Art History
Museum of Fine Arts Houston
American Art
 A particular strength of American art at the MFAH is 19th-century
landscape painting, with fine examples by Thomas Cole,
Frederic Church, and others reflecting the allure of the American
wilderness.
The post-Civil War period is well represented at the museum,
with works by John Singer Sargent, William Merritt Chase, and
Childe Hassam. The holdings in early-20th-century American art
include wonderful Ashcan School paintings and important early
abstract works. Paintings by Georgia O´Keeffe and other Taos
artists are another highlight. The American galleries in the Beck
Building surround a sculpture court that features works by
Frederick William MacMonnies and Paul Manship.
John Singer Sargent
 This portrait represents John Singer Sargent´s
lifelong friend Sarah Sears, a photographer and
patron of the arts in Boston. Her alert pose, intense
gaze, and upper-body posture contrast with the
seemingly relaxed position of her lower body,
demonstrating how Sargent seemed to capture, as
one critic wrote, "the nervous tension of the age."
Sargent´s stunning surface displays of paint
connoted elegance and dash, and helped make him
the portraitist of choice for the aristocracy of England
and America at the turn of the century.
Thomas Cole
 In Indian Pass, Thomas Cole created a primeval
American past. Deeply concerned about the political
and economic turbulence of his time, Cole filled his
landscapes with symbols and moral warnings. The
blasted trees suggest the inevitable passage of time.
The Native American figure is a nostalgic element; by
1847 he would no longer have inhabited the scenic
wilderness that Cole depicts. Thus, with this dramatic
and lush setting, Cole offered 19th-century viewers a
marker by which to measure the nation´s present and
future.
John George Brown
 Among the most popular and prolific artists working in the United States
in the late nineteenth-century, Brown specialized in genre scenes of
urban and rural children. While Curling;—a Scottish Game, at Central
Park is a genre painting—well-dressed figures engage in urban
leisure—it is also a group portrait, commissioned by Robert Gordon, a
Scottish businessman and member of the St. Andrews Curling Club in
New York, in whose family the painting descended. The creation of
Central Park gave rise to new forms of leisure, including the imported
game of curling, which gained in popularity in the mid-nineteenth
century.
Known as a master of figural groupings and facial expressions, Brown
invites the viewer into the scene through the eyes of the young girl
seated in the sleigh at far left. Brown captures with brilliant effect the
hazy light of winter, the reflective surface of the smooth ice, the
costumes and expressions of the players and observers, the glistening
surface of the painted stones, and conveys the sheer pleasure of this
winter outdoor sport.
Mary Cassatt
 Strongly encouraged by her dear friend Edgar Degas, Mary
Cassatt was one of only two women and the only American to
join the Impressionists. She focused on the domestic world of
women and children, rendering them in a straightforward
manner free from sentimentality. Here, the radical composition
and the variety of brush strokes—from smooth and exacting to
sketchy and dynamic—enhance both the intimacy and the
drama of an everyday scene. Susan Comforting the Baby
 An American-born artist who spent most of her life in France,
Cassatt (1844—1926) is well known for her images of women
and children in domestic settings. She revisits that familiar
theme in Children in the Garden, which she exhibited in the
eighth Impressionist Exhibition in Paris in 1886. Enclosed in a
private garden, a nursemaid sits on a bench knitting, while one
of her charges sleeps in a nearby carriage and the other plays
at her feet.
Thomas C. Eakins
 Thomas C. Eakins´s late portraits, which include this
powerful likeness of a Philadelphia banker, are
among the artist´s most poignant works. Here, the
artist focuses upon the two elements of portraiture
traditionally deemed most important: heads and
hands. The penetrating gaze and the taut, sinewy
hands of the aging sitter carry the emotional weight of
the painting and testify to Eakins´s life-long
commitment to portraying the human condition in all
its heroism and frailty. Portrait of John B. Gest
George Bellows
 This portrait depicts Florence ("Flossie") Pierce, the
daughter of a lighthouse keeper who lived on an
island off the coast of Maine, where George Bellows
spent several summers. Bellows was associated with
the Ashcan School, a group of painters in New York
City who advocated a vigorous painting style that
suggested the modern pace of city life. Here, the
artist experiments with bold color arranged in large
blocks. At the same time, he suggests a complex
psychological presence conveyed by the brightly lit
gaze of the sitter.
