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2,619 of 2,619 paintings
A collection of oysters is grouped around a glass of wine. A few closed mussels have been added at the left, with a single open shell depicted at the right, its shades of blue and white contrasting with the overall earthy tonality. Behind the oysters stands a squat bottle, perhaps containing oliv...
Not on display
Jakob Schlesinger (1792–1855) made this tracing in 1822 of the Sistine Madonna by the Italian Renaissance artist Raphael (1483–1520). Drawn in pencil, it is formed of 24 pieces of paper pasted together and mounted on a canvas the same size as the painting. Schlesinger was a painter and picture re...
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In this monumental painting, Venus, the goddess of love, is attended by the Three Graces, who carefully fasten her sandals and jewellery. Her son Cupid stands before his bow and arrow in the foreground, delicately holding a pearl earring between forefinger and thumb, while a putto reaches through...
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Buildings crumble and collapse along a seashore harshly illuminated against a dark sky. These unstable structures are probably assembled from elements of ancient and modern architecture familiar to the artist. The domed building beside a Gothic church-like tower is based on the ancient Temple of...
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In the right foreground lies the ruined shell of what must have been a grand building. To the left of it stands a lone figure, bundled up in clothing that is blown to one side in the breeze. Behind the ruins the ground drops quite sharply to the plain, which is dotted with rows of trees in the ma...
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Framed beneath an arch of tall trees, a small crowd watches two characters from commedia dell’arte (a popular form of comic theatre) engaged in a mock duel. The show is watched by a mix of male and female characters from various social classes, ranging from young children to the elderly. This is...
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According to the Book of Exodus, the Israelites, having escaped slavery in Egypt, feared famine as they wandered the desert. They complained to Moses, so God sent down a heavenly food, manna, which fell from the sky each morning but melted in the sun. Here, they gather the manna up into pots, jar...
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We don‘t know the identity of this woman dressed in sumptuous fabrics and heavy gold jewellery, but her clothing is like that worn by the elite of society and ladies of the Saxon court. Her outfit is, in parts, physically impossible: the rings she wears under her gloves are higher up her fingers...
After a friend boasted about the jewels she owned, Cornelia Africana, a widowed Roman matron and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (known as the Gracchi), declared her sons to be her jewels. Here Cornelia holds the hands of her young sons, in contrast to the pearl necklace and expensive fabri...
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This is a portrait of Misia Sert, née Godebska, who was the darling of the highest artistic circles in France at the turn of the twentieth century. It is hard to overstate quite how glamorous and influential she was: the local newspapers dubbed her the 'Queen of Paris’. A talented pianist, she a...
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In 1893 Monet bought a plot of land next to his house in Giverny. He had already planted a colourful flower garden, but now he wanted to create a water garden ‘both for the pleasure of the eye and for the purpose of having subjects to paint'. He enlarged the existing pond, filling it with exotic...
A wild, mountainous landscape stretches out before us, with sharp snowy peaks silhouetted against the sky. In the middle distance, just beyond the rushing waterfall, a town – complete with campanile (bell towers) and classical buildings – perches on a hilltop. In the foreground, a handful of figu...
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The Virgin Mary stands with her infant son, Christ, in the corner of a large but sparsely decorated room. He is balanced on a small table, the only piece of furniture, but is dangerously close to its edge; a closed book further restricts the space available to him. The Virgin uses both hands to s...
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Two boats are moored along the right bank of the river Seine as it passes through a peaceful landscape edged with slender trees. Ethereal forms in muted greys and greens are set against a luminous sky, the whole bathed in pearly morning light. The more substantial manner in which the boats are pa...
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Light spills in through a window high up on the towering wall of the barn. It picks out a sturdy woman with her sleeves rolled up, her arms in a tub – she’s perhaps washing clothes. Around her, discarded articles – an earthenware jar, a wicker basket, some colourful rags – are heaped up among bal...
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‘Ecce Homo’, the Latin title of this painting, is taken from the Bible, and means ‘Behold the man!’ These were the words of Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor of Judea, when he was sitting as the judge during the trial of Christ. Pilate, here shown wearing a turban and rising to his feet, is pres...
This work is a badly damaged fragment of a fresco. It shows the Virgin holding the naked infant Christ on her knee. The Christ Child raises his hand in a gesture of blessing while looking down towards the left. The direction of his gaze and that of the Virgin suggests that he may originally have...
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A small, beady-eyed sparrow on one side of a set of scales heavily outweighs the gold and pearls which a weeping woman, two tears glistening on her cheeks, places in the other. Clearly, in the real word, this couldn't happen: the bird would be much the lighter than the jewellery. But this picture...
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The Christ Child stands on a stone parapet leaning against his mother, who turns to meet his gaze. He wraps one arm tenderly about her neck as she holds him gently around his waist in a very natural pose. In his other hand he holds an apple, a symbol of the Fall of humankind that he will redeem b...
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Lady Anne, 2nd Countess of Albemarle, is approaching 60 in this portrait. She is the widow of William-Anne Keppel, 2nd Earl of Albemarle, with whom she had 15 children, although only four sons and two daughters survived childhood. She holds a shuttle and is engaged in ‘knotting’ – a pastime invol...
This is a copy of the central figure of Christ from Luini’s Christ Among the Doctors, also in National Gallery’s collection. Luini’s composition may be based on an original design by Leonardo.At the age of 12, Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem by Mary and Joseph, who became accidentally...
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The central character of this painting is hidden in the shadows: a man with long hair and a beard who seems to draw the attention of the people gathered before him. This is Saint John the Baptist, standing on what looks like an improvised pulpit. The large crowd is divided between conversation an...
In 1845 Ary Scheffer painted an episode recounted by Saint Augustine in his Confessions. The Church Father recalled sitting with his mother Monica shortly before her death and discussing the kingdom of heaven. The picture, for which Scheffer used his own mother as the model for Saint Monica, beca...
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Under a spreading tree in the left foreground a man saws amidst a pile of logs while a woman reaches up into the tree itself. A stream (the Auxois) winds its way from behind the foreground boulder through the gully on the left-hand side to the hill beyond. The light is coming from the right backg...
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Christ, barefoot and weeping but dressed in rich red and blue, is bent under the weight of the Cross. The spikes of the crown of thorns dig into his flesh, and crystal tears drip down his cheeks. He is dragging the Cross to his own crucifixion.The setting is not first-century Palestine, but Renai...
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Jupiter, the ruler of the gods, is seated on a cloud, his attribute of an eagle with thunderbolts in its beak beside him. He is embracing the goddess Minerva, his daughter. The scene is witnessed by a gathering of the gods of Olympus, clearly shocked by what they see.Mercury, messenger of the god...
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We are looking at the east end of a Gothic church, where the body of a bishop is being exhumed from his tomb in front of the high altar. This is Saint Hubert, Bishop of Maastricht and Liège, who died in 727. He is being moved from Liège to the newly founded abbey of Saint-Hubert-en-Ardenne, in 82...
This painting is one of a pair that depicts episodes from the Book of Exodus, which describes how Moses rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and accompanied them into the promised land of Canaan.Moses brings forth Water out of the Rock is based on Exodus 17: 1–7. It shows the Israelites n...
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The blind old man Tobit, a merchant and devout Jew, sent his son, Tobias, on a long journey to collect a debt. God sent the Archangel Raphael – the winged figure on the left of the scene – to accompany Tobias and his dog.Tobias carries a fish that he has gutted; Raphael holds its organs in a litt...
On display elsewhere
We are in a dingy tavern with a small gathering of drinkers and smokers squatting on low wooden stools and chairs. The focus of their attention – and ours – is the tussle going on between a man and a young woman on the left-hand side of the painting.The depiction is unusually lewd. The man, his t...
At the centre of the composition stands a building with four arches, the third of which leads to a furnace. In the foreground, a cart laden with fuel and drawn by two oxen is led by a man wearing a classical tunic. Smoke pours out of the vents in the tiled roof and the rolling storm clouds at th...
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A young woman takes a moment from her spinning to look out from a dark room, her gaze direct. Although she holds a long length of raw half-spun wool, her mind isn‘t on the task. She’s more interested in whoever has taken her by surprise.Netscher specialised in small genre scenes before he took to...
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These are two panels from an altarpiece painted by Gaudenzio Ferrari between 1508—9 for the church of Sant’ Anna in Vercelli. It was commissioned by the local confraternity dedicated to Saint Anne for the altar of their oratory.The panels of the altarpiece were arranged in two horizontal rows of...
Not on display
In contrast to many of Turner’s paintings – often full of activity, grand architectural settings, dramatic weather and dazzling effects of colour and light – this painting looks almost empty. The only figure is a barely visible young boy with a shrimping net over his shoulder, who wades in from t...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary gazes down at the infant Christ Child, who lies on a woven manger: wisps of hay poke through the sides of the basketwork. Beside them Saint Joseph leans on a stick; on the right the shepherds look on in wonder, their humble gift of a lamb lying on the floor beside the manger. Othe...
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Ludolf Bakhuizen rarely made his seas calm or sunlit. His is a northern sea with boats scudding before the wind, evoking the sound of straining timbers and slapping rigging.The vessel speeding towards the distant man-of-war (battleship) is a snaauwschip – a dispatch boat. The man-of-war is at anc...
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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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The infant Christ reaches up towards the Virgin Mary, oblivious of his visitors – the Three Kings on the left and the shepherds on the right. The golden dome of heaven has opened up and is circled by 12 angels holding olive branches entwined with scrolls and hung with crowns. In the foreground, t...
On display elsewhere
Gainsborough painted this portrait of William Hallett (1764–1842) and Elizabeth Stephen (1764–1833) shortly before their marriage on 30 July 1785. The couple are shown arm-in-arm on a morning walk with a Pomeranian sheepdog. The style of the portrait draws on the work of earlier painters Watteau...
This painting records a key moment in European political history: the confirmation of the treaty which formally granted independence to the Dutch nation from Spanish control in 1648. The key figures are the six Dutch and two Spanish delegates, shown in the centre swearing the treaty oath, and ter...
On display elsewhere
Monet’s earlier paintings of the Normandy coast had emphasised it as a working seascape, peopled with fishermen who had to contend with a cold climate, choppy seas and stormy skies. But this painting and the eight others he made in the summer of 1870 show it as a holiday destination, with wide sa...
This elegant woman is Mary Magdalene, holding the pot of oil with which she anointed Christ’s feet. Although a biblical figure, she is dressed in the height of fifteenth-century fashion. Her red cloak and uncovered hair were meant to hint at the medieval understanding that she ‘gave herself to al...
We don't know who painted this portrait or the sitter’s identity, though he was clearly a man of means. His clothes are rich but sombre – a black or dark grey hat and doublet, and a purple coat lined with grey damask. His white shirt is finely woven and the laces at his neck have gold tips; he we...
Not on display
A young family enjoys a tender moment in a leafy glade. Venus, goddess of love, holds her son Cupid’s bow as his father Mercury, god of communication and wit, teaches him to read. Mercury looks down fondly at his child but Venus gazes dreamily towards us and smiles. Unusually, Venus is shown with...
On display elsewhere
The Abbé Scaglia (1592–1641), whose full name was Cesare Alessandro Scaglia di Verrua, was a cleric and diplomat well known in Rome, Madrid, London and Paris for his service to the House of Savoy and Philip IV of Spain. Scaglia was also an art collector of renown who knew, among others, Rubens, V...
The grim story of the beheading of Saint John the Baptist, the prophet who preached the coming of Christ as the Messiah, is recounted in the Gospel of Mark. John had criticised King Herod for marrying Herodias, the wife of his own half-brother. In revenge, Herodias persuaded her daughter Salome t...
Not on display
This panel, which was part of an altarpiece, depicts Saints Bartholomew and Monica standing side by side on an angular step that encloses a patch of grass. At least two other fragments of the same altarpiece are also in the National Gallery’s collection. The central – and largest – panel shows th...
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La Fargue presents a flourishing market packed with people. He looks on his world fondly and with humour, making ’slice of life' pictures similar to William Hogarth, but without Hogarth’s merciless, satirical eye.Seen from the Prinsengracht –- one of the principal thoroughfares of The Hague – the...
Not on display
This is the central panel of a small triptych (a painting in three parts), probably commissioned by Sir John Donne in the late 1470s. In it, he kneels before the Virgin and Christ Child, facing his wife Elizabeth and one of their daughters. They are accompanied by their patron saints Catherine an...
Many Dutch artists went to live in Italy when they were young and brought their idyllic dreams of a warmer, slower, rural lifestyle home to an enthusiastic Dutch public. Nicolaes Berchem was probably one of them. Dutch cities were growing fast and people were migrating to them from the country in...
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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...
Not on display
Far from the soft, rolling sand dunes at many seaside places, those in Wouwerman’s painting are craggy with rocks here and there. The stark outline of the broken fence against the sky seems forbidding, and the house up on the left bank, gable end facing us, seems to shut us out.Individual parts o...
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Wynn Ellis MP (1790–1875) was the National Gallery’s greatest benefactor in the second half of the nineteenth century. He made his fortune in the silk trade and sat in the House of Commons as Liberal MP for Leicester from 1831 to 1834.He began buying paintings in the mid-1820s and had a strong li...
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In the seventeenth century the Little Ice Age settled over Northern Europe. Rivers and canals in Holland froze over and people took to the ice for work, leisure – and accidents. Hendrik Avercamp, just starting out as an artist, took to it too. His life’s work became the depiction of winter scenes...
The Christ Child lies naked and glowing in the centre of the main panel of this arched altarpiece, adored by his parents and four saints. More saints stand in the pilasters. Recent research has identified the original location of this altarpiece as a small chapel in the castle of Cerreto Ciampoli...
Not on display
According to an inscription on a tree stump in the centre, this painting shows the marriage of Isaac and Rebecca described in the Old Testament book of Genesis. The couple dance with tambourines, surrounded by other figures reclining and enjoying the festivities. The flat landscape and expanse of...
The boats crowded together on either side of Jan van de Cappelle’s painting are tough, working craft, made to carry goods and people along the coastline and the many waterways of Holland. Although the vessels are not glamorous in themselves, van de Cappelle has exaggerated the height of the masts...
Not on display
Three small boats head up river, towards the rising sun. Their taut, curved sails are outlined against a cool, luminous sky as they lean with the wind. Moving clouds reveal a patch of intense blue that is reflected silvery grey on the translucent water below. Cattle wade up to their knees by the...
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...
Not on display
Boudin is most famous for his scenes of well-to-do holidaymakers on the beaches of the fashionable Normandy resorts of Trouville and Deauville. But from the late 1860s he began to turn his attention to the daily life of the inhabitants of the northern French coast. In all, he painted around 100...
Not on display
In 1999 this panel was reunited with its pair, an image of the Virgin and Child. Together they formed a diptych, a painting made of two panels joined with a hinge.Christ is shown on the Cross, just after his death – a type of image called the Man of Sorrows. Its origins lie in Byzantine painting...
The shining Christ Child lies on the ground surrounded by angels, while the Virgin Mary kneels to worship him and Saint Joseph stands holding a candle. Behind Joseph are two women in exotic jewelled turbans – the midwives who attended the birth. Angels hover in the air above.Although this picture...
Not on display
The subject of Christ bidding farewell to his mother, the Virgin Mary, as he heads to Jerusalem to face his arrest, trial and death was very popular in southern Germany. This is a fragment of a larger painting, which has been cut at the right edge – only Christ’s hands and part of his long crimso...
Not on display
Forain worked as an etcher and lithographer, as well as a painter, acquiring a reputation for his satirical, and often biting, scenes of Parisian life. A friend of Manet and Degas, he participated in some of the Impressionists’ exhibitions from 1879 to 1886. His later paintings were mainly scenes...
