. (eds), Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford 1992-, https://doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/35920
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History of Parliament Trust (ed.), The History of Parliament: British Political, Social & Local History, London 1964-, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/
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H. Preston, 'Salting, George', in J. Turner et al. (eds), Grove Art Online, Oxford 1998-, https://doi.org/10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T075409
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UCL Department of History (ed.), Legacies of British Slave-ownership, London 2020, https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/
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Paintings previously owned by George Salting
(Showing 6 of 157 works)
Probably by Abraham van Calraet
This handsome horse, which would have been an impressive status symbol in seventeenth-century Holland, is presented in a dramatic light. It dwarfs the stable boy. Its forequarters stand out brightly against the dark hillside while its rump is contrasted against the luminous sky; there are no othe...
Not on display
Small figures – traders returning home from market or a fishing trip – animate this little scene, but also serve as a measure of scale, alerting us to the size of the ruins. This is an imaginary scene known as a capriccio, but Guardi took inspiration from known buildings – the arch with a suspend...
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This imaginary scene reflects an eighteenth-century fascination with ruins. In it, a once glorious but now ruined folly has been positioned on one of the islands in the Venetian lagoon. Two men dig energetically beside the classical arch, a scene repeated in other paintings by Guardi. He has used...
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A quiet sea under a vast sky. In spite of the calm, there’s a light wind. Grey clouds billow, with enough breaks to cast a luminous light on the water. Two slender poles in midstream mark the safe course up the river at low water, their reflections long because of the angle of the sun. The sails...
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After Adriaen van Ostade
Scenes of the everyday life of peasants and tradesmen were popular among art buyers in seventeenth-century Holland. Often they were humorous, perhaps even mocking, in tone. This tiny picture, little bigger than a piece of A5 paper, is more sentimental, emphasising the cobbler’s diligence. He repa...
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With this painting, Costa invented a type of image that would become very popular in northern Italy, particularly Venice, in the sixteenth century. The band of singers is engrossed in the camaraderie of their music; as she sings, the young woman keeps time by tapping her fingers against the marbl...
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This is an early work by Jacob van Ruisdael, probably made when he was only about 20 years old, around the time that he qualified as an artist and joined the painters’ guild in his home town of Haarlem. He has built the composition around a stand of scrubby trees and a farmhouse on the edge of a...
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Imitator of David Teniers the Younger
An assistant prepares a plaster at the table while the doctor treats a patient’s foot. This composition is derived from works by Adriaen Brouwer, who had a profound influence on Teniers. Teniers made several variations on the theme, which were often imitated by his contemporaries and later artist...
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Scenes of mothers and children were fashionable in eighteenth-century France, much encouraged by the writings of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who advocated a ‘natural’ approach to child-rearing.A young mother is sitting in a beam of light at a table with three of her infants wriggling on her lap. An ol...
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A warship keels over in the face of an advancing storm, a Dutch flag flying boldly at its mainmast, the arms of the Province of Holland on its stern. The gun ports are open, the cannon out at the ready – probably for practice. A small fishing boat is tossed about on the crest of the wash left beh...
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A man sits on a spit of land, his body reaching towards the sea, the line of his gaze drawing our eyes to the boats he watches. Perhaps he longs to be on board; perhaps he looks out for someone about to land. Or perhaps he’s just held by the visual poetry of the vessels themselves, the seemingly...
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Imitator of Aelbert Cuyp
This peaceful rural idyll is possibly a copy of an unknown painting by the great Dutch landscape painter Aelbert Cuyp. It may even be a pastiche imitating his style by Jacob van Strij, who painted such pictures.The vast sky and the distant windmill, water and trees are typical of Cuyp’s view of t...
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Philips Wouwerman was an extremely successful painter in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century and was also a favourite in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His paintings – landscapes with rural scenes being enacted in them – are full of movement, small dramas and incident, capturing...
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Adriaen van de Velde’s tranquil views made him one of the most successful Dutch landscape artists of his time. In this picture, the low horizon and high viewpoint give the impression of a vast distance ending in a range of low, misty hills.These hills are, like the rest of the scene, entirely ima...
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Jan Wijnants specialised in painting landscapes which evoke the countryside around Haarlem, where he lived and worked. It was an area characterised by ancient sand dunes overgrown by scrubby woodland and open pastures interlaced with winding cart tracks. It was also scattered with picturesque rui...
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In a mellow light, a group of peasants pause by a muddy pool in the shade of an oak tree. A woman perched high on a cart holds a basket and looks around her. Away in the distance to the right, a church spire and a windmill seem as delicate as cobwebs against the sky.Isack van Ostade paints the sc...
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A man and child are seated at a table. The man looks attentively at the child, who turns away and picks a grape from a bunch nearby. The rest of the composition is only roughly sketched in; the child’s left arm, the man’s body and the table are unfinished.The painting was once thought to be by a...
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A young woman, her blouse and jacket falling open rather immodestly, has drifted to sleep in her chair. In one hand is an empty wine glass, in the other a clay pipe. One man blows a stream of smoke towards her ear while a second looks on laughing. This seems like a tavern scene, but in the backgr...