Frederic Edwin Church
 In this painting, Frederic Edwin Church
depicts Cotopaxi, an active volcano in the
Andes mountains of Ecuador. The tiny
foreground figures suggest the insignificance
of humankind in comparison with the natural
wonders that surround them: the volcano, the
waterfall, and the lush tropical foliage.
John Kensett
 Artists of the Hudson River School often made pencil
or oil sketches out-of-doors and later used them in
the studio as a guide to create finished works. Here,
John Kensett depicted an artist painting a view
popular with tourists and artists: Mount Mansfield in
the Green Mountains of Vermont and its pastoral,
sun-filled valley below. With the invention of the
steamboat, the expansion of the railway, and
improved roads, artists and other nature tourists had
easier access to glorious sites like this one.
 A View of Mansfield Mountain
Thomas Doughty
 This painting depicts the Fairmount Waterworks, the
pumping station for the water supply of 19th century
Philadelphia. One of the great technological
achievements of its day, the Fairmount Waterworks
represented a successful marriage of scientific
innovation with the arts and nature. Dams, reservoirs,
and water wheels were all disguised behind a series
of classically inspired buildings set within public
gardens. Here, Thomas Doughty transforms this
industrial scene into an idyllic landscape bathed in
golden light in which people are enjoying outdoor
leisure activities.
 View of the Fairmount Waterworks, Philadelphia,
from the Opposite Side of the Schuylkill River
Robert S. Duncanson
 A landscape painter in the so-called Hudson River School
tradition, Robert Scott Duncanson was the first African-American
artist to gain international recognition. His extraordinary
achievement is all the more remarkable given his success
during the height of slavery in antebellum America.
Like the work of his model, artist Thomas Cole, the painting
contains deeper meanings. The blasted trees, references to the
passage of time and America´s primordial past, combined with
the scene of a clear-cut valley, offer a poignant warning sign of
man´s encroachment on nature. Beautifully composed and
painted, A View of Asheville hints at the promise of this
developing city, juxtaposed with the still-unspoiled mountains
that hover in the background. This painting is an excellent
example of one of the most important 19th century American
landscape artists.
 A View of Asheville, North Carolina
Willard Leroy Metcalf
 America´s first major exhibition of French Impressionist
paintings was held in New York in 1886 and included works by
Edgar Degas, Édouard Manet, Claude Monet, and Auguste
Renoir. Impressionism had been steadily ridiculed in France
since its emergence in the 1860s, but the exhibition in America
met with critical and popular acclaim. In fact, some American
artists had already begun to experiment with the revolutionary
style. William Metcalf was one of several Americans who,
beginning in the mid-1880s, made pilgrimages to Monet´s home
in Giverny, France. Leaning from the master, Metcalf abandoned
preparatory sketches and began painting spontaneously from
nature. This small study of brilliant light and deep shadow was
painted in Giverny.
 Sunlight and Shadow
William Merritt Chase
 This luminous landscape was inspired by the rather
flat and ordinary countryside of Shinnecock, Long
Island, where William Merritt Chase taught outdoor
painting. Sandwiched in between the scraggly clumps
of grass and sky is a sliver of sea dotted with white
boats, and pink dunes highlighted by a streak of red.
Chase’s seemingly simple composition testifies to his
ability to make the ordinary seem extraordinary.
 Sunlight and Shadow, Shinnecock Hills
Thomas Hart Benton
 In this scene of farmers at work, the rhythmic swirls
of paint and lyrical movement of the workers make
farm life appear pastoral. Referred to as a
Regionalist, Thomas Hart Benton believed that the
subjects of American artists should come from the
nation´s heartland. The theme here—man working in
harmony with nature, and the landscape as a source
of bounty and sustenance—presents an ideal view of
the actual hardships that farmers endured during the
Great Depression of the 1930s.
 Haystack
William Merritt Chase
 In this portrait, William Merritt Chase presents his
daughter, who holds a coral whistle and looks over
the shoulder of her mother, dressed in a Japaneseinspired costume. The relationship between the black
tones of the kimono and the background attests to
Chase’s experiments with delicate tonal harmonies.
One critic, praising Chase’s painterly effects,
described “ . . . the tingling pleasure that one receives
from the one note of vivid scarlet that cuts through
this quiet harmony like a knife . . .”.
 Mother and Child (The First Portrait)
William Merritt Chase
 Chase´s fame as a painter of still lifes rests
on his images of fish. A master of bravura
technique, Chase elevated this plain subject
into high art. He once explained: "I enjoy
painting fishes; in the infinite variety of these
creatures, the subtle and exquisitely colored
tones of the flesh fresh from the water, the
way their surfaces reflect the light, I take the
greatest pleasure. In painting a good
composition of fish I am painting for myself."