On display elsewhere
This is one of the panels that decorated Pierfrancesco Borgherini’s bedroom in his palace in Florence. They tell the Old Testament story of Joseph and were probably originally set into furniture. Five other panels from the series are also in the National Gallery.Joseph was his father’s favourite...
This fragment comes from a large painting in fresco – a technique that involved painting directly onto wet plaster – that showed the fall of Lucifer, the rebel angel who was cast out of heaven. It once decorated a wall of the church of the confraternity of Sant' Angelo in Arezzo. There are two ot...
Not on display
This angel is a pair to another in the National Gallery’s collection. Both were part of a large altarpiece made for the church of San Francesco Grande in Milan that included Leonardo’s ‘Virgin of the Rocks’, which is also in our collection. They were made to surround a sculpture of the Virgin Mar...
In this chaotic woodland party, men and women dance, drink, play music and behave badly. They gather around a statue of a red-faced satyr with horns, which may represent Pan, god of shepherds and herdsmen, or Priapus, god of gardens. Both deities are linked to the mischievous god of wine, Bacchus...
An elderly bearded man kneels in a landscape, gazing up at the Virgin Mary and Christ Child who float in the sky. Behind him a rather astonished-looking young woman throws up her hands. This is the Emperor Augustus' encounter with the sibyl, a pagan prophetess.According to medieval legend, on the...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
Paintings of life on the frozen waterways of Holland during the Little Ice Age were very popular with collectors at the time. Many artists, usually known for painting rivers or landscapes, produced them, and Adriaen van de Velde was one of the most successful. But in this painting he has concentr...
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...
Not on display
Christ is shown crucified – the massive figure of God the Father holds the arms of the Cross as though presenting him to the viewer. A dove, representing the Holy Ghost, hovers between them. The three together represent the Trinity, the one Christian God consisting of Father, Son and Holy Ghost....
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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...
Herod, ruler of Galilee, promised his stepdaughter Salome anything she desired if she danced for him; prompted by her mother, she asked for the head of John the Baptist. The story of the beheading, with its mixture of religion, violence and eroticism, had been depicted many times in art, not leas...
Teniers brings the cycle of the seasons full circle – and his series of paintings of the seasons to an end – with an old man representing Winter. Wrapped in velvet and fur, he hunches over to warm his hands at a brazier. His face is lined and wrinkled, his beard long and frosted with white. But h...
Not on display
Courtier and soldier Sir John Donne kneels before the Virgin and Christ Child in the central panel of this triptych (a painting in three parts), which he commissioned, facing his wife Elizabeth and one of their daughters. With them are Saints Catherine and Barbara, two of the most popular medieva...
Not on display
This scene shows the holy family – the Virgin Mary, Joseph and Jesus Christ – just after Christ’s birth in a stable. The artist has set the scene in surroundings familiar to contemporary viewers: the towers of a town that resembles fifteenth-century Tuscany are visible in the distance. On the hil...
Not on display
Christ’s disciples were gathered together 50 days after his death when, according to the Bible, a strong wind began to blow. Flames like ‘tongues of fire’ appeared on their heads and they were filled with the Holy Ghost (Acts 2: 1–4). This event, called Pentecost, was when the disciples were give...
Not on display
Monticelli painted many imaginary scenes of costumed figures throughout his career. Here, a dozen characters are shown in colourful outfits, probably during a torchlight procession. The central figure in white appears to be dressed as Pulcinella, a character from Commedia dell'Arte plays. This su...
Not on display
Christ’s head is shown in vivid close up in this little picture, his pale face and brilliant robe stark against the black background. Bright light falling from the left allows us to see every pitiful detail: the thorns thrust into his forehead, the blood dripping down his face and his red-rimmed...
Not on display
Seventeenth-century Dutch winters were notorious for their Arctic cold, with canals and rivers frozen over. In the little town that Avercamp takes us to everyone is out on the ice, making the best of it: working, playing, showing off, laughing, complaining, falling over or just about managing to...
A shepherd boy leads a flock of sheep along a country track between two dark banks of trees. Other figures sit in the shadows at the side of the lane. The strongly lit country path contrasts with the darkly massed trees, guiding our eye towards a light, hazy, distant hillside. Dughet has also use...
Not on display
Taken from an episode in Ovid’s Metamorphosis, this painting shows the moment when Cephalus is horrified to find his wife Procris impaled and slumped against a tree, after he has accidentally killed her with his spear. He thought she was a wild animal – the deer fleeing over the horizon was his i...
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Le Sueur shows us a moment described in the Gospel of John, when Christ speaks to his mother, the Virgin Mary, and his disciple, Saint John the Evangelist, just before he dies. Opposite them kneels Mary Magdalene, her hands clasped together in prayer. Their expressions, mouths slightly open and e...
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A group of men and women play a game called La Main Chaude (‘the hot hand’), which involved one person hiding their face on the lap of another, placing their hand behind their back and then guessing who has hit that hand.The artist, a follower of the Flemish painter Hieronymus Janssens, has place...
Not on display
This extravagant celebration of textures, scents and tastes is far more than a naturalistic study. It’s high artifice – a picture of pure luxury. Jan van Os would probably have drawn his ideal arrangement and painted each element from sketches and drawings, yet everything appears real, as if you...
Not on display
In his later years, Pissarro painted several series of paintings based upon views of Paris. Each series was dedicated to a specific location in the city painted at various times of the day and during different seasons and weather conditions. This wintry scene, probably created in the early months...
Not on display
High, scudding clouds and a restless sea bring a feeling of freshness to Willem van de Velde’s painting. Two lowered white sails seem to tumble towards the water, and echo the froth on the tops of the waves. The breeze is almost palpable, with spars, masts and vessels all leaning at different ang...
Not on display
Saint Matthias holds the axe that was used to chop his head in half. He was not widely worshipped but he was an important saint for the church of Santa Maria Maggiore, Rome, where this panel formed part of an altarpiece: his relics were buried there, and he was depicted in a mosaic in the east en...
This elegant young man is dressed in an expensive black coat lined with lynx fur and a fine linen shirt embroidered in white around the neckline with delicate scrolling patterns. It is not possible to make out the emblem on his signet ring, which might have given us a clue to his identity. The co...
Not on display
This is one of Titian’s earliest surviving works. It shows the Adoration of the Shepherds – the flying angel in the distance announces Christ’s birth to them. Saint Joseph presents the infant Christ to a young shepherd, who kneels in reverence.It is unusual to find only one shepherd in attendance...
The island of La Grande Jatte and the views from it across the river Seine were a rich source of pictorial subjects for Seurat during the 1880s. He was especially attracted to this location, in part because of the pictorial forms and structures it offered, such as the horizontal of the river and...
On display elsewhere
A group of cattle and goats has been herded to drink in a stream or pool. Two country girls, a child and a man sit quietly on the sandy bank. The sun begins to sink behind the distant hills, casting a golden evening light over the peaceful woody landscape.Gainsborough’s painting is based on a dra...
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...
Not on display
In this small, circular painting a young boy holds a fish in one hand and clasps the hand of an angel with the other. This is the story of Tobias and the angel: Tobias caught a large fish in the Tigris and was advised by the Archangel Raphael to keep its internal organs as a cure for his father’s...
Not on display
Born into a family of physicians in Picerno, then in the Kingdom of Naples, Joseph-Nicolas-Blaise Forlenze (1751–1833) was a pioneering ophthalmologist and surgeon based in Paris, where this near life-size portrait of him was exhibited at the Salon of 1808.Fashionably dressed in a long-tailed bla...
Not on display
The shadowy dome of St Paul’s Cathedral is viewed from the south bank of the Thames. Just to the front of the cathedral the newly built Blackfriars Bridge straddles the river; behind it a train, invisible but for its plume of smoke, passes over Blackfriars Railway Bridge. The leaden sky is heavil...
Not on display
Assuming that the inscription on the back of this pastel is correct, this is Marthe Legrix de La Salle (1716–1777), daughter of a successful draper in Bordeaux. She married Jacques IV Le Grix (or Legrix) de La Salle in Bordeaux in 1733. According to the memoirs of her son Jacques, Marthe had a k...
Not on display
We have interrupted a young man reading; he turns to look over his shoulder at us. The unguarded look creates the impression that we are seeing him as he really is. His identity is uncertain, although he may be the stationer Lorenzo di Matteo Peri, whose family commissioned Andrea del Sarto’s Dis...
This is the second panel in a series of four paintings that tell the story of Florence’s patron saint, Zenobius. Botticelli shows three of the saint’s miracles set in the streets of Florence. In the first scene, on the far left, he shows the saint – who was the bishop of Florence – dressed in a b...
On display elsewhere
Saint John the Baptist is shown within a rugged landscape and wearing a camel-hair tunic, alluding to the simple life he led in the wilderness, as described in the Gospel of Matthew. He holds a reed cross with a scroll coiled around the top. It bears a Latin inscription: Ecce Agnus Dei (‘Behold t...
Not on display
Although we know the name and approximate date of birth of the sitter of this portrait, he has not yet been fully identified. His robes suggest he was a Benedictine, or possibly Augustinian, canon. The coat of arms in the upper right corner – that of the Boulengé de la Hainière family – is the sa...
Not on display
A voluptuous woman regards us with an inviting sidelong glance that is both reticent and willing. She unveils her charms, and as she does so offers us a posy of flowers. Her chemise has fallen from her shoulder to reveal her breast, the curve of which is emphasised by the line of her blue silk ri...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
A velvet curtain drawn back from a stone window reveals a little boy, who gazes upwards at a bubble floating past him and into the darkness. In the shadows behind, a smaller child concentrates equally fiercely. Using a long pipe he blows bubbles in the soapy liquid held in a cockle shell. Already...
Nicolaes Maes has turned a biblical moment into a scene from his own time, illustrating part of the Gospel of Matthew (19.13–14): ‘Then there were brought unto him little children, that he should put his hands on them, and pray: and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, Suffer little childr...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary turns to look down at the kneeling man beside her and extends a protective arm around his shoulder. Saint John the Baptist points at the lively Christ Child, while Saint Joseph sleeps with his head on his arm. The diagonals in the composition draw the viewer’s eye to Christ’s gaze...
A young child is being taught by an older girl, perhaps in her early teens, who is possibly an elder sister or another relation such as a cousin. Despite the picture’s title, this is a private lesson, probably taking place at home rather than at school. The younger child is most likely a boy, alt...
A tiger crouches low in thick jungle foliage, its back arched and teeth bared. It is not entirely clear what is happening: is the tiger cowering from the flash of lightning, or is it stalking prey?Surprised! was the first of around 20 ‘jungle’ paintings that Rousseau produced, which are among his...
This is a fragment of a wall-painting made using the fresco technique (painting directly onto wet plaster). It comes from a ’street tabernacle‘ – an outdoor religious painting – that showed the Virgin and Child surrounded by two saints.It is the head of one of the saints. We can’t identify him fr...
Not on display
Following Jewish tradition, Christ was circumcised when he was eight days old (Luke 2: 21). Seated on his mother’s lap, Christ reaches out to the mohel, the man who will perform the surgery, who holds a fine blade. The vibrantly coloured marble floor tiles are designed to attract the viewer’s att...
Christ’s body hangs limply on the Cross; the torment of his crucifixion is almost over. He is supported in his final moments by the Virgin Mary and his disciple John the Evangelist. Antonello has composed the picture with a low viewpoint; it is as if we are looking up at a Crucifix placed upon an...
The Gospel of Luke tells how after the Crucifixion, Cleopas and another of Christ’s disciples set out from Jerusalem for the village of Emmaus. They were joined by a stranger who recounted the prophecies concerning the Messiah’s death and resurrection. It was not until the three ate together late...
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This scene shows Christ being baptised by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. The composition is directly based on a panel painted by Perugino for the Benedictine Abbey of San Pietro in Perugia, Italy. When the work was acquired by the National Gallery in the nineteenth century it was thought t...
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Jacob van Ruisdael’s washerwomen are strong and sturdy. One stands in the river up to her ankles and raises a stick to beat the linen she’s washing, while her companion stoops to rinse a cloth. Behind them a heap of dirty washing awaits the attention of their brawny arms. Their dog lifts his head...
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An audience has gathered around a lecturer to watch an experiment. It is night, and the room is lit by a single candle that burns behind a large rounded glass containing a diseased human skull. A white cockatoo has been placed in a glass container from which the air is being pumped to create a va...
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...
Not on display
This painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1900 but we have no record of earlier owners, nor of the name of the sitter or artist, nor of the date. It’s hard even to be sure where it was made. Until the 1950s it was thought to be Dutch, but now it’s believed that the style of painting...
Risen from the dead, Christ appears to his grieving follower, Mary Magdalene, in the Garden of Gethsemane. At first she mistakes him for a gardener but then reaches out her hand in wonder. Christ says, ‘Do not touch me’ (in Latin, noli me tangere); it is time for his followers to let go of his ea...
The Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist stand in Christ’s red marble tomb supporting his lifeless body. He is partially covered by a burial shroud, but the spear wound on his side is visible. The Virgin mourns her son, wiping her eyes with her veil. John the Evangelist places his hand to hi...
The leader of a troop of horsemen lowers his hat to salute Philippe-François, 1st Duke of Arenberg and Duke of Arschot and Croy, who doffs his own feathered hat in response. Arenberg was an important figure at the court of Brussels: he served in the army of the Southern Netherlands, where he dist...
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This is traditionally said to be a portrait of the Englishman John Scott, who bought the estate at Banks Fee, near Stow-on-the-Wold in Gloucestershire, in 1753. During the early 1770s – around the same time as this work was produced – Scott did travel to Rome, where the famous portraitist Batoni...
On display elsewhere
This is one of a pair of portraits of a husband and wife, one of the richest couples in the Netherlands. Jacob Trip, who made much of his money as an arms dealer, had been married to Margaretha de Geer for nearly 60 years. The paintings, both in the National Gallery, were made to hang together, a...
This is the only sketch for Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières that includes a rainbow, which was painted over the sky once the paint had dried. Although perhaps a rather contrived image, the mottled sky suggests Seurat may have seen a rainbow. It is evidence of his attention to particular effects of l...
This sitter’s waistcoat and the cuffs of his coat are richly embroidered. His dignified bearing and expensive clothes identify him as a gentleman, but neither his name, nor the identity of the artist, is known. The work probably dates from the middle of the eighteenth century and is possibly by a...
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Christ carries the Cross on which he will be crucified. Bust-length paintings of this subject had become popular in Venice and Lombardy by the end of the fifteenth century.The emotional charge and drama of this painting are heightened by the tight cropping of the scene and the extremes of light a...
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Rubens made this oil sketch, along with two others, in preparation for an altarpiece commissioned for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. The central panel depicts Saint Bavo, a Roman soldier who left the military for the Christian Church, being received as a monk. This scene, in which King Clothar and h...
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A young couple seem about to strike up a duet. The woman, seated at the keyboard of a virginal, hands her partner a musical score, presumably the part for the violin on the table next to him. Scenes of music making among young people were common in seventeenth-century Dutch painting, and they wou...
A drinking glass, a vase, a plate of oysters, some small fish – probably sardines – and a half-peeled lemon lie on a table against a flat dark background. The highly patterned tablecloth is also present in the artist’s Still Life: Fruit and A Vase of Wild Flowers (both in the National Gallery), m...
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This view is from the bank of the River Thames, looking across a sprawling meadow towards Eton College on the horizon. A shady glade gives way to a softly lit landscape, with folk enjoying the summer’s day – a family group are picnicking while other people fish and boat nearby. A finely painted t...