The man in this portrait has not yet been identified. The upper ring on his left forefinger may provide a clue: it seems to show the arms of the Strauss family (the other ring seems to have shown another coat of arms which can no longer be deciphered). It has been suggested that the man depicted...
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Paintings of Merry Companies (a group of people playing music together or otherwise entertaining themselves in a domestic setting) were very popular in Holland in the early 1630s. This is a particularly distinctive example: a shaft of bright sunlight gives the composition a clear structure and br...
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In this tender little scene, Adriaen van Ostade shows an elderly peasant with his hand on that of a woman about his age. He leans towards her, his other hand holding a tall, full beer glass – perhaps denoting his desire for her. Her hand is on a long unbroken clay pipe – in Dutch art of the time...
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In a quiet, dark room, a little girl folds her hands to say grace. She looks straight ahead as she has been taught to do when at prayer by her mother – her gaze is fixed so that nothing can tempt her away from her devotions. Books of emblems and instruction from the church laid emphasis on the im...
In this exuberant painting of a peasant, Adriaen van Ostade shows his ability to portray the human condition. We sense the giddiness of the drunken peasant as he sweeps backwards, jug open to drink straight from its neck. His mouth is gaping and his eyes are watery and unfocused, but he’s happy.V...
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Steen’s paintings of everyday life in seventeenth-century Holland are nearly always humorous in tone. This tiny picture, which is smaller than a sheet of A4 paper and was probably made when Steen was in his mid-twenties, is no different.An old woman screws up her eyes as she tries to read a text...
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Many of Aert van der Neer’s atmospheric landscapes are set in the low light of evening or early morning, characterised by a silvery glow on water and the deep shade of the wooded banks. He also painted night scenes, lit by a moon often partly hidden by the clouds of a dramatic sky. It’s not clear...
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Aelbert Cuyp made this painting when he was aged about 20 or 21 and it shows his early grasp of how to create a sense of distance and evoke the atmosphere of a cloudy day in the Low Countries.At the time, Cuyp was much influenced by the landscape painter Jan van Goyen. Both artists used a very re...
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Darkened varnish has taken its toll, and the true colours in Jan van Goyen’s painting are difficult to make out. The picture is almost entirely given over to a vast sky, but there’s enough movement below to capture the atmosphere of a busy autumn day on the river.A series of diagonal lines sweeps...
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This landscape was, for a long time, thought to be by a follower of Jacob van Ruisdael, but both the landscape and the figures are now considered to be van Ruisdael’s work.The identification was probably made difficult by the layers of old varnish that obscure the work, but it’s still possible to...
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Meindert Hobbema liked nothing better than to take you for a walk. He leads us onward – patches of sun that follow one another up the canvas, but into the picture, make the image appear three-dimensional – and leaves us feeling fresh and windblown. In this painting, his trees are stunted and bent...
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This painting, for some time thought to be by an unknown artist, is now considered to be by Jacob van Ruisdael, the leading Dutch landscape painter of the seventeenth century. The rocky hillside lit with patches of sunlight from the broken, scudding clouds overhead is typical of van Ruisdael’s wo...
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Jacob van Ruisdael was the foremost seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painter, and even paved the way for the rural scenes Thomas Gainsborough painted in England in the eighteenth century. Gainsborough admired and made copies of van Ruisdael’s work, but rather than the pastoral views that appea...
The cold is almost tangible in Jan van Goyen’s evocation of life on the ice in a seventeenth-century Dutch winter. The horizon is low and the sky vast, so we are on a level with the people portrayed. A bank of grey cloud hovers overhead, just moving enough to let in the pale sun and allow a glimm...
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From the mouth of a harbour or estuary, Jan van de Cappelle subtly leads our eye out to sea. A couple of fishermen are working with nets in the shallow waters of the foreground while the ship in the centre, flying the red and white flags of the city of Dordrecht, sets out.It is a wijdschip (a typ...
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Imitator of Rembrandt
This painting of a grey-haired man apparently lost in thought is not intended to be a portrait of a real person, but is an example of a tronie. This genre, popular at the time, depicted personality types.It is signed Rembrandt halfway up on the right-hand side; scientific analysis suggests that i...
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This undulating countryside of ancient sand dunes, found around Haarlem, forms the background to the vast majority of paintings by local artist Jan Wijnants. But while he captured the spirit and atmosphere of these sand hills, he also – like most painters of the time – exaggerated for effect. The...
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This is most likely a view of daily life in Venice during the second half of the eighteenth century, rather than an invented capriccio, though the actual site has not yet been identified. The Guidecca, Chioggia and Murano (districts and islands of Venice) have all been suggested.Men chatting, wom...
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Nowadays, many of us have little experience of clear moonlight – it’s often washed out by street lights or car headlamps. But in the seventeenth century the many moods and lighting effects of the night sky and the different phases and heights of the moon would have been a familiar part of everyda...
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Jan van Goyen’s painting – his view of the wide sweep of the Netherlandish landscape – is a poetic vision. Seen from a sandy rising, the horizon is low and the sky vast. Just a few birds wheel in the towering clouds.Van Goyen was very influential in the development of the ‘tonal phase’ of Dutch p...
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There are lots of examples in Dutch seventeenth-century painting of artists using images of sleeping women for satirical purposes – to emphasise neglect of their moral duties. That is not the case here. Van Brekelenkam was more concerned with paying homage to diligent housekeepers: this woman has...