 Still Life
Elsie Driggs
 In 1928, American artist Elsie Driggs (1898—1992)
traveled to Detroit to make studies of the Ford Motor
Company´s River Rouge Plant. She was fascinated
by the aircraft that took her there, a 1926 Ford TriMotor plane that became the prototype for future
airplanes. Here, Driggs depicts this new form of
transportation as a symbol of modernity and the
future. Like other Precisionist paintings, Aeroplane is
a synthesis of realism and abstraction. The tightly
painted canvas is delineated with diagonal lines,
creating an abstract, gridlike effect.
 Aero plane
Frederick Frieseke
 Japanese woodcuts flooded the European market in
the late 19th century, finding an especially
appreciative audience among French Impressionist
and Post-Impressionist painters. Many artists
became collectors, and some even included
Japanese art in the backgrounds of their own
paintings, as Frederick Frieseke did here. This
American Impressionist painter probably first fell
under the spell of Japanese design while he was
studying in Paris. The compressed perspective,
flattened color, and linear embellishment seen in this
painting are borrowed from Japanese aesthetics.
 Girl Reading
Robert Henri
 Believing that the artist must also be a force for social
reform, Robert Henri developed a technically
adventurous style that was nonetheless grounded in
realism. With bold brushwork and pure color, he
painted dramatic but unidealized portraits of ordinary
people. Henri made several trips to Spain and
became fascinated with bullfighting. This dashing
portrait depicts the picador Antonio Baños. While the
matador personifies the glamour and heroism of the
bullfighting ritual, the picador plays only a supporting
role: his job is to goad the bull. In choosing this
subsidiary character as his subject, Henri rejected the
more elitist traditions of portraiture.
 Antonio Baños
Childe Hassam
 Here, Childe Hassam offers a dazzling and
mysterious view of an ordinary slice of life—New York
City at night in the rain. Hassam had admired the
work of the French Impressionists during his studies
in Paris in the 1880s. He adopted the Impressionists’
flickering brushwork, sparkling light effects, and
subjects taken from daily life. Upon returning to the
United States, he settled in New York, where he
found the bustling streets and grand buildings rich
subjects to paint.
 Evening in New York
Marsden Hartley
 When Marsden Hartley traveled in 1912 to Paris and
to Munich, he met some of the champions of
European Modernism. Before long, he had developed
his own nonrepresentational style that was indebted
to Robert Delaunay´s circles of pure color and Vassily
Kandinsky´s theories of Expressionism. Hartley
returned to America in 1913 and exhibited his
geometric abstractions at the Armory Show. With its
emblematic arrangement of circles and bands and its
emphasis on pure color relationships, Abstraction is
typical of Hartley´s work at this time. In 1917 he
abandoned abstract art to concentrate on landscapes
and seascapes.
 Abstraction
Henry Ossawa Tanner
 An accomplished painter, illustrator, and
photographer, Henry Ossawa Tanner struggled for
acceptance as a black artist in America. He left for
Europe in 1891, when he was 31, and he soon found
success in Paris. A bishop´s son, Tanner often
painted religious scenes that transcend their biblical
sources. With its themes of persecution, escape, and
new beginnings, the New Testament story of Mary
and Joseph´s Flight into Egypt resonated with the
plight of African-Americans. Tanner painted the
episode about 15 times, infusing each work with
mystery and passion.
 Flight into Egypt
John Marin
 The Maine coast was a favorite subject for John Marin, one of
the great masters of American watercolor painting. Marin
modified the Cubist technique invented in 1907 by Georges
Braque and Pablo Picasso to give structural form to his
reverence for the natural world. In this vibrant watercolor, he
distills the elements of nature into geometric shapes and bold
lines. Although Marin presents a multifaceted view of objects
and forms, the overall effect is one of harmony and not
fragmentation. The white paper becomes an important
component of the composition, contributing to the freshness of
the image.
 The Little Sailboat
E. Martin Hennings
 Passing By shows people of the Taos Pueblo moving
through a glade of cottonwood trees in the brilliant
autumn sun. The figures and landscape are as tightly
and harmoniously interwoven as a fine tapestry. E.
Martin Hennings was a prominent member of the
Taos Society of Artists, which embraced the peaceful
Pueblo culture and the dramatic colors and
topography of the desert Southwest.