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...
Some of Rembrandt’s most powerful paintings are of men and women immersed in thought, depicted with bold brushwork and dramatic, shadowy light effects. Slumped sideways across a chair, one hand gripping the wooden arm and the other resting lightly on his temple, this elderly man is in just such a...
Rembrandt was a teacher as well as an artist – and he knew how to school apprentices in his workshop so that they could paint just like he did.In this portrait we can see many of the skills and techniques that Rembrandt used with such great effect. Look at the intense and detailed focus on the fa...
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A frog, crouched in the foreground and glittering like a jewel, appears to be causing a stir. The male birds looking down at it seem angry or excited by its presence: they prowl, flutter their wings or glare, feathers ruffled. On a top branch is a chaffinch, fluffing out its plumage; its mate sit...
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These four saints come from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) made for the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.From left to right we see Saint Bernard, his book inscribed ‘S.BER’; a nun, probably Saint Scholastica, with her name scratched abo...
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Smoke seems to mingle with the clouds in this dramatic scene of Gypsies round a fire against a background of distant mountains and closer hills. Strong women carry babies slung round them in shawls, and here and there a man’s turban is visible. An old man tends the fire.A woman with a baby on her...
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Immediately identifiable by his long hair, beard and gesture of blessing, this kind of small close-up ‘portrait’ of Christ was hugely popular as an object of private devotion in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. Such portraits were produced in a number of painters' workshops both north and s...
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Jean de Dinteville, the man on the left, is shown on his second diplomatic mission to England on behalf of Francis I, King of France. To the right is his close friend, Georges de Selve, Bishop of Lavaur. This portrait was painted at a time of religious upheaval in Europe. Although the pope had re...
This painting and Portrait of a Woman aged about 45, also in the National Gallery, were designed to hang together as portraits of a husband and wife. They are said to have been given by the painter Sir William Boxall RA, director of the National Gallery from 1865 to 1874, to his friend, the archi...
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A woman weeps on the steps of a shadowy temple, while members of the Jewish ruling council gather round. Afraid of Christ’s popular preaching, they planned to trick him into transgressing the Jewish law. They said to him: ‘Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the law...
The sombre colours and dying glow of the evening light in this rustic landscape evoke autumn, the inevitable passage of time and a certain melancholy. Leaves on the cluster of poplar trees are crisp and beginning to turn brown. On the scrubby grass beneath the trees, a few dabs of paint suggest l...
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A country track leads from the left foreground between two outcrops of tree-covered rocks, around a limpid pool and towards the distant mountains. In the foreground a man wearing a classical tunic rests by the side of the track. He looks towards a second man in the middle distance, who ties his s...
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This fragment comes from a scene of Christ crucified which formed the central panel of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. The crown of thorns, placed on Christ’s head to mock him, has pierced his skin and blood is running down his face. The letters ‘I.N.R....
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This portrait of Charles William Lambton - aged six or seven - was commissioned by the boy’s father John George Lambton, 1st Earl of Durham, a Whig politician and MP for County Durham. Popularly known as The Red Boy, it remained in the Lambton family until it was acquired by the National Gallery...
On display elsewhere
The Virgin Mary kneels in adoration before Christ, her son, who lies on his back in the hay in a manger. Behind her are two men in ragged clothes. This is the Adoration of the Shepherds, described in Gospel of Luke (2: 8–18). Mary’s husband Joseph – looking slightly despondent – sits huddled in a...
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From around 1842 and into the 1850s Courbet painted about 20 self portraits in which he presented himself in different guises. This portrait is a reduced version of The Man with the Leather Belt (Musée d’Orsay, Paris), which Courbet painted around 1845–6.Courbet painted replicas of at least three...
On display elsewhere
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...
The Virgin presents the Christ Child, who balances on a gold-threaded pillow and blesses the viewer. Further gold detailing can be seen in the decoration running along the edge of the Virgin’s blue robe, which reveals the artist’s name in Latin: ‘PAULUS’. Behind the mother and child are three fem...
The picture has been transferred from its original panel and placed onto a canvas, a process that has damaged the paint surface. Nevertheless, the composition, where the Virgin is placed behind a ledge and in front of a cloth, shows Montagna’s artistic debt to his teacher Giovanni Bellini. The s...
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The church we are looking into here – the Cunerakerk – still towers above the small town of Rhenen in the Netherlands. Bartholomeus van Bassen was an expert in painting church interiors such as these, often adding inventive details, though he employed other artists to paint the figures.The Cunera...
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This painting probably belonged to a series of Apostles and represents either Saint Thomas or Saint Matthias, both of whose attribute is a spear. Ribera painted several such series throughout his career – the most complete, dating from around 1630, is in the Museo del Prado, Madrid. Apostle serie...
A rutted road leads into a wood and winds round to the right and over a rise to disappear. This is an often repeated theme in Jacob van Ruisdael’s early paintings – scenes of the Dutch countryside designed to please busy city dwellers wanting a moment of tranquillity in the home, or a reminder of...
Not on display
We do not know this man’s identity, although he was once thought to be the sixteenth-century theologian Martin Luther, who was a leading figure of the Protestant Reformation. This was once the left wing of a folding diptych or triptych (a painting of two or three parts respectively). There are re...
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Aeneas and Dido have been caught in a storm created by the goddess Juno. They shelter in a cave and embrace. A putto (winged infant) holds Aeneas’s horse and two other putti hover above, one holding a burning torch and the other a bow and arrow as symbols of love and romance. In the sky is Juno,...
Saint Francis stands on a marble ledge against a golden background. He embraces a Crucifix and gazes compassionately at the tiny figure of the crucified Christ. If you look closely you can see bright red blood on Christ’s feet and his white loin cloth, where it has dripped from the wound in his s...
This panel is one of four in our collection that come from the lowest part of an altarpiece (the predella) made for the church of Santa Croce in Florence. It shows the moment, described in the Gospels, when Jesus Christ was arrested by Roman soldiers. The soldiers are on the right in elaborate ar...
We do not know who this lady is. Her costume suggests that she is a Florentine noblewoman of the late 1570s and 1580s and it is likely that the portrait dates from that time.The style of the portrait is similar to those of Bronzino (1503–1572), who was court artist to Cosimo I de’ Medici (1519–15...
Not on display
The infant Bacchus, god of wine, drinks from a bowl into which a satyr squeezes grape juice representing wine. Paintings commonly show Bacchus as a drunken adult, but to show him drinking alcohol at this young age is unusual. Ovid’s Metamorphoses describes how Bacchus' aunt Ino watches over him....
On display elsewhere
This small roundel of the Archangel Michael comes from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) painted by the Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte for the high altar of the church of Saint Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio in Tuscany. In it, Saint Michael holds a sword for fighting the d...
Not on display
Perugino painted this altarpiece for the Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza. It stood in the side chapel dedicated to the Archangel Michael in the Carthusian monastery (also known as a charterhouse or certosa) in Pavia, a town outside Milan. The Duke was captured by invading French forces in 1499, an...
Not on display
The fires of hell light up Teniers’s cave-like underworld with an eerie glow. An old man stands, hands raised in self-defence, his eyes wide with fear at the sight of the horrors around him. Weird creatures gather in glee to welcome another soul into the dreadful place that his greed and avarice...
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According to the Meditations on the Life of Christ and other texts, the weeping Virgin Mary embraced Christ’s body when he was taken down from the Cross. This subject is usually referred to as the pietà.On the left is Saint Jerome with the lion that was his companion. On the right, a saint wearin...
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This panel is part of a series Beccafumi painted for the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b.1489), a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of the ruler of the republic of Siena. The decorations were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina di Niccolò Man...
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This painting shows one of the seven acts of charity described in the Gospel of Matthew and was part of a series that Murillo painted for the church of the Hospital de la Caridad in Seville. The Caridad was a charitable brotherhood dedicated to helping the poor and sick of the city; Murillo himse...
The infant Christ places a ring on Saint Catherine’s finger in her vision of a ‘mystic marriage’. Parmigianino has positioned the gold ring with a blue stone at the very centre of the painting. Beside Saint Catherine is the spiked wheel upon which she was tortured for her Christian faith.The iden...
A sick person wearing a white veil and gown lies in bed. A barefoot man kneels beside the bed; another stands at the bed head, holding a pink shirt. This is probably the raising of Tabitha (Acts 9: 36–41), one of the miracles performed by Saint Peter after Christ’s death. Tabitha was a disciple o...
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The Archangel Gabriel descends from God to tell the Virgin that she is to bear a child – a moment known as the Annunciation – but has been distracted from his mission by a bishop saint, who has stopped him in the street of a Renaissance town. This is Saint Emidius, patron saint of the town of Asc...
Christ blesses the viewer with his right hand. Antonello has altered the original position of the fingers and hand, foreshortening them – that is, compressing their real length – so that they appear to be projecting out of the picture. If you look closely, you can see the outlines of their initi...
Catharina van Hemessen is the earliest female Flemish painter for whom verifiable work survives – we can see her name here in a Latin inscription in the top right corner. We don't know who the sitter was, but she was evidently wealthy. Her shirt, visible at her neck and wrists, is ornamented with...
Not on display
There are really two subjects of this painting. The landscape creates a slightly mysterious air. The trees are backlit by a bright sky, and the long reflection across the pond leads our eye to the open gate beyond. It seems we are in a walled park or the formal gardens of a grand house. Then ther...
Not on display
Girolamo Fracastoro (1476/8–1553), a celebrated medical doctor, as well as an astronomer, mathematician and poet, proposed the theory of contagion and in 1530 wrote an epic poem that gave the name ’syphilis' to the virulent, sexually transmitted disease that was ravaging Italy in that period.Alth...
Not on display
This is a display of all the rich fruit, fish and fowl that could be found on a wealthy man’s table. Lobsters and chicken are placed close to the full basket of fruit – peaches, nectarines, a single black plum. A costly blue-and-white Chinese bowl stands next to it, full of wild strawberries. The...
Not on display
This is one of two panels in the National Gallery’s collection which were once probably part of the shutters of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. The shutters would have been attached to either side of the main panel.The Roman governor Pontius Pilate was...
Not on display
This is an early example of Degas’s cafe or cafe-concert scenes. Cafes were an important part of Parisian social life, and also provided artists with a rich source of visual spectacle, characters and ‘types’.Two men seated at a corner table examine a newspaper. The figure facing us points to an a...
Not on display
According to her legend, Saint Veronica saw Christ fall as he carried his Cross to the site of his crucifixion. Taking pity on him, she offered her linen handkerchief (called a sudarium) to wipe the sweat from his face. When he returned it, an image of his face was imprinted upon it.The legend in...
The holy family are resting from their travels in this small pastoral scene. The Virgin Mary sits on a rock, absorbed in nursing the Christ Child; a bundle and pitcher lie on the ground beside her. Saint Joseph leans on the rocky ground beyond, looking up at a small cloud above the Virgin’s head,...
An old man with a long white beard kneels in a rocky landscape. He gazes up at a rough wooden cross made from two slender branches roped together. This is Jerome, a fourth-century saint. It’s one of a number of versions of the subject made by Cima da Conegliano.The painting is arranged to focus o...
This is a nineteenth-century copy of a much larger painting made by Murillo for Seville Cathedral in 1660 (Louvre, Paris). During the French occupation of Seville, Murillo’s painting was moved to Paris, where this copy was probably produced around 1810.In his painting, Murillo explored the theme...
Not on display
Small-scale images of the Virgin Mary and Christ Child made for private worship were one of Bellini’s specialities, and there was intense demand for them. Bellini had a large workshop of assistants who worked under his supervision, producing paintings in his style. This is one of those works, whi...
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An opulently dressed man with glossy clean-shaven skin and clear blue eyes gazes directly at us with a slight smile on his lips. He wears a rose-gold coloured jacket with exotic gold tassels, covered with a gorgeous teal silk-velvet cloak lined with embroidered gold silk damask. His soft velvet c...
Not on display
A powerful hound brings life into this picture – surrounded by dead creatures, the dog pauses, head turned, alert to the call of a horn blown by the huntsman on the right. Light bounces off the belly of a hare, the flowing curve of the heron’s wing and the dog’s snout. The artist’s considerable s...
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...
Not on display
Two angels with golden wings and jewelled diadems invite us into this painting. They sit on a step, playing a lute and a violin, looking out at us. Behind them rises the Virgin Mary, seated on a stone bench. She supports the infant Christ, who stands on her lap and raises his right hand in blessi...
Not on display
The lady in the picture is shown with the attributes of Saint Agatha, the third-century Sicilian martyr who was reported to have been tortured for rejecting the marriage proposal of the Roman governor. A dish with Agatha’s severed breasts and the pliers used to remove them are depicted on the rig...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
This is the central part of a painting done in fresco (painting directly on wet plaster) on the outside wall of a house in Florence. It was flanked by two saints, whose heads – the only surviving parts – are also in the National Gallery’s collection.The grand, simple design and colours were ideal...
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Jacob de Gheyn III learned painting and engraving from his father, Jacob de Gheyn II. It’s unclear if this painting is a copy after de Gheyn III’s etching of the same subject, or if the painting was made first. A preparatory drawing (Museum of Fine Arts, Budapest) depicts Paul in reverse.In both...
Not on display
There is a swagger, even an arrogance, in the bearing of this man who meets our eye so directly and seems so at ease with himself. This is a self portrait, and going by what his contemporaries said about the artist – Jan Lievens – we shouldn’t be surprised at his self-confident air. An English am...
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The Archangel Gabriel, huge peacock-feather wings outstretched behind him, kneels in front of the Virgin Mary, his head bowed in reverence. He has arrived with the news that she will conceive a child, Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost.A small dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost, flies towards t...
David Teniers painted caricatures in imaginary landscapes, a background to his comic characters. Here, three men stand facing each other in a circle. One reaches into an inner pocket and looks with a shifty half-smile at the man in the blue coat, whose straight back hints at a military background...
Not on display
The pagan virgin Veronica took pity on Christ carrying the Cross and wiped his face with her veil, which became miraculously imprinted with his features. Saint Veronica kneels to receive the veil from Christ’s hand as he continues on his way. Although Christ is in profile, the image on the cloth...
Not on display
In this scene from the Book of Exodus, a large gathering of Israelites worship a life-size statue of a golden calf, or what is actually a bull, which represents the Egyptian bull-god Apis. They have decided to worship a different, pagan god while their leader Moses has been away on Mount Sinai co...
This, one of van Ruisdael’s most famous paintings, is a bigger version of his An Extensive Landscape with Ruins, also in the National Gallery’s collection. This sizeable picture was almost certainly painted on commission and was designed to hang in a very large room. Its size is matched by the se...
This panel is part of a series of decorations Beccafumi painted for the bedchamber of Francesco di Camillo Petrucci (b.1489), a wealthy merchant and landowner who was nephew of the ruler of the republic of Siena. The decorations were probably made to coincide with Francesco’s marriage to Caterina...
Not on display
This portrait of Caterina Giovanna Penza (or Pensa) was probably intended to hang beside a companion picture of her husband, the Venetian architect Tommaso Temanza, in which he holds the instruments of his profession (Gallerie dell' Accademia, Venice). Alessandro was the son of artist Pietro Long...
Not on display
The artist shows John the Baptist leaving the city for the wilderness, where he lived a simple life preaching about Jesus Christ. We see his dainty figure twice in this scene, which is unusual in Italian art. He appears first leaving the city gates with a small bundle of possessions, and then cli...