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Pieter Codde was an Amsterdam painter who specialised in genre scenes of everyday life. And this is just how A Woman Holding a Mirror of 1625, his earliest known work, can be seen. An attractive and well-dressed woman has tried on various outfits – a discarded dress lies on the table – and is now...
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Possibly by Pieter van den Bosch
A rather lonely figure, almost certainly the cook or maid in a prosperous Amsterdam household, is doing the washing up in a gloomy kitchen. She looks up and her face catches the light; we can see her tired, slightly careworn features. Her attention has clearly been caught by something outside the...
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A curtain has been pulled back on van Deuren’s young astronomer to reveal the stargazer looking not at the heavens but at a celestial globe, marked with northern and zodiacal constellations, that he has taken from its stand. A notebook and inkpot sit on his desk awaiting his observations; books o...
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An elegantly dressed young woman is in the act of grooming herself – we see her cutting her fingernails with a pair of scissors. A maidservant brings a silver ewer and dish for washing hands, while the big basin in the left foreground probably serves to wash her feet and other parts of her body.T...
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A pale young man, hands folded in prayer, is engaged in private devotions. This small painting was clearly the left wing of a diptych (a painting made of two parts) or triptych (a painting made of three parts). The object of his prayer would have been shown to his right, on a panel attached to t...
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Follower of Jan van Eyck
We don‘t know the identity of the young man in this small portrait, but his clothes are those of a wealthy individual. The fur of his cuffs and collar is spotted, which is unusual in mid-fifteenth-century Netherlandish painting; it might be lynx. The laced collar of his doublet is perhaps a Germa...
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It appears to be dark outside this elegant room: a blue curtain covers the top part of the window, but the glass below it is black. The light which glints in the heavily dilated pupils of the woman seated at the keyboard comes from in front of the painting, an unusual effect for Vermeer.Significa...
The stretch of water in the foreground almost certainly lies near to Daubigny’s home in Auvers-sur-Oise. Its surface is covered with vegetation, including clumps of reeds and water-lilies. A woman in a red and white hat sits at the far side, under a clump of alders. This is an evening scene, with...
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This theatrical scene, with its stage-like setting of dramatic buildings that loom over the figures, was imagined by Guardi. The building on the left may be based on an unused design for Venice’s Rialto bridge by Andrea Palladio, a sixteenth-century architect. Guardi probably studied the design a...
Although capricci views like this one show scenes that are essentially imaginary, Guardi often used details of real buildings in his. The staircase here is based on the one in the courtyard of the Doge’s Palace in Venice, though Guardi has removed some of its statues. He also reduced the size of...
This capriccio, or architectural fantasy, is a patchwork of features taken from different buildings in Venice: the archway in the foreground is from the Torre dell'Orologio (clock tower) while the buildings and staircase beyond are from the inner courtyard of the Doge’s Palace. Guardi has exagger...
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Aert van der Neer was an expert at creating a sense of depth in his landscapes. Often, as here, he used the sinuous path of a river or inlet receding into the distance to emphasise the effect. In this picture he has gone a step further, using figures to reinforce that recession and to inject a se...
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A grey, turbulent sky dominates the scene, but our eye is also caught by a patch of light in the fields: the sun has broken through a crack in the clouds.This sense of fast-changing light brings the whole landscape to life, injecting movement into what otherwise might have been a static scene. Th...
Centre stage, against a shadowy, mostly black-and-white background, the bright red jacket inevitably draws our eye to the young woman. She leans back – rather immodestly, a glass of wine held in her lap, knees apart, one foot up on a box – and smiles directly up at the man offering her an oyster....
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Possibly by Ludolf de Jongh
Images of young women being plied with wine were common in seventeenth-century Dutch art and there was usually a certain frisson about the scene. Wine was considered an aphrodisiac and the suggestion behind an image like this might be that the woman was working as a prostitute or that her virtue...
Imitator of David Teniers the Younger
An old woman looks down intently at the large book she holds open – very likely a Bible, since she’s dressed in the plain clothing often worn by Calvinists, followers of a strict branch of the Protestant faith. This isn‘t a portrait but a tronie, pictures which showed stock characters, often with...
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One of Gabriel Metsu’s great strengths as an artist was his ability to absorb ideas and influences from other artists. Here he has borrowed a device from Gerrit Dou, who had probably trained him in Leiden a few years earlier.Dou had found success with a series of ‘niche paintings’ – scenes, somet...
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In this lively oil sketch, Rubens experiments with ideas for the design and composition of one of a series of paintings on a hunting theme commissioned by Philip IV of Spain to decorate his hunting lodge, Torre de la Parade, just outside Madrid. Rubens’s assistants would have used the sketch as a...
Bartolomeo Bianchini was a nobleman and humanist scholar from Bologna – his name is written on the letter he holds. This is the earliest known use of a letter as a means of naming the sitter in an Italian portrait.The painted ledge makes it appear that we are looking through a window. Bianchini’s...
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A thin-faced man with a hooked nose gazes directly out at us. He wears a black hat and his dark grey garments are perhaps made of watered silk: an irregular swirling black pattern extends across both chest and the puffed shoulders. There are no indications of the sitter’s identity.Corneille de Ly...