 Passing By
Robert Spencer
 Robert Spencer was a member of the colony
of American Impressionists in New Hope,
Pennsylvania. Here, Spencer departs from
the rural landscapes of his New Hope
contemporaries by painting a bleak scene of
urban decay. In The Exodus, Spencer
suggests the plight of refugees by presenting
them in a contemporary version of the biblical
story of Exodus.
 The Exodus
Stuart Davis
 Stuart Davis fragments the elements that
make up this harbor scene in
Massachusetts—sea, boats, piers, buoys,
tackle, and flag—and represents them with
patterns of bright color arranged to convey a
lively rhythm. Davis, in fact, conceived of
compositions such as this one in terms of the
staccato pulse of American jazz.
 Gloucester Harbor
Georgia O´Keeffe
 By magnifying a nautilus shell and juxtaposing it
dramatically against a distant landscape, Georgia
O´Keeffe transforms the ordinary into something
abstract and mysterious. O´Keeffe´s experience living
in the desert Southwest, first in Texas and then in
New Mexico, informed her paintings with bold colors
and stark forms. Her elegant still lifes of simple
objects were inspired by the objects she collected on
her walks—clam shells, turkey feathers, bones,
rocks, fossils, and flowers.
 Red Hills with White Shell
Severin Roesen
 The tradition of painting fruit and flowers dates back to 16th- and
17th-century Dutch and German artists. By the 18th century,
still-life painting had fallen from fashion, only to be revived in
Germany during the 1830s. Severin Roesen was among the
many German artists who studied the genre before immigrating
to America. Following James and Raphaelle Peale, these artists
contributed to the growing popularity of still-life paintings in mid19th-century America. Here, the lush profusion of natural bounty
seems to suggest the richness of an American Eden and its
promise of prosperity. With a meticulous attention to detail and
skillful replication of texture, this painting forms a convincing
illusion — never mind that the flowers shown blooming together
here do not do so in nature.
 Victorian Bouquet
Martin Johnson Heade
 Heade (1819—1904) preferred to work on small canvases. In
his tightly controlled paintings, the artist displays an intensity
that makes his canvases seem much larger, if not monumental.
Having essentially discovered the artistic possibilities of the
humble salt marsh in rural New England, Heade painted them
for more than 45 years. As he did with magnolias, he depicted
salt marshes repeatedly. Conceived in series form, Heade´s
magnolias and, in particular, his salt marshes, are endlessly
varied and show evidence of the careful changes he made while
painting. The subtle shifts within his work as a whole account in
part for Heade´s appeal to modern eyes. His paintings received
only limited artistic acclaim during his lifetime, but with the
general revival of interest in American art in the 1940s, attention
returned to him once again and his reputation was reestablished.
Martin Johnson Heade
 In this acutely observed still life, Martin Johnson
Heade depicts five magnolias in various stages of
blossom. Heade had moved in 1883 to Florida, where
flourishing tropical flowers like magnolias both
encouraged his interest in natural history and
appealed to him artistically. The golden glow of the
background and of the plush velvet sets off the
various qualities of the flower: the delicate, smooth
petals in creamy white; the rough stems; and the
waxy finish of the leaves, one of which has been
affected by a fungus.
 Magnolias on Gold Velvet Cloth
Masterworks of European Art
 Early Christian art at the MFAH includes an important ivory figure of
God the Father and a Late Gothic Virgin and Child by the workshop of
Niclaus Weckman the Elder.
Thanks largely to the vision and generosity of two great art collectors
from the first half of the 20th century—Percy S. Straus and Samuel H.
Kress—the museum´s collection is strong in Renaissance and Baroque
art. Among the Renaissance highlights are Italian examples by Fra
Angelico, Giovanni di Paolo, Sebastiano del Piombo, Antico, and
Scarsellino, as well as Flemish masterpieces by Rogier van der
Weyden and Hans Memling. Baroque strengths include notable works
by Orazio Gentileschi, Guido Reni, Philippe de Champaigne, Luca
Giordano, Frans Hals, and Jan van Huysum.
The 18th- and 19th-century galleries feature important works by JeanSiméon Chardin, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Canaletto, Jean-Léon
Gérôme, Francisco de Goya, William Adolphe Bouguereau, Camille
Corot, and Théodore Rousseau.
Guido Reni
 Guido Reni was one of the most influential of the 17th century
Italian painters, enjoying the highest reputation during his
lifetime and remaining one of the great painters of the Catholic
Counter-Reformation. In his religious paintings he was
concerned with the expression of intense emotion; his subjects
often had upraised eyes conveying a state of ecstasy or divine
inspiration.