This is the earliest of four known portraits of John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) by his friend Thomas Lawrence, probably painted around 1790 when Lawrence was about 20. It seems to have been painted impromptu on top of an unfinished portrait of a different man, which is now starting to show thr...
Not on display
Gauguin painted this still life soon after he had arrived in Tahiti for his second and final stay in 1895. Exotic red bougainvillea and hibiscus, white and yellow frangipani, white tiare and large blue leaves burst out of a dark clay pot. They look as though they are slightly past their best, and...
Not on display
This is one of three portraits of Napoleon painted by Vernet in 1815–16 for Charles Kinnaird, 8th Lord Kinnaird of Inchture, an art collector who had been a Member of Parliament and an elected representative peer for Scotland.Napoleon declared himself Emperor of the French in 1804 and reigned unt...
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The story of Leda and the Swan is a Greek myth which exists in various versions. Leda, the wife of the king of Sparta, was loved by the god Jupiter (Zeus in Greek) who transformed himself into a swan and seduced her. As a consequence she gave birth to the twins Castor and Pollux, who were hatched...
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Saint Vincent Ferrer was a Spanish friar and missionary, and a member of the Dominican Order (the religious order founded by Saint Dominic); he was officially declared a saint in 1455. He is shown raising a finger demonstratively: he was known as a passionate preacher whose stirring sermons somet...
We seem to be looking at a scene just outside a kitchen. A maid has brought a steaming cauldron out from the kitchen stove and placed it near the open drain in the courtyard. Apparently obeying her mistress, who stands in front of her, she seems to have taken the fish out of the cooking pot; perh...
Not on display
The wind seems to chase the clouds across this painting, letting through a fitful sun to light up the tumbling water for one moment. In another it will be gone, falling instead on the sheep on the steep hillside across the valley, perhaps, or the distant windmill and church steeple beyond. The ma...
Not on display
Although the title of this picture is Interior with a Sleeping Maid and her Mistress it has become known as The Idle Servant. The young woman is slumped on a stool, head in hand, taking a snooze after the hard work involved in preparing a large meal; heavy pots and pans litter the floor. But the...
Not on display
After being exiled from Rome, the Roman general Coriolanus led the Volscian army to besiege the city. He was eventually persuaded to call off the attack by his mother, his wife and their children. In this painting, Coriolanus is shown kneeling before his family, his helmet on the ground beside hi...
Not on display
This little picture formed the right side of a diptych (a work of two parts). It was joined with central hinges to The Adoration of the Shepherds. Ercole made this for the Duchess of Ferrara, Eleonora of Aragon, when he was court painter at Ferrara. Eleonora’s personal prayer centred on the Corpu...
A woman kneels at prayer desk. We don't know who she is; she was once identified by a coat of arms – of which little now remains – on the side of her prayer desk. The painting is on the front of the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Her husband, possibly a member of the Bollis...
Not on display
This large altarpiece – one of the few in the National Gallery which is almost complete – has had an eventful life. It was commissioned in 1455 from the Florentine painter Francesco Pesellino, and is his only surviving documented work. He died in 1457 and it was finished by Fra Filippo Lippi and...
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Charles Rémond, who studied with the neo-classical landscapist Jean-Victor Bertin (1767 -1842), won the Prix de Rome for historical landscape in 1821 with The Rape of Proserpina by Pluto (Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris). During his four years at the French Academy in Rome, he not only sketched in th...
Before the 1880s Renoir painted very few nudes. But the artist’s journey to Italy in 1881, where he was absorbed by Roman sculpture and Renaissance painting, rekindled his interest and he began painting them far more often. This small and intimate picture is probably one of a series made during t...
On display elsewhere
The priest Simeon is shown receiving the infant Christ from the Virgin Mary in front of an elaborate altar. The scene is based on a passage in the Gospel of Luke (2:22–40), which describes Mary and Joseph’s visit to the temple in Jerusalem for the rituals of Mary’s purification and of Christ’s pr...
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The scene shows the violent biblical episode in which King Herod orders a massacre of all children under the age of two in an attempt to kill the newborn Christ, believing him to be a threat to his rule. This panel was once joined with the other painting by Mocetto in our collection, forming the...
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In late 1883 Van Gogh moved to the town of Nuenen in North Brabant, in the south of the Netherlands. His arrival there marked the beginning of a highly productive period that was to culminate in his first major painting, The Potato Eaters of 1885 (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam).This picture belongs...
Not on display
Seated in a palatial interior, Queen Mariana of Spain is in mourning – she wears a white wimple and the black habit of widow’s weeds. This portrait – one of Mazo’s finest works – was painted the year after the death of her husband Philip IV, King of Spain. Their son and heir, Charles, was too you...
This extraordinary painting is a unique depiction of the Adoration of the Shepherds. The Virgin Mary, Joseph and two shepherds cluster round the infant Christ; the ox and the donkey peer out of the darkness behind them. They are not, however, in a stable in Bethlehem, but gathered in front of a v...
This panel is part of the predella (lowest section) of a large altarpiece. The altarpiece’s central panel shows the Virgin and Child, and panels on either side show narrative scenes of the lives of saints.The original predella showed Christ in the centre, surrounded by the 12 apostles, his follow...
This type of image of Christ after his death – close up, showing his naked torso – originated in Byzantium (the Eastern Christian empire) but was very popular in Italy from about the thirteenth century. It was supposed to promote meditation upon Christ’s suffering and death.Christ is supported by...
This is a fragment of a wall-painting made using the fresco technique (painting directly onto wet plaster). It comes from a ’street tabernacle‘ – an outdoor religious painting – that showed the Virgin and Child surrounded by two saints.It is the head of one of the saints. We can’t identify him fr...
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This is a view of Lake Thun on the River Aare in the Berner Oberland (Bernese Highlands), Switzerland. The sunlit snowy peak in the distance has been identified as the Blümlisalp, but it also has some resemblance to the Jungfrau.Raised near Lake Geneva, Calame knew the Swiss landscape well and so...
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Although inscribed G. Courbet, there is little reason to believe this is a work by Gustave Courbet, or even by one of his collaborators. The painting was previously titled L’Orage (The Storm) because of the dark grey cloud that looms over the landscape. Despite the area of bright blue sky on the...
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The young man in this portrait leans on a stone ornament, confident and at his ease. Dressed fashionably in black, with large amounts of expensive lace on show, he has a falling collar – a relatively new trend in Holland – and a multitude of tiny buttons down the front of his coat. The black sati...
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Reynolds portrays Banastre Tarleton (1754–1833) aged 27, in action as commandant of the British Legion cavalry in the War of American Independence. Tarleton was famed for his reckless bravery and savagery, as well as for his vanity. He later became MP for Liverpool and defended the slave trade, o...
Saint Anthony of Padua, wearing the grey habit of the Franciscan Order to which he belonged, stands before the infant Christ. A white lily, Saint Anthony’s attribute, lies at Christ’s feet and the saint splays his hands in a gesture of adoration as Christ reaches out to embrace him. The Christ Ch...
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Christ lies across his mother’s lap in a position intended to recall the pietà, when his dead body was returned to her after the Crucifixion. Saint Joseph watches him sleeping and the infant John the Baptist raises his finger to his lips, asking us for silence.The Virgin holds open a Bible. The p...
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A naked young satyr, just like a little boy but with pointed ears and a curly tail, swings from a vine to pick grapes. This irregularly shaped panel was part of a musical instrument, probably a kind of harpsichord. Together with Silenus gathering Grapes it would have formed the inside of the lid...
A saint with a bald head and curly beard stands on a marble platform, his large, deep-set eyes looking straight out at us. He can be identified by the large keys which he holds: he is Saint Peter, the first pope, to whom Christ gave the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16: 18–19). This is t...
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This large pala (an altarpiece with a single, unified surface) was painted for a church in Pistoia, but sawn into pieces in the eighteenth century. It was reassembled in the National Gallery – look closely and you can see lines where the fragments were put back together.Two fourth-century saints...
A dark-haired young man turns to look at us sidelong. Who is he? Tantalising clues have been included in the painting.He wears two red-stoned rings on the little finger of his left hand, and may be holding a folded glove, which is sometimes the symbol of a love pledge. A coat of arms was once pai...
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In this painting Perugino has stressed the humility of the Virgin Mary, positioning her directly in a grassy meadow as she kneels before the infant Christ, a chubby baby. He is supported by an angel who looks towards Mary, sharing in her knowledge of his divinity.This was the central panel of the...
This small canvas mounted on panel shows two imaginary portraits of figures from Ancient Greece. The main figure, whose bearded face is shown in profile, is the lyric poet Pindar (518–438 BC). Behind him, and in shadow, is Ictinus, the architect of the Parthenon, who lived in the mid-fifth centur...
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This painting is the second of a pair that depicts episodes from the Book of Exodus, which describes how Moses rescued the Israelites from slavery in Egypt and accompanied them into the promised land of Canaan.Moses had left the Israelites for 40 days and nights, climbing Mount Sinai to receive t...
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This painting is one of a series of panels that decorated the bedchamber of the Borgherini palace in Florence. Together, they tell the life of Joseph from the Old Testament (Genesis 43).Joseph, who had been sold into slavery in Egypt as a boy by his half-brothers, foretold a famine from a dream P...
This view was one of several pictures that Corot painted in May 1871, when he was staying with his friend Alfred Robaut in Douai. While many of the pictures are of specific sites, this particular view has not been identified and was probably painted in the studio.The handling, particularly of the...
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A woman, her face intent, leans towards an old man – a cobbler. She pokes her finger vigorously into a worn shoe; its pair lies on the ground at her feet. He takes the event in his stride with a little smile, holding on to the shoe he’s been working on while reaching for hers, with one of his too...
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In this almost life-sized portrait, an elegantly dressed lady holds a bunch of columbines. She is shown in profile, as was conventional for formal aristocratic portraits. It’s an unusual work: it’s painted in on canvas rather than wooden boards, the usual support for Renaissance paintings. It’s a...
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Lotto wrote in his account book that he gave a painting on 23 September 1547 to ‘Giovanni della Volta, my landlord’. He describes it as ‘a painting with his portrait from life and that of his wife with two children, altogether comprising four figures’. The portrait may have been painted in lieu o...
On display elsewhere
This picture shows the view across Moulin Huet Bay on Guernsey. Renoir visited the island for six weeks in 1883, and this is one of a group of paintings he produced during his stay. He was starting to break away from some of the techniques of the Impressionist approach to landscape painting, whic...
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During the summer of 1869, Monet and Renoir painted together at La Grenouillère, a slightly raffish resort on the river Seine some 12 kilometres west of Paris. It had become a popular weekend retreat from the city during the 1860s.Monet made several oil sketches at the resort, including this pict...
This is an early work by Fragonard, which was presented to Louis XV at Versailles in 1753. It illustrates an episode from the classical story of Cupid and Psyche, retold in a book by Jean de La Fontaine. Having fallen in love with Psyche, Cupid only visited her at night, forbidding her to look at...
This is one of two panels, almost mirror images of each other, that flank either side of the central and uppermost panel of the large altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, Florence.Gathered together against a completely gold backdrop representing heaven are groups of angelic beings...
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At the request of Martha and Mary, Jesus visited the grave of their brother Lazarus and raised him from the dead (John 11:1–44). Sebastiano shows Christ standing with one hand raised to invoke the power of God and the other pointing to Lazarus, who is seated on the edge of his stone tomb.Christ s...
The view is of Holt Bridge, spanning the River Dee, at the point where the river serves as a border between Wales and England. It was painted as a pair with The Valley of the Dee with Chester in the Distance, also in the National Gallery. They are landscapes painted in the spirit of the French ne...
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This small painting is an incomplete copy of a panel titled The Perfect Accord (L’Accord parfait), which Watteau probably painted between 1717 and 1719, and is now in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art. This pastoral scene of a couple strolling in the countryside as other peop...
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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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A ruinous chapel-like building stands in a rocky landscape. The Virgin Mary sits on the remains of a wall and presents the Christ Child to the Three Kings, who, together with their retinue, are gathered around her to present their gifts. The Gospel of Matthew tells the story of the Adoration of t...
The Christ Child lies in the Virgin Mary’s arms and holds a small bird to his lips. This tender image was intended to show the bond between Christ and his mother.Christ’s pose is found in paintings of the Virgin adoring the Child that were produced by Lippi and his workshop, such as the so-called...
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Barely a third of van Goyen’s painting of life on the ice in seventeenth-century Dordrecht shows people; the rest is sky. But he still manages to pack the picture full of incident and humour. Some people squeeze into horse-drawn sledges, while others zoom across the ice or stand and chat. Some pl...
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Like its pair Holt Bridge on the River Dee, which is also in the National Gallery, this is a view of the valley where England and Wales meet. It is probably the ‘View near Chester’ that Wilson exhibited at the Society of Artists in 1761. It was most likely painted downstream from the village of H...
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The Virgin Mary, the smiling Christ Child on her lap, sits under a fanciful framework of architecture, sculpture and metalwork which forms the back and canopy for her throne. Stone columns rest on green cushions, which seem to be carved and coloured in a deceptive imitation of reality. Stone bran...
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A young man cradles a bottle, presumably full of wine, and drinks from a smooth-sided glass. Vine leaves, a symbol traditionally associated with Bacchus, the mischievous god of wine, garland his head. He looks at us with a conspiratorial gaze, and though he might appear to be encouraging us to jo...
The composition derives from a print of 1624 by Paulus Pontius, made after a portrait of the same date by Rubens of Prince Vladislav Sigismond, later King of Poland. We can tell that the artist has used the print as a source because some of the details – as on the hilt of the sword – are slightly...
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The sitter – whom Rembrandt did not name – has an almost regal poise. She looks down on us from a slight height, her right hand resting on what must be part of the arm of a chair, but which has the air of a sceptre. She wears expensive pearl earrings and jewellery and what seems to be a fur mantl...
Van Gogh painted several versions of A Wheatfield, with Cypresses during the summer of 1889, while he was a patient in the psychiatric hospital of Saint-Paul de Mausole, in the village of St-Rémy in the south of France. A first version, which he described as a study, was painted on site in late J...
Monet was in his early twenties when he painted this view across the breakwaters to the headland of La Hève, near Sainte-Adresse on the Normandy coast. He knew the area well, as he had spent his childhood in nearby Le Havre. The picture was probably made on the spot as a study for a larger studio...
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Charity is one of the theological virtues, together with Faith and Hope. From the sixteenth century onwards, Charity was commonly depicted as a mother suckling her infants. Here, one of the children looks at us and draws our attention to his mother’s example. Her breast is still exposed from feed...
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The Virgin and Child are enthroned in a walled garden with three saints. Saint Mary Magdalene holds her pot of oil, while the richly dressed Saint Barbara has a tower – her attribute, or emblem – in her headdress. The wheel on which Saint Catherine was tortured is visible behind her, and Christ p...
This small picture shows two episodes from the life of Saint Jerome. At the front, the saint sits under a lean-to shelter and removes a large thorn from a lion’s paw. In gratitude the lion remained with him in the wilderness and after he went back to monastic life. On a rocky platform behind, the...
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A young officer dictates a letter to another soldier. Meanwhile their comrade – in the impressive blue jerkin – stares directly out of the painting. He’s a messenger, waiting to deliver the letter. His faintly amused expression and the way he catches our eye creates a conspiratorial air: there’s...
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Around 200 of Cezanne’s works depict male and female nude bathers, either singly or in groups, in a landscape. This large painting is one of three pictures of female bathers that Cezanne worked on during the final decade of his life. They represent the culmination of his lifelong investigation of...