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This tiny picture, measuring only 10 by 6 cm, is framed with two other views of picturesque ruins in imaginary Italian settings (such paintings are known as capricci). One shows an elegant couple and the other depicts a man and child surrounded by soaring architecture. In the foreground of this s...
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This is one of three tiny pictures that have been grouped together since the early nineteenth century (the others show a man and child in a landscape with a derelict folly, and hard-working men beside a pool). It shows an elegantly dressed couple heading towards a pillared ruined arch, which appe...
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A crumbling, overgrown archway towers above a man and a young child carrying a stick, who are picked out by warm sunlight. The eye is led into the scene by the contrast of light, which illuminates the white stone building beyond, and shade. The use of simple blocks of colour and black lines to su...
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A bull stands silhouetted against a threatening sky. It seems energised and alert, aware of the presence of the viewer – it makes direct eye contact with us – and of the storm. A strong wind bends the willow trees and a sheet of rain sweeps across the middle distance. Two cows and a pair of sheep...
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Style of Domenico Ghirlandaio
The Latin inscription identifies this woman as Costanza de‘ Medici, the wife of an important Florentine citizen of the Caetani family. The portrait was clearly made to celebrate their marriage: she holds a sprig of orange blossom, which was associated with chastity and traditionally worn by brid...
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Meindert Hobbema specialised in landscapes, and particularly woodland scenes such as this. They were not usually modelled on real views, but were composed to capture the atmosphere and harmonies of woodland life. Here the three cottages seem to merge into the underwood. Switches cut from a nearby...
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Two young men stroll through the Italian countryside, one of them – rather startlingly – carrying a giant head. He is David and the head is from his defeated enemy, Goliath. The other man is probably David’s friend Jonathan, son of Saul, King of the Israelites.We are not really sure who or what t...
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Follower of Rembrandt
The Roman goddess Diana threatened death to any man who saw her bathing. Actaeon, who came across her in a forest pool by accident, was turned into a stag and torn to pieces by Diana’s hounds.In this painting, the figure beside Diana looks more like a satyr (a mythical creature – half man, half g...
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Style of Adriaen Brouwer
Adriaen Brouwer worked in Antwerp from 1631. This painting used to be attributed to him, but is now believed to be by another, somewhat clumsier hand – perhaps one of his apprentices imitating his style. The picture is similar to those usually depicted by Brouwer: humorous everyday scenes of peas...
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This portrait is probably of Francesco Albani, one of the leading citizens of Bergamo; the initials ‘FA’ are painted in reverse on his signet ring. The Albani supported Venetian rule in Bergamo, and Francesco was created a Knight of San Marco by the Venetians in 1516. This portrait may have been...
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Brekelenkam painted tailors in their shops many times, as well as depicting weavers, spinners, and seamstresses – all trades which thrived as part of Leiden’s prosperous seventeenth-century textile industry. He repeated the same basic composition of the tailor sitting cross-legged in front of the...
A lavishly dressed young woman lights up Eglon van der Neer’s picture, her sumptuous silk and brocade dress contrasting strongly with the dark background. Decorated with pearls, it seems to be the star of the show. But a longer look at the painting reveals a sword in the woman’s right hand and, m...
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A young woman is moving towards an open window or door through which a hilly landscape can be seen. She turns to look back at us over her shoulder, her arm parallel with a stone parapet on which the date 1510 is written. On a metal salver she carries the greyish-green severed head of a man. The w...
A herdsman waves a stick at his cattle to encourage them to move towards the stream. This painting does not show a story from the Bible or mythology – it is a scene inspired by the countryside near Rome, where Dughet spent most of his career.Probably painted around 1637, this is one of Dughet’s e...
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Under a stormy sunset sky a distant range of mountains is strung out along the horizon. In the foreground a figure stands at the edge of what is possibly an expanse of water. This view was probably painted in 1844, when Rousseau travelled with Jules-Louis Dupré to the Landes, a region south of Bo...
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Probably by Pieter van Coninxloo
This elegantly dressed young lady is Margaret of Austria, one of the most important female rulers of the Renaissance. The only daughter of Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, she was regent of the Netherlands from 1507 till her death in 1530. The half-blank coat of arms at the top of the arch i...
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Follower of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
In Greek mythology, Narcissus was an outstandingly beautiful young man who fell in love with his own reflection in a woodland pool, eventually pining away with unrequited passion. This tiny picture shows him dressed elegantly and with a wreath of leaves in his hair, gazing into a still basin of w...
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This was probably made when Steen was still in his early twenties and is one of many small paintings that he produced around this time. The theme of peasants drinking and dancing was a common one in Steen’s work, as was the central joke of an older man propositioning a younger woman. At least two...
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Probably by Pieter van Coninxloo
This young man with flowing hair is Philip the Handsome, son of the Holy Roman Emperor and founder of the Habsburg dynasty in Spain, so-called because of his fair hair and attractive grey eyes. The painting is one wing of a diptych (a panel painting in two parts). The other, showing his sister, M...
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This is a rare surviving portrait by the Venetian painter and manuscript illuminator Jacometto, and it shows his delicate and refined painting style. The boy’s beauty is probably an idealised version of reality; portraits were thought to represent the subject’s soul as well as their facial featur...