James the Greater, one of the twelve Apostles and brother of
John the Evangelist, was among the circle of men closest to
Christ. Here, the saint is shown as Christ´s Apostle: bearded,
with his dark hair parted and falling on either side in the manner
of Christ. Resting in the crook of his arm is the pilgrim´s staff,
one of his attributes.
Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi
 In the late 15th century, Isabella d´Este and her
husband, Gianfrancesco Ganzaga, gathered poets,
painters, and sculptors at their sophisticated court in
Mantua to assist with their studies of ancient art. One
such sculptor was Pier Jacopo Alari-Bonacolsi, who
earned his nickname, Antico, for the remarkable
small bronzes he made in the antique style. This
example, one of the few in the United States, shows
Hercules as an idealized male nude, just after slaying
the Nemean lion, the first of his 12 labors.
 Hercules Resting after Slaying the Nemean Lion
Carlo Dolci
 Carlo Dolci was deeply devout even as a child, and intense
religious feeling was the guiding force behind his art. Many of
his paintings were inscribed with prayers and intended to inspire
spiritual fervor in those who beheld them. His great piety is
illustrated by the fact that during Easter Week, Dolci would paint
only scenes relating to Christ´s Passion. His painstaking
technique and the meticulous care with which he rendered every
detail of his compositions brought him great patronage. Some of
his works attained the status of venerated images and remain
among the most popular devotional pictures within Catholicism.
 Virgin and Child with the Infant Saint John the Baptist
Frans Hals
 One of the great 17th-century Dutch artists was Frans Hals, who
achieved some renown early in his career but died an
impoverished man. Not until the 19th century, when artists
began to appreciate his unprecedented manner of applying thick
paint with spontaneous, free brush strokes, was his reputation
secured. A wonderful painter of portraits and scenes of everyday
life, Hals is best remembered for his bravura studies of the
Dutch bourgeoisie, including a series of nine group portraits of
Haarlem civic guards. In the 1630´, Hals´s printings became
more somber as in this penetrating portrait, one half of a
husband-and-wife pair.
 Portrait of an Elderly Woman
Canaletto
 Painted views of towns and landscapes were
enormously popular in the 18th century. Travelers to
Italy eagerly sought accurate and detailed records of
their visits to Rome, Florence, Venice, and Naples.
Canaletto was the most famous painter of vedute
(Italian for "views") at the time. His ability to capture
the light, the life, the buildings, and the expanse of
Venice established his reputation as one of the
greatest topographical painters of all time.
 The Entrance to the Grand Canal, Venice
Pompeo Batoni
 Pompeo Batoni´s paintings were especially popular
among English visitors to Italy in the 18th century:
Lady Anna Riggs Miller´s declaration that he was
"esteemed the best portrait painter in the world" is
typical of contemporary estimations of his talent. This
portrait of William Fermor in a red velvet coat lined
with lynx (a type worn in Italy in the winter by the
British) demonstrates Batoni´s ability to create a
striking and memorable likeness.
 William Fermor
Mattia Preti
 Mattia Preti is one of the founders of the Neopolitan Baroque
style. Born in Calabria in southern Italy, he worked in Rome and
then moved to Naples in about 1656, at a cosmopolitan period
in that City´s artistic history. One of a set of three paintings
commissioned by a Flemish merchant living in Naples, this work
demonstrates Preti´s powerful style. He depicts the beheading
of Saint Paul at its most tense moment: the saint bows his head
just as the executioner begins to unsheathe the sword. The
close placement of twisted figures in the foreground heightened
by sharp contrasts of light and shadow, created the scene´s
dramatic immediacy.
 The Martyrdom of Saint Paul
Ferdinand Bol
 The most likely interpretation of this painting is that
the handsome woman admiring herself represents a
personification of the vice of Vanity, or Vanitas. The
term vanitas (Latin for "emptiness") derives from the
admonition in the Old Testament book of
Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities; all is vanity." The
vanitas theme was a well-known subject in 17thcentury Dutch art and was intended to symbolize the
transitory nature of earthly life and the inevitability of
death.
 Woman at Her Dressing Table
The Blaffer Foundation Collection
 The collection of the Sarah
Campbell Blaffer Foundation was
originally established by Houston
art patron Sarah Campbell Blaffer
(1885—1975). In 1993, the
foundation agreed to place some
of its finest works on long-term
exhibition at the MFAH.