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According to the Gospel of John, Mary Magdalene wept when she saw that the tomb in which Christ had been buried was empty. A man appeared and asked her why she was crying – she eventually recognised him as Christ, and reached out to touch him. He stopped her: ‘Touch me not; for I am not yet ascen...
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In this fantastical landscape, the holy family – the Virgin Mary, Joseph and Christ – pause on their journey beside a derelict Roman temple. Among crumbling columns and fragmented archways, niches with antique statues and carved reliefs remain intact. The Virgin gives Christ some figs as a symbol...
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...
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A young woman leans on the hilt of a sword and there is what appears to be a fragment of a wheel next to her shoulder. She is probably Saint Catherine of Alexandria, the fourth-century martyr who was tortured by being bound to a wheel studded with iron spikes and later beheaded.We don’t know who...
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This is the interior of a brothel. On the left, three men drink with the women who work there, whose skirts are hoisted up to show their legs. On the right, we see a group of entertainers: a boy does a headstand on a stool; a small dog has perhaps already jumped through the hoop on the floor. An...
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This is a preparatory sketch for one of a series of eight frescoes that Giordano painted on the walls just below the dome of the church of San Antonio de los Alemanes in Madrid. The frescoes depict miracles performed by Saint Anthony, and this sketch represents one of the stranger episodes in his...
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A cold, grey light creeps through an open window into a room that is itself very old – no glass in the window, a heavy wooden shutter, an open fire with an earthenware pot beside it. The light falls onto an old man. He sits facing into the room, his hands clasped, his head lowered, his face almos...
A man sits in a luxuriously furnished room, painting a picture. This is Saint Luke, patron saint of painters and physicians. Many of the objects around him refer to these professions, and his symbol, the ox, lies at his side.The picture is full of information on how Renaissance painters worked. S...
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At breakfast, an elegantly dressed woman watches a little girl dip a biscuit into milky coffee. The girl wears paper curlers in her hair. Coffee and chocolate were exclusive and costly beverages in the eighteenth century; the porcelain and silverware they use were no less luxurious.As well as cap...
The Virgin Mary is crowned by Christ, her son, after her ascension to heaven. The episode was very popular in Florentine painting, where it formed the central panel of polyptychs (multi-panelled altarpieces), usually flanked by images of saints. It has been suggested that two panels showing two s...
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Willem van Mieris belonged to a group of Dutch artists based in Leiden who are known as the Fijnschilders (‘fine painters’) because of their attention to accurate, realistic detail and their smooth technique. They aimed to show each object, each texture so authentically that they would seem tangi...
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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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This painting has been darkened by varnish, making the woods in the foreground so murky and the distant landscape so misty that the reflection created by trees in the water seems startlingly bright. The light catching the terrified stag and hind running from the hounds seems silvery – almost like...
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The Virgin Mary breastfeeds the infant Christ in a walled garden surrounded by flowers. God the Father, a small figure radiating light, appears in the sky above. The image of the Virgin and Christ Child in a garden was derived from the poetic imagery of the Song of Solomon, a book of the Old Test...
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Saint Jerome kneels in penitence in the wilderness, where he spent four years living as a hermit. He has discarded his red cardinal’s robes and hat, revealing his colossal, muscular body. The strong light emphasises the athleticism of his physique, casting his pensive face into shadow. He touches...
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This is one of only two surviving images of the Virgin and Child by Gentile Bellini. Its large size suggests that it was probably the central panel of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece). It has been connected with the apparently now-lost altarpiece that we know Gentile made for the Scu...
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A bearded saint in rich red and blue robes holds an open book. His halo, now rather worn, was burnished gold incised with decorative patterns; the edges and lining of his cloak, his sleeves and his neckline glimmer with touches of gold. His book with its fluttering pages has a dark green binding...
An old man writes by the glow of a candle; it appears to be the only source of light in the darkened room. A collection of framed prints and drawings crowded on the wall is barely visible. Wide cracks caused by paint shrinkage run across the canvas, revealing the white ground and making the detai...
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This impressively bearded figure is a fourth-century saint, Jerome, one of the Fathers of the Christian Church. He holds several books – symbolising his extensive writings, including the first official translation of the Bible into Latin – and a stone.A red hat held on by a string hangs down his...
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A man sits on a muscular horse, towering above a servant who passes him a helmet to complete his suit of armour. A Latin inscription on the tablet hanging from a tree identifies him as ‘King of Great Britain’ – this is Charles I, surveying his kingdom. Anthony van Dyck painted several portraits o...
In this vast canvas Orazio Gentileschi depicts the Old Testament story of the Finding of Moses (Exodus 2:2-10). When Pharaoh decreed that all newborn sons of Hebrews should be killed, the infant Moses was placed by his mother in a basket and hidden in bulrushes to ensure his safety.Here, nine ele...
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This is thought to be one of Boccaccino’s earliest known works. It is an altarpiece painted for the choir screen of the church of S. Domenico in Cremona.Christ carries the Cross escorted by three soldiers, two of whom are pulling the rope around his neck. The procession winds up the hill, on top...
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This painting was most likely commissioned to commemorate the alliance of the Milbanke and Melbourne families through marriage in April 1769. The married woman is Elizabeth Milbanke (seated in a carriage on the left) and her husband is Peniston Lamb, 1st Lord Melbourne, mounted on a chestnut hors...
Against a deep red background, the Archduke Albert of Austria turns towards us with a direct but gentle gaze. His left hand is on the pommel of his sword but his pose is relaxed and unintimidating. His right arm is turned towards us, showing off the delicate pattern of his sleeve and the lace ruf...
This is the first of a series of paintings by David Teniers in which the four seasons are given human form. Here, Spring is personified as a young gardener with a bushy beard, heaving a heavy pot containing a sapling. His step is jaunty and he has a gleam in his eye. His jacket looks new, and his...
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At the age of 12 Jesus went with his parents to Jerusalem for the Passover. On their return they found he was not with them, and after searching they discovered him in the Temple involved in a learned debate with the Jewish scribes (Luke 2: 41–51). In this dramatic depiction of this story, the yo...
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Aurelia Ciommi was a favourite model for Mancini in Rome, posing for some 25 paintings. Her nickname was La Cornacchia (The Crow), expressive of her sharp and animated features. Here, she seems to reveal for our delectation an austere and elegant Renaissance portrait bust of a woman in white marb...
On display elsewhere
Taking careful steps, a woman comes towards us, holding what at first glance looks like a deep circular tray. She is the Vestal Virgin Tuccia and the object she carries is, in fact, a sieve.Vestal Virgins maintained the fire in the temple of the chaste goddess Vesta in Rome. Their virginity was c...
Isack van Ostade shows us a farmyard with a forsaken air, tranquil and atmospheric. Under an ancient oak tree a patch of sunlight picks out a wooden pen, a shelf above it holding an earthenware pot and a sieve. Behind them, a cart wheel and a basket lie forgotten in an old shed – its withering th...
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In this painting, Saint Ambrose (about 340–398), Bishop of Milan, stops the Emperor Theodosius (about 346–395) and his retinue from entering the city’s cathedral. This was a punishment for Theodosius‘ massacre of the people of Thessalonica, who had murdered his general, Butheric.This story was re...
Christ stands at the centre of this small square panel. The moment shown is the Transfiguration, when Jesus ascended a mountain and became filled with heavenly light, shown here by the golden striations (stripes) on his robes. Suddenly the Old Testament prophets Moses (on his left) and Elijah (on...
This young saint holding a banner and a model fortress was once thought to be Saint George, as a red cross on a white background is the flag associated with him. However it is more likely that he is Terentius, the patron saint of Pesaro. He stands high on a parapet, set against a great expanse of...
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One of the most famous paintings in the National Gallery, Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne illustrates a story told by the classical authors Ovid and Catullus. The Cretan princess Ariadne has been abandoned on the Greek island of Naxos by Theseus, whose ship sails away in the distance. Bacchus, god o...
This is an early, small-scale copy of one of the world’s most famous paintings, Rembrandt’s The Night Watch of 1642 (Rijksmuseum, Amsterdam). Rembrandt’s commission was to paint a huge group portrait of musketeers under the command of Captain Frans Banning Cocq. At the time, companies of volunte...
On display elsewhere
Saint Hubert kneels in prayer in front of a vision of Christ upon the Cross, which has miraculously appeared between the antlers of a stag. Hubert was a courtier in Metz, a city in the eastern Frankish Kingdom, and an enthusiastic hunter. He had been out with his dogs in the forest of Ardennes wh...
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The Dominican friar and Inquisitor Pietro da Verona was killed in a wood by perceived heretics on 6 April 1252. Here he reaches towards a burst of heavenly light, accepting his murder for the cause of Christ. Cherubs prepare to descend from the clouds with Pietro’s martyr’s palm, while in the woo...
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In this busy but peaceful scene Abraham Storck shows an idealised version of life on a Dutch river in the seventeenth century, but his painting of the vessels is detailed and accurate. The rising sun is hidden behind the sails of the man-of-war (the great warship coming in from the sea) and the g...
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Shepherds kneel and stand in order to praise the baby Jesus, watched by Joseph and the Virgin Mary. The stone archway frames an earlier episode: the same shepherds fall over in surprise as an angel appears in the clouds to announce Christ’s birth to them. Following an old tradition in painting, P...
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...
The Rape of the Sabines is one of a series of paintings that show scenes from ancient Roman history. They were probably intended to be inserted into wall panelling. Three other pictures in the series are in the National Gallery’s collection: The Attack on Cartagena,The Continence of Scipio and Th...
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A woman and five children are crammed into a small space. It is hard to tell where they are, or what their relationships to one another are; their individual facial expressions, which all feel unconnected, seem to be the main focus.The bright colours of the children’s clothes stand out against a...
Delacroix painted this portrait of fellow artist, Louis-Auguste Schwiter (1805–1899), in the early years of their lifelong friendship. Not only was this Delacroix’s first full-length portrait, but it also reveals the close attention he paid to work by British artists such as Thomas Gainsborough (...
Meticulously painted insects, flowers and berries are laid out on a plain creamy white surface without any overlap. Each specimen is carefully observed and identifiable. All of this might give us the idea that we are looking at a scientific illustration, but these insects appear very much alive:...
This small arched painting shows the Virgin Mary and Christ Child seated in a landscape. Christ, balanced on the Virgin’s knee, reaches out to take something – probably a flower – that is being offered to him by an angel.The composition is a free version of The Virgin and Child with an Angel (Upt...
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The Virgin and Child are accompanied by the young Saint John the Baptist and a kneeling woman, who cannot be clearly identified. She holds the infant Christ in her arms and gazes at him in adoration.It is not clear which, if any, New Testament episode is shown here. The shepherd and herdsman in t...
We don’t know their names, but this was undoubtedly a wealthy, fashion-conscious family, almost certainly from Antwerp where the artist, Gonzales Coques, was based. Group portraits such as this were popular among the city elite and artists incorporated gestures, looks and activities to bring the...
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This half-length figure of a saint comes from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Stephen, Christianity’s first martyr.Potato-like rocks – representing...
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The story of the honest woodsman – the subject of Rosa’s painting – is taken from Aesop’s Fables, a collection of moral tales from ancient Greece. In the story, the god Mercury takes pity on a woodsman who has accidentally dropped his axe into a river. He retrieves two axes from the water, one go...
On display elsewhere
Staring straight at us while nonchalantly holding a cigarette is the Hungarian-born art dealer Joseph Brummer (1883‒1947), who had opened his gallery in Paris that same year. Brummer dealt in African works of art and was one of Rousseau’s most devout patrons. Seated in a wicker chair covered in r...
The Virgin Mary stands barefoot on a narrow patch of grass, dangerously close to the edge of a rocky slope, with an angel on either side. As our gaze moves upwards, we are calmed by the Christ Child sleeping peacefully in his mother’s arms.Circular paintings, known as tondi, were hugely popular i...
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The Virgin sits outdoors on a stone parapet, holding the naked Christ Child on her knee. Saint Joseph looks down thoughtfully at the baby’s tiny foot in his hand. The infant Christ clings on to Joseph’s staff and turns to regard us over his shoulder, apparently raising his hand to bless Joseph....
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This panel shows the Dominican Blessed, both tertiaries (those who lived in general society rather than a convent, but were allied to the Dominican Order) and friars. They're dressed in their distinctive black and white habits, neatly lined up in rows.The Blessed were holy figures belonging to th...
Saint John the Evangelist is seated on a stone ledge. He holds a very fine quill in his right hand, while the other rests on a blank scroll which curls over his knee. He turns to look up over his shoulder towards a heavenly light, as if ready to take dictation from on high. Saint John was one of...
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The design of this tender image of the Virgin Mary with the Christ Child and an angel is derived from a picture by Fra Filippo Lippi, the Florentine painter and monk. It was a popular composition in Florence and there are numerous versions of it by different artists. The semi-transparent veil wit...
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Two elegantly curved birch trees frame this harmoniously composed painting. A herdsman lazily contemplates three large oxen from behind a fence, their stillness contrasted with the large rolling clouds above.Schweickhardt trained in The Hague, Holland, before settling in England; he moved to Lond...
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All seems calm in the foreground of this picture – Saint Joseph leads a placid (and delightfully hairy) donkey on which the Virgin Mary sits feeding the Christ Child. But look closer and the atmosphere changes. This is a family fleeing a massacre: the Massacre of the Innocents. When King Herod le...
Not on display
This panel and The Massacre of the Innocents once formed a single image, with this scene on the right. It was cut into two before entering the National Gallery’s collection. The bearded man wearing a crown is King Herod – he is overseeing the massacre of infants that he had ordered in an attempt...
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There is a rough grandeur in Berchem’s picture. The oxen are fine animals, well muscled and rich in colour. The man is strong, windswept and sunburnt. His massive arms labour at the primitive plough; his shirt is shabby, but gleams white and clean in the sun. He leans back in a huge effort to sho...
The picture of a hunt, with aristocratic riders wielding spears and the stag surrounded by hounds all ready for the kill, might not be to everyone’s taste today. But the speed and vitality of the animals and the huntsman blowing the horn – the stag itself moving with such energy that it still jus...
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Saint Catherine of Alexandria sits at a table reading a book. On either side of her are two angels: one holds Catherine’s traditional attribute of the spiked wheel on which she was tortured for her Christian faith, the other holds a martyr’s palm.The picture is a later version of a painting by Be...
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Of the small panels in the National Gallery’s collection related to Seurat’s Bathers at Asnières, this oil sketch on wood is perhaps the one most closely connected with the final painting. Unlike other sketches, which concentrate on atmospheric effects or the landscape, Seurat’s focus here is alm...
On display elsewhere
This is one of four paintings Seurat produced in 1890 near the town of Gravelines, a small port on the northern French coast between Calais and Dunkirk. Positioned on the sand dunes of Petit-Fort-Philippe, we see the shore in the morning light after the receding tide has left a broad expanse of o...
It seems a service is about to begin in this chapel: the two candles on the altar are being lit. The altar itself is adorned with a painted altarpiece, on which the holy family – Saint Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child – are just visible, painted loosely in blue and grey. An elaborate...
Not on display
In around 1220, Saint Francis of Assisi was living in Gubbio, Umbria. When a ferocious wolf began attacking livestock and people, Francis rebuked it, and tamed the animal by making the sign of the cross. He promised that, if it stopped terrorising the city, it would be forgiven and cared for. The...
Prince Charles Louis, Count Palatine, was the second son of Frederick V, Elector Palatine and briefly King of Bohemia. His elder brother Henry had died young, and although Charles Louis was now heir to the Palatinate, his father had been deposed and the family were living in exile in the Netherla...