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A richly dressed lady gazes out at us from this painting. We don't know who she is but the jewellery and fabrics she wears could only have been afforded by the exceptionally wealthy. The extravagance of her dress is comparable with that worn by royalty.She was perhaps unmarried: she faces right,...
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This bold picture is a good example of the portrait style of Venetian painter Alvise Vivarini. He was well known for describing his sitters' individual features in detail – here he has made sure to include the man’s wrinkles and the dark circles under his eyes. The man’s confident expression was...
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The format of this portrait – the three-quarter bust-length view, the inclusion of the hands and the plain background are typical of German portraiture of the sixteenth-century. But the painting is in poor condition and has been overpainted extensively. The identities of the sitter and artist a...
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The languid brown eyes of a young man gaze out at us, his look faintly quizzical. But who is he? His long hair waves softly about his neck, the shadow of a moustache dusts his upper lip, a wisp of a curl brushes a wide brow, and his full mouth pouts a little, adding to the uncertainty of his exp...
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Associate of Jan Cornelisz. Vermeyen
The sitter, wearing a lynx-lined coat, holds up a medal showing a bearded man dressed as a cardinal; the Latin inscription identifies him as Mercurio Arbono di Gattinara, Grand Chancellor to Emperor Charles V. The sitter is probably Alfonso de Valdés, one of Gattinara’s closest associates.Judging...
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We do not know who the man in this small portrait is. He seems to be in his thirties. He’s dressed in what might be black silk and he holds a pale brown glove in one hand. His clothes, the style of his hair and beard, and the angle of his hat suggest a date of around 1550.In the early twentieth c...
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The sitter in this portrait is clearly a prosperous man, conventionally but expensively dressed in the style of the mid-1640s. Beyond that, no evidence has survived – we don’t know who he is. Nevertheless, this portrait is a good example of Hals’s ability both to capture a convincing likeness and...
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In this painting of 1640 of a well-to-do but unremarkable Dutch family, Pieter Codde’s challenge was to give life to a static scene. The sitters are unknown, although it has been suggested that they are Hendricus Meursius and Judith Cotermans with their son. Whatever their identity, their fine cl...
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Possibly by Bernardino Campi
This unidentified man is standing beside a virginal, which was a very popular household keyboard instrument in sixteenth-century Italy. He is shown half-length holding a pair of steel dividers – used to take measurements – which echo the splayed pose of his fingers against his black costume.The p...
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Age and youth, grandmother and granddaughter perhaps, an unknown artist and unknown sitters. What more can there be to say with such an undefined beginning – is it even safe to say they are grandmother and granddaughter? Maybe not, but their apparent ages and the one firm, fond hand holding the o...
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Although we don't know the identity of this woman, her clothing and the objects around her suggest that she was painted in around 1500 and most probably came from Cologne. The portrait was almost certainly part of a diptych (a painting made of two panels), which could have been hinged at the cent...
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Follower of Corneille de Lyon
We don't know who the young woman in this small portrait was, but her jewellery and clothes, which are in the fashion of around 1560, are not enormously rich: she was probably not a lady of the court.A rather similar but even smaller portrait of a similarly dressed lady is in the collection of th...
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This painting demonstrates Frans Hals’s gift for creating lively and animated portraits that suggest distinctive personalities. We don't know who the woman in this compelling work is, but her elegant dress and jewellery indicate that, like many of Hals’s patrons, she may have been the wife of a w...
We do not know this woman’s identity, but the enamel and gold coronet she wears suggests she may be of high rank. The pattern embroidered on her white satin sleeves could be her family’s heraldic device or perhaps a personal emblem.The fabric of her dress resembles a watered silk threaded with go...
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Imitator of Raphael
In the past this painting was believed to be a portrait of Raphael as the sitter slightly resembles his self portrait in The School of Athens of 1509–11 (Vatican). It is not, however, by Raphael and is probably not a portrait of him either. It was previously described as Umbrian and possibly Bolo...
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This is an early work by the Venetian painter Marco Basaiti. We do not know who this young man is but we can tell his age, origins and social rank from his costume: he wears the black gown and cap worn by citizens and gentlemen over the age of 25 in Venice.Basaiti has placed him against a vast la...
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We are looking through an arched window of a brick house at a well-dressed young man. He holds a heart-shaped book; a pen case and inkwell sit on the window ledge. This tiny painting was possibly once part of a diptych (a painting made of two parts). The young man may be at his devotions, and mig...
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We don‘t know the identity of the young man in this small painting, but he is clearly a person of wealth and taste. He wears a bright red robe trimmed with fur, and at his waist is a black bag with a ’notebook' of wax tablets inside. He holds a small but luxurious manuscript, probably a Book of H...
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Capturing the physical likeness of a sitter as well as their soul or character was crucial to Renaissance portraiture, and this was made easier with the introduction of the three-quarter view, as used here. It allows us to see more of the sitter’s face and so is more engaging than the previously...
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Probably by Ridolfo Ghirlandaio
The sitter is almost certainly Girolamo Benivieni (1453–1542), a significant Florentine literary and political figure. Initially one of the intellectuals surrounding the cultured Lorenzo de' Medici, who effectively ruled Florence, he fell under the influence of the Dominican preacher and reformer...