Five galleries in the Beck Building
are devoted to presenting this
outstanding collection of European
art. The highlights include works by
Lucas Cranach the Elder, Sandro
Botticelli, Pietro Longhi, Sir Joshua
Reynolds, Thomas Gainsborough,
and Jean-Baptiste Oudry.
Bonaventure de Bar

The figures are treated in a more robust and realistic manner
than in the work of other followers of Watteau. Only the woman
in the center, whose sumptuous silk dress is emphasized by a
lighting that brings out all its brilliance, wears a costume
unsuitable for this resolutely rustic site. But at the same time, de
Bar manages to retain a poetry and a subtlety that bear
comparison to Watteau´s work. As with Watteau, the
represented action is not clearly indicated, and the spectator´s
imagination is free to invent a story for the figures in the picture
and to be filled with the painting´s sensitive, delicate
atmosphere.
 Fête Champêtre
Sir Anthony van Dyck
 By the 17th century, portraits were in great demand
among Europe´s merchant and militia classes as well
as its nobility. Born in Flanders, Sir Anthony van Dyck
was one of the leading portraitists of the time, famous
for creating flattering but incisive character studies.
Imbuing his subjects with dignity and refinement, van
Dyck became particularly popular among aristocrats
during his sojourns in England in the 1630s. His
grand style influenced English portrait painting for two
centuries. This sympathetic work depicts Antoine
Triest, a bishop of Ghent who was also an art
collector. The bold brushwork in indebted to Rubens,
with whom van Dyck worked as a young man, while
the pose and color derive from the Italian painter
Titian.
Sandro Botticelli
 Sandro Botticelli oversaw an active workshop, producing
hundreds of paintings, especially devotional images of the Virgin
and Child, over the course of his career. Very few of Botticelli´s
paintings are signed or dated, and it is often difficult to
determine his authorship. This painting belongs to his late
period, which is particularly enigmatic. Some scholars attribute
this work entirely to Botticelli, but it may also have been
executed in part by his assistants. The round painting, or tondo,
shows the Virgin Mary adoring the infant Jesus, while Saint
Joseph sleeps. On the right are the devoted shepherds, and in
the background, on the left, the Holy Family flees into Egypt.
 Adoration of the Christ Child
Hieronymus Bosch
 The patron saint of travelers, Christopher was one of
the most popular figures in the late Middle Ages.
According to legend, this giant figure, guided by a
hermit (here visible on the bank, holding his lantern),
served Christ by carrying travelers across a river.
One night Christopher carried the Christ Child himself
and struggled under the weight of the world. The
artist has elaborated the story with nightmarish
symbols of a sinful world.

Saint Christopher Carrying the Christ Child through a
Sinful World
Melchior d´Hondecoeter
 Melchior d´Hondecoeter specialized in paintings of
animals and birds. It is unusual for animal paintings
to have literary references, but this work illustrates an
ancient Greek fable. Zeus planned to choose the
most handsome bird to be king over the others. The
crow, or jackdaw, realizing how plain he was,
fastened feathers molted by other birds all over his
body. Zeus was about to award him the throne
because of his splendid appearance when the other
birds, indignant at the deception, plucked all the
borrowed plumes from the pretender, returning him to
his natural, unimpressive state.
 The Crow Exposed
Alessandro Magnasco
 The works of Genoese artist Alessandro Magnasco are marked
by a bravura painting technique scarcely matched in his time.
Forms are suggested rather than defined, and drips and flicks of
paint attest to the energy with which he created his paintings.
Magnasco´s subject matter is also unusual: the paintings are
peopled by elongated figures, often monks, pilgrims, and
peasants, engaged in sometimes enigmatic activities. Here,
peasants led by a monk or hermit kneel around a strange altar,
upon which rest a skull, two candles, and a column topped by a
cross. The group gathers at water´s edge in a wild and
mountainous setting.
 Worshippers at a Shrine in a Mountainous Landscape
Lucas Cranach
 Lucas Cranach and his workshop painted dozens of
versions of the story of Lucretia, the ancient Roman
heroine who took her own life after being raped. This
painting was probably one of the primary versions of
the subject because inscribed on the ledge behind
the figure of Lucretia is Cranach´s monogram, and,
most unusual, the date of the painting´s execution.
Cranach was an enormously successful artist who
worked for the Saxon princes and courtiers in
Wittenberg, Germany. His paintings of subjects from
Roman mythology and classical history that featured
nude women were particularly popular.
 Suicide of Lucretia