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This painting combines a view of Rome, on the left, with an imaginary ruin, on the right. The distant view is of the sixteenth-century church of Santa Trinità de' Monti, where Claude would be buried. Beside this is the convent of the Sacro Cuore. These buildings are now at the top of the Spanish...
A young woman wearing a blue silk cape is shown half-length looking out of a stone window. Her fashionably powdered hairstyle was known as the ‘tête de mouton’ (’sheep’s head') and was popular in France in the 1750s. She rests her left arm on a piece of light beige cloth draped over the stone led...
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Holding a quill in his right hand, the man in this portrait has turned his head towards us, creating the feeling that we have just interrupted his work. He gives us a questioning look, as if he is waiting for an explanation for the interruption. The sitter is Jean de la Chambre (1605/6–1668), a d...
The enchantress Armida and her bewitched lover, Rinaldo, a Christian knight, recline in a beautiful landscape, surrounded by attendant cupids. The scene shows a tender moment between the couple before Rinaldo’s comrades, whose helmets are visible behind the bush on the left, disturb their idyll a...
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Christ’s lifeless body lies at the foot of the Cross, supported by the Virgin Mary; she gazes towards heaven in deep sorrow. Mary Magdalene clings to Christ’s left arm, unable to contain her grief, and Saint John the Evangelist buries his face in his red drapery. Two other men are still crucified...
We don’t know who the sitter in this portrait is, but Adriaen van der Werff has portrayed him as a man of leisure and a lover of antiquities. He is pictured outside in his garden, wearing a luxurious quilted silk robe and white cravat. He gazes out at us, his eyes thoughtful and intelligent thoug...
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A solemn woman wearing a soft cap of dense white fur sits with a red squirrel in her lap and a glossy-feathered starling at her shoulder. Common pets in the fifteenth-century, these animals also have a symbolic meaning and serve as clues to the sitter’s identity. She is thought to be Anne Lovell,...
A river runs from the left edge of this painting to the bottom right corner. A bank rises gently towards the right. A lone figure dressed in a red shawl and bright yellow hat stands motionless under the leaning tree. In the centre a group of houses with steep gabled roofs stands amid a further gr...
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The mythological story of the musical competition between the god Apollo and the satyr Marsyas is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Marsyas challenged Apollo to a music contest, which the god won. To punish him for his presumption, Apollo skinned him alive.This is one of ten frescoes by Domenichino a...
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Two sleeping nymphs have been discovered by a pair of satyrs (mythological woodland creatures who were half human and half goat). The satyrs sneak forwards, intent on shocking the nymphs awake; their tanned complexions and rugged looks contrast with the nymphs' smooth, pale skin. In the landscape...
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This painting places us in a busy Parisian street close to six principal figures who fill the foreground. A milling crowd behind them almost completely blocks out the boulevard beyond. The top quarter of the picture is mostly filled by a canopy of at least a dozen umbrellas.Painted in two stages,...
Dressed in a sumptuous black velvet doublet and satin robe trimmed with ermine, the man in this portrait looks out to his right with a steady, impassive gaze. Seated in front of an architectural column against a backdrop of shimmering green drapery, the full-length format of this portrait conveys...
Tied to a column, Christ has collapsed to the floor. His limp body, tilted head and pained expression show his exhaustion and suffering. Velázquez shows the moment after the Flagellation, when Christ was flogged by Roman soldiers – we can see the sticks and whip they used lying in the foreground....
We see the skyline of Dordrecht, identifiable by the grey bulk of the Grote Kerk (Great Church) and the outlines of two of its watergates. The crenellations of the Vuilpoort (demolished in 1864) are in the centre, the tower of the Groothoofdspoort (which still survives) is on the right.The emphas...
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This is one of Moroni’s most famous paintings. The dress and the style of the painting suggest that he made it late in his career, around 1570.The cloth merchant or tailor looks up at us, interrupted from his work. His cream and red costume contrasts with the black fabric marked with chalk lines...
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This painting was the left half of a decorative panel commissioned by Jean Schopfer, a writer who published under the pen name Claude Anet. In 1935, over 30 years after its completion, Vuillard cut the panel into two and reworked it; the other half, La Terrasse at Vasouy, The Lunch, is also in th...
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A saint in a red dalmatic (a long, wide-sleeved tunic) collapses to the ground as a crowd throw stones at him. This is the death of Saint Stephen, the first Christian martyr. Stephen was a deacon in the early Church and, according to the Acts of the Apostles, enraged the authorities in Jerusalem...
The Marquis Giorgio Capranica del Grillo (1849–1922) was a courtier to the Italian Queen Mother, Margherita, a painter in his own right, and a benevolent patron to Mancini. The portrait, one of Mancini’s most ambitious, was painted in Rome in 1889 and intended for the Paris Universal Exhibition t...
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Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson and Delilah portrays a tragedy of love and betrayal. Delilah, Samson’s lover, has been bribed to discover the secret of Samson’s supernatural strength. Rubens shows the moment when Delilah tells an accomplice to cut his hair, leaving him powerless. Outside, soldiers wai...
The sun catches the face of a sheep lying in the shade of a tree. Light filters down through the leaves on to its thick curly fleece, painted in exquisite detail by Karel Dujardin.Dujardin has added a quirkiness to his figures, giving them real humanity. The herdswoman has found the tedious busin...
A bearded man gazes out intently from this painting. We don't know who the sitter is, but the cut of his beard and the fashion of his hat and clothes suggest a date towards 1530. The fact that both his doublet and gown are lined with fur probably indicates that the portrait was painted during the...
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David Teniers seldom painted identifiable buildings, but in this case the large house partially hidden by trees has been identified as Het Sterckshof near Antwerp. It belonged to Jacob Edelheer, who was city secretary as well as a collector of artworks and scientific instruments.The figures on th...
Time and inexpert hands have not been kind to this picture. White flowers, difficult to identify with certainty, and heavy roses loom out of the darkness. A scarlet poppy turns its back to display ragged grey sepals.The flowers are painted with skill, but the murky background has been considerabl...
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Cunera van der Cock married the artist Frans van Mieris about a year before he painted this portrait of her. About 120 of his pictures still exist, but although Cunera appears in about a quarter of them, very few are actual portraits of her. The rest are genre paintings in which she is playing a...
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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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This painting depicts a critical moment in classical mythology. The man on the left with his back to us is Paris, who had been raised as a shepherd but was actually a prince of Troy. He has been asked to judge a beauty contest between the goddesses Venus, Juno and Minerva, and to award a golden a...
The Virgin, holding the infant Christ, sits on a marble throne with a luxurious material stretched across it – a cloth of honour, something often hung behind medieval royalty. Two saints stand with them, and particular symbols tell us who they are. On the Virgin’s right is Saint Peter, a key peep...
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A pale, clean-shaven young man, naked but for a loincloth, is bound to a tree. He gazes towards heaven, seemingly unaffected by the four arrows which pierce his upper body. This is Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity and was executed for his faith.This altarpie...
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The ruins of this castle seem to have been absorbed by the landscape. Aelbert Cuyp has employed the same palette of colours and the same camouflage patterns to depict the crumbling walls as he used for the autumnal woods and the hillside behind. The reflections in the still waters of the lake add...
Using an animal skin, two laughing satyrs with pointed ears and short tails lift a plump, drunken man to pick the grapes that dangle above him. To the right a young satyr clambers up a vine and reaches out for another bunch. The man is Silenus, teacher and companion of Bacchus, the classical god...
Monsieur de Norvins had recently been appointed Chief of Police in Rome when Ingres painted his portrait in 1811. He is presented as a reserved, even forbidding, figure who closely scrutinises us as we look at him. Norvins’ loyalty to Napoleon is indicated by the gesture of placing his left hand...
Eva Gonzalès (1849–1883), Manet’s only formal pupil, was a successful artist and a regular exhibitor at the Salon. This portrait was probably started in February 1869 and involved numerous sittings. It was finally finished in March 1870 and shown at the Salon the same year.Manet had painted other...
This angel was part of an elaborate painted and sculpted altarpiece made for the church for San Francesco Grande in Milan. The main image of the altarpiece was Leonardo da Vinci’s ‘The Virgin of the Rocks’, also in the National Gallery’s collection.This angel – playing a vielle, a type of fiddle...
This painting depicts a legendary moment recounted by the ancient Greek historians Herodotus and Plutarch: Solon, an Athenian philosopher and lawmaker, disputes with Croesus, King of Lydia, on the subject of happiness.We see Solon approach Croesus as he passes through the ruler’s palace at Sardis...
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Elegant couples rest after the hunt in an idyllic sunlit landscape, reflecting the traditional association of hunting and courtship. The gushing fountain, the woman holding flowers and the flirtation between the man holding a falcon and his companion add to the light-hearted romantic atmosphere....
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This was the first painting by Friedrich, one of the principal figures of German Romantic art, to enter a British public collection when it was purchased by the National Gallery in 1987. A man, having cast aside his crutches, lies against a large boulder in a snowy landscape as he prays in front...
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Maria Maddalena Balletti, known as Manon Balletti, was the daughter of Antonio Giuseppe Balletti, an actor in the Comédie Italienne. Her brother Stefano, also an actor, was friends with the Venetian adventurer and author Giacomo Casanova, who declared his love for Manon. She broke off her existin...
A sandy path runs down the middle of a rocky barren ravine. This view, with its high horizon and full-frontal close-up depiction of the path and rocks, is particularly original. The location is probably that of Les Sables du Jean-de-Paris, a sandy hillside topped with boulders and trees within th...
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This half-length portrait is on paper later attached to an oak panel. A young man wearing a slight, almost boyish moustache looks towards the viewer, his determined expression emphasised by his pose, with his right hand raised to his chest and his left resting on his hip. He is dressed in a black...
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On the night before his crucifixion, Christ went to the Garden of Gethsemane at the foot of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem. He said his prayers; his disciples Peter, John and James fell asleep. Christ asked God, if possible, to spare him the destiny that awaited him. Eventually Christ accepted...
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This devotional painting makes us feel as if we are in the same room as the Virgin Mary, who appears almost life-size, praying in quiet devotion. The background is so plain and dark that nothing distracts us from her bowed head framed by a white headdress or her hands pressed gently together. Bri...
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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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In this little picture Raphael depicts the moment when the Christ Child takes a carnation, traditionally symbolic of divine love and the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion), from his cousin John the Baptist’s hand. The space between the children’s hands is the centre of the careful geometr...
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This seemingly straightforward portrait was one of the National Gallery’s most controversial purchases of the nineteenth century. Bought in 1845 as ‘the Gallery’s first Holbein’, its authenticity was quickly cast into doubt. Recent dendrochronological analysis of the panel – a method of determini...
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The Intervention of the Sabine Women is one of a series of paintings that show scenes from ancient Roman history. They were probably intended to be inserted into wall panelling. Three other pictures in the series are in the National Gallery’s collection: The Attack on Cartagena, The Continence of...
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Four bloody arrows pierce Saint Sebastian’s seemingly lifeless body. One has stabbed through his leg, and a stream of blood seems to enter our space from its tip. The saint was a Roman centurion who converted to Christianity and, in punishment, the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered Sebastian’s fel...
In this picture, Willem van de Velde the Younger displays his skills as an exceptionally gifted painter of ships. Each vessel here is accurately depicted. An English ketch in the foreground flies the flag of Saint George, and a weyschuit (a small open boat) moves almost alongside it. To the left,...
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A saint dressed in an animal skin stands on a marble plinth, holding a cross and a scroll. This is John the Baptist, the biblical hermit saint.John was usually shown in a camel-hair shirt with long hair and a beard, alluding to the years he spent in the desert, punishing his body with uncomfortab...
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Crivelli painted this unusual image of the Virgin standing alone with no Christ Child for the church of San Francesco, Pergola, a little town in the north of the Italian Marche. The Virgin is depicted in a particular role, surrounded by symbols and texts that express the idea that she was conceiv...
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In seventeenth-century Holland city dwellers displayed scenes of peasant life on the walls of their homes. They enjoyed idealised pastoral scenes or, in this case, the fun of looking at the various people and activities they may have seen on visits to the country.Jan Lingelbach was increasingly i...
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A great throng of retainers and animals accompany the Three Kings to pay homage to the infant Christ (Matthew 2: 2–12). Reclining among angels in the heavens, God the Father blesses all those below. The Virgin Mary holds the Christ Child, who blesses the eldest king prostrated before him and rece...
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This scene is set in heaven, and Rottenhammer has managed to convey its vast scale even in this small space: rows of angels, saints and prophets fill every inch of the painting, and the more distant figures are painted very faintly to create a feeling of expansiveness.At the top, surrounded by a...
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The pond which takes up the foreground probably lies in the grounds of the tall building glimpsed at the extreme right, perhaps a mill or château. Beyond an open gate lies an unseen road or lane bordered by a hedge, and further in the distance stands a higher bank of trees. At the left, the woman...
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A number of grandly costumed figures are seen beside a fountain in an imaginary garden on the edge of a forest. Two men on horseback coming from the left are approaching a group of women standing in the centre but moved slightly to background. On the right, three other women and a dog are seen in...
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The Virgin with the Christ Child on her lap is flanked by two saints. On the left is an old bearded man, possibly Saint Jerome; he wears a ragged white robe tied around his waist with a belt made of a twisted olive branch. On the right is a younger man in the grey habit of an observant Franciscan...
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Christ Carrying the Cross is a painting dating from the beginning of Lo Spagna’s professional maturity as an artist. Bent under the weight of the large wooden cross, Christ looks towards the viewer as he makes his way along the road to Calvary. Behind him, a raised area of ground falls away to r...
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During the 1870s when he was living at Argenteuil, on the outskirts of Paris, Monet made several trips back to Le Havre, where he had grown up. The city was a thriving commercial and industrial centre, and France’s most important transatlantic port, with a series of harbours and busy docks. For...
The Swiss artist Jean-Etienne Liotard most likely produced this portrait in pastel on vellum or parchment while he was living in Constantinople from 1738 to 1742. He travelled widely across Europe, producing pastels and chalk drawings of European nobles and diplomats who are often in Eastern cost...
Two men concentrate on a game of tric-trac, a form of backgammon, while a woman chalks the score on the side of the board. Meanwhile one man sits smoking, lost in his thoughts, while another lights a pipe from a bowl of embers. None of them is speaking and nor do they look at one another; all the...
A man kneels in prayer, his patron saint, Peter – identifiable by the key he holds – standing behind him. This panel was once the left wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts); the right wing, which shows his wife, is also in the National Gallery’s collection. These figures and the missing...
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This panel once formed the left shutter of an altarpiece in the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in north-west Germany. The right-hand shutter is also in the National Gallery’s collection.This painting shows, from left to right, Saints Gregory, Maurice and Augustine. The gilded clasp that fastens Sa...
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This portrait was purchased in 1855 from the Capello family, and is said to represent Pellegrina Morosini, who was from one of the oldest and most important families of sixteenth-century Venice. Pellegrina married Bartolomeo Capello in 1544 and had two children, Bianca and Vettor. She died some t...
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During the Franco-Prussian War in the winter of 1870–71, Boudin left Paris to avoid the fighting. But unlike his friend Monet, who went to England, he based himself in Brussels. He was no doubt encouraged by his art dealer telling him there was a ready market for his marine scenes in Belgium.Whil...
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We look down from a height on a rocky outcrop of ground surrounded by trees, their reflection caught in the tranquil stream drifting past. The woods are dark and dense but unthreatening. There’s a pathway through the undergrowth towards the light.A shepherd leans on his crook, his flock beside hi...