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Jan de Reus is about 70 years old in this portrait. He looks out from a dark background, his lined face framed by the long curls of a full-bottomed wig. Each wrinkle is rendered with meticulous care. His mouth is sensitive, though the lips are perhaps not as clearly defined as they once would hav...
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This peaceful river landscape depicts the Oise near the village of Auvers, where Daubigny built a home in 1860. At the far right, mostly hidden by a clump of trees, is Daubigny’s studio boat, nicknamed Le Botin (Little Box). It was originally a ferry boat which the artist had converted with the...
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Imitator of Jan van Goyen
Because of the presence of a signature and a date, this painting was once thought to be by Jan van Goyen, one of the great Dutch marine painters of the seventeenth century. Both, however, were found to be false and have been removed, so the picture is now attributed to an unknown follower.Small b...
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Follower of Simon Marmion
This was once the left wing of a triptych (a painting made up of three sections) which showed a man and woman with their patron saints on either side of an image of the Virgin and Christ Child.Here, Saint Clement stands behind a man, presumably the male donor who paid for the triptych. The anchor...
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Workshop of Gerard David
An elderly man kneels in landscape, beating his sunken and bleeding chest with a stone. He gazes up at a Crucifix attached to a tree, on which hangs a painted figure of Christ. This is Saint Jerome, hermit and translator of the Bible. His cardinal’s robes and hat lie discarded behind him.The rock...
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A bearded bishop stands over a child lying in a street, his mother kneeling at his side. This is Saint Zenobius – the fourth-century bishop of Florence and one of the city’s patron saints – bringing a boy back to life.This large altarpiece was painted for Bilivert’s great friend Giuliano Girolami...
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Constable painted Salisbury Cathedral many times from different viewpoints. Some of these pictures were oil sketches made outdoors like this one, while others were large pictures intended for exhibition. This sketch was created during Constable’s six-week visit to Salisbury in the summer of 1820....
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Salome displays the severed head of John the Baptist as his executioner places it in a footed bowl. Her mother Herodias, who held a grudge against John the Baptist for saying her marriage to Herod was unlawful, persuaded Salome to ask for this grisly prize from Herod as a reward for her dancing (...
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Christ appears as Salvator Mundi, or ‘Saviour of the World’, with a crystal orb in his left hand and his right hand raised in blessing, its shadow falling across his breast. The orb, surmounted by a golden cross, symbolises Christ’s rule on earth. His direct gaze and frontal pose engage the worsh...
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This sparkling little picture is unusual among Jan Steen’s paintings. We are outside an inn – The White Swan, to judge by its sign – rather than in its dark interior, Steen’s more typical setting.The energetic pose of the man bowling suggests that he’s serious about his game and that, given a mom...
Four small boats are gently run aground in an inlet on a sandy shore. The tide is out, the sea is calm and a man with a basket wades into the picture. Some fishermen are barefoot, others tend their craft without hurry. Sails hang up to dry in the sun and the Dutch flags on the mast tops droop. In...
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A tempting pyramid of exotic foods stands out against the dark background of Jan Davidsz. de Heem’s sensuous painting, evoking delectable flavours and scents. At the base, three fleshy oysters curled up in their shells are placed in a triangle, echoing the pyramid form. A single, half-full glass...
The objects in this still life appear simple and modest, but in the artist’s own time they would have been recognised as costly and luxurious. Luscious strawberries spill from an expensive Wanli bowl, imported from China. Olives glisten in a pewter dish and a salmon is cradled in its own crisp sk...
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The Virgin Mary holds her clothing out the way as Christ leans towards her to breastfeed, and Saint Joseph dotes upon him. By using a plain dark background and a tightly cropped close-up view, Signorelli invites us to share in this intimate moment.Signorelli was well known for his ability to pain...
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Workshop of Joos van Cleve
The Virgin Mary is seated behind a grey parapet on which the infant Christ stands. He grasps at her strangely high breast and she curls her right hand protectively around him. Saint Joseph, in a straw hat and glasses, reads at a lectern.This is one of many similar paintings associated with Joos v...
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The Christ Child lies on a bundle of straw before his mother, the Virgin Mary, on a grassy patch in the foreground of this picture, his head supported by a kneeling angel. Making direct eye contact with the viewer, he suckles his index finger in a gesture that may have been understood as a kiss o...
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From the world of outdoors, a horseman – dashing, smart and confident – has stepped into the gloomy interior of a blacksmith’s shop. He strikes a superior pose and his status is underlined by his expensive scarlet coat, its gold braid and the hilt of his sword glittering in the dim light. While t...
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Adriaen van Ostade specialised in painting dimly lit rooms, often belonging to an inn, peopled by ‘low-life’ characters, their features and poses grotesquely caricatured. In some, battered furniture and broken crockery suggest the bar-room brawls that van Ostade also sometimes portrayed.The room...
Between 1634 and 1637, Saenredam made a series of views of the interior of the Grote Kerk (or the Cathedral of St Bavo) in Haarlem, the city where he lived and worked – this is one of them.Even though it is a small picture, it required an enormous amount of work. Saenredam made sketches on site,...
After being taken down from the Cross, Christ’s body is laid outside the cave in which he will be entombed. Nicodemus or Saint Joseph of Arimathea kneels with his hands clasped in prayer while Saint John the Evangelist supports the body of the dead Christ. The Virgin Mary stands in a gesture of s...
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Probably by Correggio
Mary Magdalene leans on a large book and holds the pot of ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet. According to legend, she retreated into the wilderness of Provence and lived there alone, unreachable by man, and was brought bread by angels who sang to her. In penitence for her former lif...
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Workshop of the Master of the Magdalen Legend
Saint Mary Magdalene is identified by her emblem, the covered pot containing the ointment with which she anointed Christ.This small panel is one of at least twelve versions of this image. The others are very similar in size, style and technique and may have been mass produced by tracing in the sa...
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Probably Spanish
The ointment jar the woman holds is an attribute of Mary Magdalene, but this seems to be a portrait of a woman in the guise of the saint. The sitter’s hairstyle and distinctive necklace can be associated with early sixteenth-century medals and specifically with an anonymous portrait of the Spanis...
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Mary Magdalene, wearing a red mantle over a startlingly see-through dress, kneels in prayer in a landscape. A splendid manuscript, presumably a Book of Hours, rests on a large, conveniently shaped rock in front of her. Although she is gazing inwards, her eyes unfocused, the object of her prayer a...
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Follower of Jacob van Ruisdael
This painting is a copy of Jacob van Ruisdael’s original, which is in a private collection in Canada. Made by an unknown follower, it shares the original’s sense of space and airiness, with a wide view past the dense trees and bushes on the left.Crossing the barrier of dead tree trunks across the...
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The Roman boy Papirius was sworn to secrecy by his father when he accompanied him to the Senate. When his mother asked him what had been discussed, Papirius lied and claimed they had debated whether it was better for a man to have two wives or a woman two husbands. Papirius’s mother rallied the m...
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This graceful Virgin Mary seems to embody both motherly love and maternal sorrow. Her beautiful hands hold the Christ Child almost tentatively, as if to prevent him floating away. She gazes sadly at her son, and he too looks out with wary, hooded eyes, as if aware of his future.Mary’s halo is ins...
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The Virgin and Christ Child are seen as if at an open window, with the infant perched on the sill. Mary gazes lovingly at her son and offers him her breast; images of the Virgin breastfeeding emphasised Christ’s humanity and vulnerability.Small religious panels like this were used as an aid to pr...
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Follower of Giovanni Antonio Boltraffio
The Virgin Mary stands behind a parapet on which the Christ Child is seated. In one hand Christ holds an apple – it symbolises the Fall of Man, from which he was believed to offer redemption. With the other, he twists to reach out for the flower his mother offers him.Painted in around 1500, this...
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The Virgin and Child sit serenely in the sunlit landscape of northern Italy and gaze out at us placidly. She tenderly cradles his foot while he holds her girdle. Only the marble bench on which they sit hints at his future, in its echo of an altar table.The painter, Cima da Conegliano, signed his...
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Christ stands upright with the support of his mother, the Virgin Mary. He holds a transparent crystal orb and is clutching his semi-transparent drapery, which hangs over one shoulder like a Roman toga. He is intended to look like a miniature Roman emperor, a pose which conveys his spiritual autho...
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The small size of this painting suggests that it was made for private worship at home. Images that stressed the maternal bond between mother and son, as this one does, were often made to appeal particularly to women.The design of the picture, where the Virgin Mary is placed against a mountainous...
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Possibly by Antonello da Messina
The Virgin Mary glances down at her baby son, Christ, who clutches a pomegranate in his tiny fist. The fruit, with its blood-red juice, was a reminder of the torture and death he would face at the Crucifixion.Mary was also known as the Queen of Heaven, and her coronation by Christ was a popular s...
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Workshop of Andrea Solario
The infant Christ embraces the Virgin in a pose that very closely resembles – and is probably based on the design for – that in Raphael’s so-called ‘Mackintosh Madonna’, which is also in the National Gallery’s collection. This picture may have been made in Solario’s workshop, or might be a copy o...
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This is a small oil sketch but its composition is ambitious. Tiepolo has arranged the figures in a towering pyramid with the Virgin Mary at the top, seated on a cloud. She holds the Christ Child on her knee, grasping his foot firmly as he tugs at her veil.The saints’ responses unfold in a chain r...
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Follower of Robert Campin
This puzzling picture of the Virgin and Child is often called the ‘Firescreen Madonna’, after the large wicker firescreen behind the Virgin’s head. We do not know who it was made for, or where or how it was used. We are not even sure how it originally looked: it was extensively restored in the ni...
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Workshop of Pieter Coecke van Aalst
The panels of this small triptych (a painting made up of three parts) are in their original frames, which are carved from the same boards as the panels. The central panel shows the Virgin Mary seated on an elaborate throne in a sort of loggia (open-sided gallery or room). On the left wing is an u...
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After Robert Campin
We are looking through a gilded arch into a small chapel in which the Virgin is breastfeeding the Christ Child to an angelic musical accompaniment. She cradles him in her arms, and looks down affectionately as he hungrily squeezes her breast.This is one of around 60 versions of a lost painting by...