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Threatened by a raging sea, two women cling to each other in distress while a boy waves an improvised flag, desperately calling for help. Foaming waves encircle their half-submerged rock. They could be the survivors of a shipwreck; caught by the tide, their lives are at the mercy of the elements....
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This picture, painted in fresco (directly onto wet plaster), was part of a series of eight which decorated the walls of the palace belonging to Pandolfo Petrucci, the ruler of Siena. He commissioned the frescoes to celebrate the marriage of his son to Pope Pius III’s niece. Two others survive in...
An unidentified male saint in a quatrefoil medallion turns the pages of a book. We are not sure exactly who he is, but he was probably meant to be one of the four Evangelists, the authors of the Gospels. This is one of three fragments in the National Gallery’s collection which possibly came from...
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A man offers gold coins and jewellery to woman lying on a bed – a carving of Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the bedpost in the foreground removes any doubt that it is an amorous encounter. The glass of wine would also have been associated with licentious behaviour. Whether this is a transactio...
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An angry tide surges around two small transport boats heading for disaster under a stormy sky. The crew of the kaag, desperate to avoid collision with the fast approaching smalschip, have released the horizontal spar to take the wind out of the mainsail. This way, the vessel will slow and – with...
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Tulips, roses, jonquils, carnations, fritillaries and a single blue iris are massed into a Chinese vase; costly flowers in a costly container. Above them all, Madonna lilies rise like shining white trumpets at the peak of the bouquet, made slightly less regal by the tiny beetle making its way up...
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Painted with Adriaen van de Velde’s usual attention to the detail of texture, the animals in the picture seem almost tangible. The kid turns its head quickly, its eye and coat soft, its pose dainty and alive. The goat stands steady but alert, two long strands of dark hair lying over the pale, sha...
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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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A bishop saint, a mitre on his head and his crosier leaning casually against his shoulder, stands reading a book. This is Saint Nicholas of Bari, an enormously popular saint who is thought to have lived in the fourth century, and about whom almost nothing certain is known. This is the right-hand...
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The infant Christ throws his arms affectionately around his mother’s neck and smiles at us. But the Virgin Mary’s eyes are downcast, as though her thoughts are already on his future sacrifice.The painting probably dates from the early years of Raphael’s time in Rome. It is called the ‘Mackintosh...
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Barye was primarily a sculptor, particularly of animal bronzes. In 1841 he began painting landscapes in oil, and by the end of the decade he was regularly visiting the forest of Fontainebleau, south-east of Paris, where he painted alongside members of the Barbizon group of landscape painters. Alt...
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In a warm and dark room, Courbet’s rich, ripe apples seem to glow as if in firelight. The heavy earthenware bowl lined with pale blue slip seems almost too small for the weight of the fruit piled into it. Among them is a single pomegranate, squeezed in at the base of the heap.In 1871 Courbet was...
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In one of his parables, Christ told of a rich man who squirrelled away his grain and his goods, hoarding them to ensure his future comfort instead of using them for charitable deeds. But God commanded that the man’s time to die had come: ‘Thou fool, this night thy soul shall be required of thee:...
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These angels came from a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the high altar of the church of Santa Croce, Florence, where Franciscan friars – members of the religious order founded by Saint Francis – had a convent. They appeared on the upper part of a panel (now lost) which showed Saint Fran...
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Ophelia, the doomed heroine in William Shakespeare’s play Hamlet, rests within a luminous space filled with vibrantly-coloured flowers. Unlike her vivid surroundings, her face is drained of colour – we are not sure if she is dead or only sleeping. This association of youthful, but ill-fated, beau...
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In this painting intended for private devotion, Fra Bartolommeo emphasises the humble circumstances of Christ’s birth. The Virgin kneels on the ground before the newborn Christ, while barefoot Saint Joseph watches over the baby. The makeshift stable made from the ruins of a classical building sta...
This was originally the top panel of the high altarpiece of Forlì Cathedral, the main panel of which is now in the Pinacoteca Civica, Forlì. The dead Christ in the tomb is supported by the Virgin (in blue), with Mary Magdalene and Saint John the Evangelist also appearing in the tomb. The patron s...
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Restored in 2018–19, this is one of the more significant paintings of the Virgin Mary to survive from the workshop of the Florentine Renaissance artist Sandro Botticelli. The exposed breast with which the Virgin Mary is nourishing her infant son, the Christ Child, is central to the design of the...
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During the 1860s Cezanne divided his time between his family home in Aix-en-Provence and Paris, where this picture was probably painted. It evokes the privation of his Bohemian existence in the capital. Cezanne has rearranged the objects in his studio, and we see them from a high viewpoint, as th...
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Gustave Moreau was a leading figure in the French Symbolist movement. He completed this painting in 1889, although he began working on it many years earlier.The story of Saint George and the dragon had long been popular with artists, and the painting shows Moreau’s awareness of earlier images of...
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Five or six stems of lilac in a tall glass vase are set against a two-tone neutral grey background. Flower still lifes enjoyed enormous success in the late nineteenth century, with artists like Henri Fantin-Latour becoming wealthy on their pictures of cut flowers in vases. Such images were admire...
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The infant Christ is the central figure in this painting, but he is the only one who doesn't look at us directly. Gripping his rosary (the Catholic prayer beads used to keep count of devotions), he gazes beyond the frame in contemplation, while Joseph, the Virgin Mary and the young John the Bapti...
This is the first of the series of seven illustrations of the story of Jason made by Jean-François de Troy as sketches for cartoons for the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris. The Gallery owns another sketch from the same series: The Capture of the Golden Fleece.According to the Roman poet Ovid’s M...
These are the four Graham children. Their father was Royal Apothecary to George I and George II. Thomas, in his gilded baby carriage adorned with a bird, had already died when Hogarth was working on the picture. The crossed carnations (funeral flowers) beside him are a tender reminder of death. A...
Saint John the Baptist, identified by his camel hair shirt, makes direct eye contact with the viewer. He clutches a scroll, its Latin inscription containing the words he spoke to Christ after baptising him: ‘Behold the Lamb of God, which takes away the sin of the world’ (John 1: 29).He is joined...
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A young woman sits side-on to us. She wears a relaxed but delicate and costly gown, her hair casually caught back in a soft chignon. She looks down, apparently calmly, at a gleaming ceramic statuette of a snarling tiger, poised to pounce. Its expression and stylised pose are reminiscent of mytho...
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During the seventeenth century, the Dutch Republic was frequently at war, often with England. It’s possible that this is a picture of a fleet preparing for battle.The sea is quiet, but there is a sense of urgency in the scene. A crowd of small boats pull out from the shore, the men rowing powerfu...
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This painting is an eighteenth-century copy of a portrait of Jean Michel de Grilleau (1710–1769). The original still belongs to his descendants in France.Jean Michel de Grilleau was the son of an influential merchant, banker and consul in Nantes. He spent his first working years in France and Spa...
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With a glance, a lifted hand, the turn of a head, the artist has made a picture that invites interpretation. This was such a popular composition at the time that several copies were made of Caspar Netscher’s original (now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich). This is one of the copies.Pictures of musi...
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The removal of Christ’s body from the Cross takes place in what appears to be a shallow gilded niche. The setting, with its stiff geometric decoration around the arch, may be intended to resemble contemporary tabernacle altarpieces, which included three-dimensional carvings set beneath a canopy a...
Johan Barthold Jongkind produced several views of the boulevard de Port-Royal, which was near his studio in Paris. He often made drawings and watercolour sketches of a scene which he would then use in his studio as the basis for his oil paintings; this picture relates to a watercolour of 1874.In...
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Portraits like this – of idealised women, seen in profile – were popular in fifteenth-century Florence. This picture is not by Botticelli but by his workshop, which was one of many that produced them. The women usually have fair hair, pale skin and rosy lips, as this was thought to be the most be...
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This small, evocative painting shows the work of Aelbert Cuyp at the peak of his maturity as an artist. It’s a picture full of light and reflections, transforming a simple view of a river at evening time into visual harmony.Light puffy clouds lit by the evening sun drift overhead, leaving patches...
In a gloomy barn a winnower holds a wide, shallow basket with no lip at the front. With skilful shaking, the chaff could be worked to the front and tipped over the edge, leaving the grain behind. This painting is one of Millet’s first to treat the theme of peasant life. He exhibited it to some ac...
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When this small still life was given to the National Gallery in 1888, it was believed to have been painted by Chardin. However, within 20 years there were already doubts about its authenticity.For a while it was thought that François Bonvin, or one of his contemporaries, had painted the picture,...
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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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This view belongs to the group of pictures that Corot painted during his stay in north-east France in 1871. The site depicted is probably the Canal de la Sensée between Arleux and Palluel. Corot first painted the view in May 1871, basing his picture on a study by his friend Alfred Robaut, with wh...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.In this painting, which we think may represent July, a man threshes grain from the corn husks and stalks of straw. He holds the corn on a wooden...
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In this small, intimate portrait, the rider, turning to look at the viewer, seems to have been caught unawares. He is Monsieur Joseph Pivot, who was about 50 at the time and a neighbour of Corot in Ville-d’Avray. He frequently rode his horse in a nearby wood where Corot also went to paint, and on...
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Austen Henry Layard (1817–1894) commissioned this marble bust of himself from the sculptor John Warrington Wood in Rome in 1881. It was remodelled from a bust sculpted by Wood in London in 1869, which was exhibited the following year at the Royal Academy. Layard was not pleased with the original...
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This fragment of a larger painting shows an elderly man on a precarious descent down a ladder. His grip is obstructed by a pair of pincers, which he has used to extract the nails which secured Christ to the Cross. Signorelli was noted in his time for his skill at depicting the human body in a var...
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This panel comes from the uppermost part of a large altarpiece painted for the high altar of the church of Santa Croce, Florence. There are two others in our collection, showing the prophet Isaiah and King David; all three figures carry scrolls with Latin inscriptions.This one shows Moses who, ac...
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Scenes of villagers and townspeople amusing themselves on the region’s frozen lakes and canals have a long tradition in the art of the Low Countries, going right back to the work of the Flemish artist Pieter Bruegel the Elder in the mid-sixteenth century. This painting was made about 250 years la...
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Christ knew Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, who sent for him when Lazarus became sick. He didn‘t go at once: Lazarus lived in Bethany, where Christ had been stoned for his radical preaching and his disciples were reluctant for him to return. On hearing that Lazarus was dead they set off...
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This grisaille work (painted in shades of black, white and grey) is a copy of a picture by Jan Steen known as ‘Old Wooer, Young Maid’. It’s a more appropriate title, emphasising that the man is probably making advances to the younger of the two women, who turns towards him.The flute protruding fr...
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This playful scene celebrates Silenus, companion to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and drunkenness. Silenus, a naked old man with a bald head, sits slumped on a throne to the left, supported by two men. Too drunk to stand, he balances one leg precariously on a tiger. He is surrounded by revellers...
This is one of 12 pictures that Pissarro painted while in self-imposed exile in London from 1870 to 1871 during the Franco-Prussian war. The Avenue was a wide, tree-lined street in Sydenham, a fashionable semi-rural suburb near Crystal Palace in south London. The location can be identified today...
It is the end of the day, and a fishing boat heads into a secluded inlet, guided by a lone figure. To the right is a wooded promontory, the branches of the trees stretching out over the water. The sun’s last rays are caught by one or two of the clouds, but the overall light is pearly, and the blu...
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Although apparently casually displayed, the objects in this still life would immediately have suggested wealth and extravagance to a seventeenth-century viewer. The cloths have a satin-like sheen, and the objects on them are all expensive luxuries. They‘re carefully chosen, not just because they...
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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This is the third of Lancret’s series of paintings depicting The Four Ages of Man and represents Youth (La Jeunesse).Three pairs of lovers embrace one another in a woodland glade. In the foreground, two archers are engaged in a game of ‘pape-guay’, which involves shooting at an imitation bird (us...
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This is one of 14 views of the Boulevard Montmartre in Paris that Camille Pissarro painted in 1897. These include the boulevard seen in snow, rain, fog, mist and sunlight, and in the morning, afternoon, at sunset and at night. The picture is the only example of a night painting by Pissarro.Pissar...
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Prince Charles Edward Stuart, popularly known as ‘Bonnie Prince Charlie’, was the son of James Francis Edward Stuart and the grandson of the exiled King James II of England and Ireland and VII of Scotland (known as the ‘Old Pretender’). After James’s exile, the Jacobite cause aimed to return the...
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This painting is one of a series of panels painted in 1515 for the Florentine bedchamber of Pierfrancesco Borgherini. They tell the life of Joseph from the Old Testament and were probably originally set into furniture.Joseph’s brothers, who sold him into slavery as a boy, come to Egypt to seek gr...
Views of the Seine and its many bridges were a favourite subject for Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lépine. The arched stone Pont de la Tournelle we see here connected the left bank of the river to the Ile Saint-Louis. It was constructed in 1654 and replaced in 1928 by the bridge that exists today.In th...
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Demand for Bellini’s small-scale images of the Virgin and Child was so high that he had a large workshop of assistants who worked under his supervision, producing paintings in his style.Here Christ is dressed in a white tunic, a gold cloth draped around his chubby body, and is propped up against...
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Paulus Theodorus van Brussel’s arrangement of fruit and flowers reveals the eighteenth-century taste for paintings depicting the exotic and expensive set in artful disarray against the faint background of a garden. It’s a celebration of the bounty of nature and is, at the same time, an appealing...
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Under cover of darkness, Saint Nicholas throws three golden balls through the window of the house of an impoverished nobleman. The saint’s act of charity, providing dowries for the daughters so they could marry, saved them from being sold into prostitution. Saint Nicholas’s feast day is celebrate...
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Elderly Saint Elizabeth looks down over the Virgin Mary’s shoulder at her son Saint John the Baptist. The Christ Child removes a garland of flowers from his head, symbolising innocence or childish pleasure. He grasps the reed cross held by the infant Saint John, who wears his camel-skin cloak and...
This moody landscape is Jacob de Wet’s only landscape without biblical figures, though the stunted, windswept tree in the foreground and the castle tower behind it are repeated – with variations – in his painting Abraham and Melchizedek (National Gallery of Ireland, Dublin). At this point in the...
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This painting, showing the Virgin and Child enthroned between Saints Francis and Sebastian, was the central panel of an altarpiece made for a family chapel in the Franciscan church at Fabriano, in the Italian Marches. At Francis’s foot, a stout little figure in widow’s dress is being presented to...
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This large altarpiece was painted by Carlo Crivelli in 1491 for a family chapel in the Franciscan church in Matelica, a small town in the Italian Marches. The Ottoni were the local ruling family – you can see their coat of arms placed conspicuously on the bottom edge of the main panel.The locatio...
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Christ’s hand is raised with his index finger pointing upwards, perhaps towards heaven, represented by the sunlit sky through the window. He holds a scroll inscribed: EGO. SVM. LVX. MŪD. meaning ‘I am the Light of the World’ (John 8: 12). Christ goes on to promise that ‘he who follows me will not...
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Paul Jean Clays’ heavy working boats are motionless, their sails hanging like sculptured banners glowing in the sun. But their power is palpable, three great vessels ready to surge forward with the first breath of wind. Although the vessels are stately and we see the detail of rigging, the painti...
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In the apocryphal Book of Tobit, Tobias travels to the city of Media to collect a debt for his blind father, Tobit, accompanied by the Archangel Raphael. When Tobias stops beside the river Tigris, a fish tries to devour him. Raphael directs him to remove the fish’s heart, liver and gall bladder;...
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The mischievous smiles of three children light up a dreary room with bare walls and little furniture; the barrel suggests it may be the back room of an inn. Their clothes are shabby and torn, but each has a sparkle in the eye and they look at home in their surroundings.The boy in the red jacket h...