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The Virgin and Child sit on the edge of a wood between two sawn stumps of olive trees that resemble the arms of a throne. Shoots have grown from each stump and the Virgin bends the taller one towards Christ, who raises his hand as if to grasp it. The olive is symbolic of peace and its vigorous re...
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The Virgin Mary sits on a stone bench and holds the infant Christ on a cushion on her lap. She may have just lifted him and the cushion from the low wall in front of her.The flowers of the rose bush behind Christ are associated with purity and suffering, and are intended to remind us of Christ’s...
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Solario most probably trained as a painter in Venice, where he would have been aware of the works of Giovanni Bellini, the city’s most highly regarded painter. This picture shows the influence of Bellini’s images of the Virgin and Child that were made for private worship. The holy figures stand b...
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The relatively small size of this arch-shaped picture suggests it was made as a focus for private devotion in the home. The Virgin steadies the infant Christ as he stands and makes a blessing gesture towards his cousin, Saint John the Baptist. John’s recognition of Christ’s divine authority in hi...
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Workshop of Sandro Botticelli
The Virgin Mary kneels, her hands clasped in prayer. Her downward gaze meets that of her infant son, Christ, who is lying on the edge of her blue cloak, leaning against a bundle of straw. Saint John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin, looks down at him from behind. The scroll he holds bears a Latin ins...
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Follower of Pietro Perugino
The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated on a wooden throne with steps, raising them above the other figures. To their right is Saint Dominic, who founded the Dominican Order in the twelfth century; on the other side is Saint Catherine of Siena, who was also a member of the Dominicans in the f...
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The focus of this picture is the loving gaze which passes between the Christ Child and his mother, the Virgin Mary. The infant is carried to her by two angels; he reaches urgently towards her as she holds out her breast for him, tenderly grabbing her little finger between his.The trim of the Virg...
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The naked Christ Child stands on a marble ledge, his toes poking forwards over its edge. He looks up adoringly at his mother, the Virgin Mary, and tenderly grasps her thumb with one hand.The Virgin herself, a rather cool blonde with pale grey, unfocused eyes and a long nose, stands in a strangely...
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The people in this group portrait have not been identified, but they may be from Venice as the dress of the men is Venetian in style. The child’s costume, which is recognisably that of a girl, can be dated to around 1540.The central man – probably the girl’s father – holds her protectively in his...
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Two bearded old men sit at a small table playing cards. What little light there is focuses on the white cap of one and the grey hair of the other, as well as their white collars, and reveals them to be better dressed than some other patrons of the inn. In the dingy back room, a young woman sits b...
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This small picture shows the great Piazza San Marco – the most famous square in Venice. We look through an archway, stood in the shadows just behind a group of figures; it is as if we are walking past them along the colonnade. A vendor surrounded by baskets shows his wares to two gentlemen. A man...
Guardi’s shimmering brushwork gives this picture a magical quality. On the far side of the square, the facade of the Basilica di San Marco glows, while a blaze of sunlight warms the sky behind the Procuratie Vecchie, the offices of the Republic’s administration, to the left.Although the figures a...
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This is a very early work by Bernardo Bellotto, the talented nephew of the influential Venetian artist Canaletto. It was painted in around 1738, when he was only about 16 years old and working in his uncle’s studio in Venice. By this time Bellotto was creating his own versions of some of Canalett...
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We see the Piazza San Marco from just inside the colonnade of the Procuratie Nuove, which housed the procurators (or caretakers) of San Marco. Although painting one of Venice’s most famous sights, Canaletto took liberties with the architecture to create a dramatic composition, enlarging the size...
Jacob van Ruisdael painted many landscapes, but few marine pictures; the ones he did make are simply views of the sea off the coast of Holland, with small sailing vessels usually in a wind varying from fresh to gale force.In this painting a small sailing vessel, probably a kaag (an inshore ferry...
This is one of of Guardi’s most serene paintings. The summery Venetian sky and the water of the lagoon merge almost seamlessly, broken only by a softly painted landscape and a few buildings. The tower of Malghera, the city’s ancient fortress, lay on the edge of the lagoon near Mestre, but the foc...
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This view is of Bowleaze Cove in Dorset looking west from Osmington. The Jordon stream trickles over the sand, with Furzy Cliff and Jordon Hill beyond. Thick clouds scud across the bright winter sky as the Downs slope to the sandy cove and sea. Constable suggests the waves rolling in to the beach...
A wooded bank and lake open onto a vista of trees and pasture. At the left two boys are fishing. A fishing rod leans on the bank, and the right-hand boy is peering into a basket, perhaps at his catch. This purely imaginary scene is the last in a series of four versions of the same composition. It...
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A fisherman stands among the rushes that border a pond or a river. Willow trees cluster at the water’s edge, the shade they provide contrasting with the sunlit meadow beyond.This small landscape was most likely painted in the 1850s around the small town of L’Isle-Adam, about 25 kilometres north o...
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A woman sits on a rocky ledge, her head turned toward a young naked child presented in the guise of a putto or cupid. He is trying to attract her attention. This painting is an early example of the rural subject matter that Millet began to explore in around 1845, and which by 1847 formed a substa...
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