This large pala (an altarpiece with a single, unified surface) was painted for a church in Pistoia but was sawn into pieces in the eighteenth century; most of it was later reassembled in the National Gallery. Look closely and you can see lines where the separate fragments were put back together.I...
Lawrence has depicted the 16-year old Emily Lamb as though in motion, her head turning back towards the viewer. The pose is one with a long tradition in the history of portraiture, but Lawrence has treated it with a freshness reflected in the informality and economy of his brushwork. He has captu...
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The huge dome of the church of S. Maria della Salute dominates the entrance of the Grand Canal. Just in front is the Dogana da Mar (Customs House), built in the 1670s and shaped like a ship’s bow. Above its entrance is a weathervane in the form of Fortune, a personification of the Venetian Republ...
This is a fragment of a fresco that was discovered under whitewash in 1855. It shows a group of nuns; the central figure has a gentle gaze and gracefully places her hand across her breast. It is in good condition but some of the colours have faded. Traces of brown paint remain in the tunics, ide...
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In this pensive study, a woman is dressed in traditional Italian costume. Her distinctive headdress is a tovaglia, a piece of folded linen or other cloth worn flat on the head and covering the neck. With increased Italian migration to France from the middle of the nineteenth century, the subject...
On display elsewhere
These angels were once part of a large altarpiece made for the church of Santa Croce, Florence, where Franciscan friars – members of the religious order founded by Saint Francis – had a convent. A Franciscan friar and saint, Louis of Toulouse, was pictured on the main tier.The image of the saint...
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This picture is signed on the marble parapet that separates us from the Virgin Mary. She stands behind it and supports the Christ Child, who kneels on a cushion. He is fully dressed; some altarpieces in which the infant Christ is similarly well covered were said to have been commissioned for nuns...
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This is the lowest part (the predella) of an altarpiece that depicts Saint John the Baptist in its central panel, baptising Christ in the river Jordan. At either end of the predella are two standing saints: Saint Benedict on the left and Saint Romuald on the right.The scene on the left shows the...
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This young woman seated in a garden is thought to be a dancer and model who we know only as Gabrielle. She appears in two other pictures by Toulouse-Lautrec.Although Toulouse-Lautrec worked mainly as a graphic artist and printmaker, and is perhaps best known for his posters advertising venues suc...
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Johann the Steadfast, Elector of Saxony from 1525 to 1532, would have been about 38 when this portrait was made. He wears a sumptuous black hat and coat, both decorated with gold thread and seed pearls.This panel is part of a diptych (a painting made of two parts) – the conjoining panel depicts J...
A profusion of summer flowers has been packed tightly into an almost invisible vase. In the centre and to the right, deep blue delphiniums stand tall above the crowd of blossom, and are mirrored by the larkspur on the left. Pink begonias are tucked in among several varieties of rose, while two da...
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We are looking into a refined room, its walls adorned with paintings in gilded frames and its door obscured by a heavy green curtain. A man in a black robe and white wig, perhaps a Venetian nobleman, bows to a young girl, whose elegant white dress stands out against the vivid green patterned dama...
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Saint Jerome spent two years in the desert, living a life of poverty and self-denial. As a punishment for sinful thoughts, he would – as we see here – beat his body until it bled. He was originally shown looking towards a vision of Christ, arms outstretched on a cross made of beams of light. This...
The aged antiquarian and doctor Ludovicus Nonnius meets our gaze with watery eyes. With his slightly parted lips, he appears to engage us in discussing a passage from the book he holds, which is most likely his recently published text, Diaeteticon sive de recibaria, Libri IV. In this he argues fo...
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The wall of angular, jutting rock formations in this painting may represent a quarry, with the cuttings revealing geological strata. While the hillside is somewhere in Cezanne’s native Provence, the specific location has not been conclusively identified.Stylistically, the painting relates to scen...
We don't know where this castle and the surrounding landscape is located, but they are likely to be based on scenes Hendrik Frans van Lint saw when he was living in Italy. He was working with a group of Dutch and Flemish artists who returned home to the Netherlands to paint the mountainous scener...
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A young woman sits on a stone bench in a garden. She leans on a plinth as if trying to be at ease but her bodice, stiffened with whalebone, forbids her to relax. She sits upright, her eyes alert as if expecting someone. Who she might be expecting remains a mystery, since we don't know her identit...
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We seem to have crept to within touching distance of this small group of musicians who turn towards us with surprise. The highly focused light source creates sharp highlights, intense shadows and a sense both of drama and intimacy. Dramatic lighting effects like this are now common, but in the 16...
A fashionable and wealthy crowd that includes many artists and intellectuals has gathered in the Tuileries Gardens to listen to one of the twice-weekly concerts given there. Manet himself stands at the far left of the picture holding a cane, his body cut by the edge of the canvas and partly obscu...
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A youthful Virgin Mary looks tenderly down at her son, the infant Christ Child, wriggling on her lap. Christ reaches out to embrace Saint John the Baptist, identifiable by the reed cross he holds. The composition of this painting is constructed along diagonals and the Virgin’s serene bearing cont...
In 1788, one of George Augustus Wallis’s many patrons, Lord Warwick, financed a trip to Italy. Around that year he arrived in Naples, where he stayed for a number of years, before moving to Rome in 1795. He was nicknamed ‘le Poussin anglais’ by his fellow English artists, and his future son-in-la...
In the seventeenth century, the linen bleaching fields of Haarlem were considered to be the best in Europe. Linen was an important fabric and to fetch the highest prices its natural beige colour needed to be bleached white. The flat fields and ready water supply in the rivers and canals around Ha...
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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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A wealthy family enjoy coffee beside a fountain. The mother offers a spoon from her cup to her little daughter. The father sits beside them holding the tray while their servant pours coffee from the pot into his cup. The painting is more likely to be a genre scene than a portrait of a particular...
Guided by a star, the Three Kings journeyed from the East to Bethlehem to honour the newborn Christ. Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar brought gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.Girolamo’s depiction of the subject is unusual. Normally the holy family is shown in a stable in the ruins of a classic...
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Vincenzo Morosini (1511–1588) was a powerful Venetian official from one of the oldest, proudest and richest families of Venice. He was a Knight of the Golden Stole, a Venetian order of knighthood represented by the embroidered stole he wears over his shoulder.He observes us with a shrewd and slig...
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This portrait is one of the first painted by Jacques-Louis David (1748–1825) when he chose exile in Brussels in 1816 following the fall of Napoleon, whom he had supported, and the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy. Isolated from Paris, David relied mainly on painting portraits of Brussels citiz...
This is one of the best seventeenth-century examples of what today we might think of as a high-resolution image. The detail and brushwork are so fine that no matter how closely you look at, or zoom in on, the picture, it never quite seems to pixelate. Yet the painter has made a very strange mista...
This is Titian’s largest group portrait. The man in a red robe is probably Gabriel Vendramin (1484–1552). The man holding the altar may be Gabriel’s brother, Andrea Vendramin (1481–1547), and the boys are his seven sons. On the altar is a reliquary of the True Cross that their great-great-grandfa...
A track runs past a cottage into the distance. In the right background the roof of a further cottage is visible, and in the distance are a small clump of trees and a further cluster of houses. The foremost cottage is enclosed by a fence of logs and flanked by trees. This landscape is painted on t...
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Beneath a pitch-dark sky, bizarre and terrifying magical spells are being cast. Monstrous figures, some of them naked, are arranged as if on a stage set, illuminated by scattered pools of light.In the centre, one witch smokes the corpse of a criminal that hangs from a withered tree while her comp...
This panel is one of three that come from the lower tier of an altarpiece made for the Duke of Milan; the other two are also in the National Gallery’s collection.The Archangel Raphael is the hero of the Book of Tobit, which is part of the Roman Catholic Bible. Tobit sent his son Tobias on a long...
This picture formed part of the decoration of the bedroom of Pierfrancesco Borgherini in the Borgherini palace in Florence, and was commissioned to celebrate his marriage in 1515. The story is taken from the Old Testament (Genesis 39: 1). Joseph had been his father’s favourite son and was given a...
The tide is ebbing at Egmond-aan-Zee, leaving a pattern of swirls in the still-wet sand. You can sense the outward sweep and undertow of the tide before the little waves tumble back towards the shore.The people lingering on the beach aren't fishermen, like the silhouetted figures near the boats....
The tranquillity of the Campagna – the countryside around Rome – stretches far into the distance under a soft golden light. Muleteers, who lived by transporting goods on the backs of their patient mules, move at a leisurely pace across the mountainous landscape, its paths winding in and out of ro...
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The Virgin Mary supports her son’s head with one hand and his chubby leg with the other, laying him down on her deep blue cloak. Her husband, Joseph, lies asleep behind them. Christ’s raised leg lifted to one side shows his genitals, proving that he is a human child – the son of man and the son o...
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In this wild party, men and women dance around a term – a carved bust of a bearded and horned man. This is traditionally identified as Pan, god of woods and fields, flocks and herds, although the statue could also be Priapus, god of gardens and fertility, who wears floral garlands and exposes his...
This atmospheric painting shows a lonely figure seated in front of a huge volume open on the table before him. Brilliant sunlight floods through the gloom onto the wall of the room. Much of the image’s power lies not just in the dramatic tension between light and dark, but in the way the artist h...
Two saints – one with wings leaning casually on a sword, the other wearing an animal skin – stand in a Gothic arch. On the left is Saint Michael the Archangel, leader of the heavenly army, with Saint John the Baptist on the right. They come from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted...
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A woman, her hair covered by an elaborate structure of caps and semi-transparent veils, holds a luxurious illuminated book. The pot identifies her as Mary Magdalene: it holds the ointment with which the saint anointed Christ’s feet.The hands and book are copied from Saint Barbara in Gerard David’...
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Eris, goddess of discord, was the only immortal not invited to an important wedding. Furious at being left out, she threw a golden apple inscribed ‘To the Fairest’ among all the goddesses at the feast. Three claimed the title – Minerva, Juno and Venus. Jupiter, chief of the gods, declared that Pa...
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Salome’s mother Herodias persuaded her to ask King Herod for the head of John the Baptist as a reward for her dancing (Matthew 14: 1–12). Herodias held a grudge against the Baptist for saying that her marriage to Herod was unlawful. The saint was beheaded and his head was then presented to Salome...
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...
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The inscription at the top of this picture tells us this is a portrait of Leonello d’Este, Marquis of Ferrara. Leonello succeeded his father in 1441 and this picture was painted six years later. It shows him in profile, drawing attention to his sloping forehead and distinctive long nose – accord...
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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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This landscape, imbued with strong natural and dramatic effects, is typical of Diaz’s late work. The view is across the desolate heathlands near the village of Barbizon. The combination of the dominant stormy sky with its mass of grey clouds and the bleak plain conjures up the terrors of a storm...
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This small, arched painting of the Virgin Mary grieving comes from a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in around 1450 for a provincial house of Camaldolese nuns in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. A number of other panels from this altarpiece are also in the National Gallery’s collectio...
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These three saints stand on the right side of a large multi-panelled altarpiece painted in the 1420s by the Florentine artist Giovanni dal Ponte. It originally sat on the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. San Giovanni was a Camaldolite nunnery – a stri...
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Pietro Longhi has combined an image of gallantry with a glimpse of domestic life – two maids at the left work at an embroidery frame. The elegantly dressed lady of the house welcomes a dashing gentleman, who places his hand on his heart as he bows from the waist. She leans towards him and lightly...
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Jacques Cazotte (1719–1792) is best known as the author of Le Diable amoureux (‘The Amorous Devil’), and other fantastical fiction. He was also a colonial administrator, a maker and supplier of fine wine, an amateur painter, a collector of old master paintings and a dabbler in counter-revolutiona...
This teenage brother and sister were the heirs of royalty and future rulers themselves. Philip the Handsome and Margaret of Austria were the children of the Holy Roman Emperor, Maximilian I, and Mary of Burgundy. Each is identified by an inscription in gold above their head and by the coats of ar...
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Passing through a gloomy forest, two riders ask for directions from a group of peasants resting at the side of the road. The man on the white horse points towards the sunlit valley beyond, his gesture mirrored by one of the seated figures. A shaft of warm evening light cuts through the dense cano...
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During his stay in Paris in the 1860s Monticelli began to paint fêtes galantes. This term derives from the pictures depicting elegantly dressed men and women, generally placed in a parkland setting and engaged in conversation, that became popular in eighteenth-century France, most often associate...
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This is a painting paying homage to diligent housekeeping, domestic harmony and a contented husband and wife. We are in a kitchen, so the woman takes centre stage and she sits bathed in light from the high window. She catches our eye, confident perhaps that we will approve of her housekeeping. Th...
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Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, is condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the man’) were the words used by Pilate when he presented Christ to the people before the Crucifixion (John 19: 2–5). Pilate, wearing a turban, raises his hand to indicate that he is speaki...
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Aelbert Cuyp is famous for his landscapes but he also painted a small number of portraits, of which this is a rare example. For some time it was believed that the sitter might be Cuyp’s father, Jacob, a portraitist who taught his son to paint. However, it is now believed to depict Cornelis van So...
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Nine men kneel in prayer, heads bare, hats in hands. Behind them stands a saint – we can only see his hand – wearing a brown garment (perhaps the habit worn by members of a religious order). It is possibly Saint Francis, who founded the Franciscan Order, presenting the men to the object of their...
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This lively and engaging portrait shows Abel Widmer (1805–1838), a pupil at the Institution Saint-Victor, a secondary school for boys in Paris. It was probably painted around 1824, the year Widmer won the school’s annual prize. It is most likely the first of a series of ten portraits of the prize...
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Rosalba Carriera was one of a small number of women to make a highly successful international career as an artist in the eighteenth century. A native of Venice, she began by painting portrait miniatures on ivory, but by the time she was in her twenties she was attracting an international clientel...
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This small oil painting on paper mounted on canvas is attributed to Stanislas-Victor-Edmond Lépine, whose signature is faintly visible. The paper is torn along the edges and a darker underlayer suggests an earlier composition has been painted over.A simple path in a park or woodland leads to an o...
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Like many of Adriaen van de Velde’s paintings, this is a quiet picture. The conversation between the milkmaid and the man with the basket seems amicable, with nothing to disturb the rhythmic swish of the milk into the pail. A pig hauls itself up on its haunches, looking as if it will roll over an...
Pintoricchio painted a number of images of the Virgin and Child of a similar size to this one. Their scale, high level of detail and decoration, and the sweetness of the figures made them highly desirable as beautiful objects and as aids for worship in the home.This one offers a view through an...
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Cornelis van der Geest was one of the most prominent art collectors of his day, so this commission must have been extremely important to Anthony van Dyck, who was only 21 at the time.He has taken a relatively conservative approach, using a traditional format: a close up of just the sitter’s face,...
We can sense the confidence and energy of the man in this portrait. He is positioned slightly higher than the viewer, so we have to look up at him; he returns our gaze with a direct, rather aloof look in his eyes. His pose seems to reflect his vitality and a sense of self-belief: there is a suren...
Saint Thomas, who doubted that Christ had risen from the dead, raises his finger to touch the spear wound in Christ’s side, an episode related in the Gospel of John (20: 20–29). Saint Thomas’s finger, the kneeling donor’s gaze and the parallel lines of the paving all point to Christ’s wound.The F...
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It is difficult to identify the musicians gathered here with certainty. The man standing on the right is probably the flautist and composer Michel de La Barre, who was a member of the French Académie de Musique – the music depicted is an exact copy of his trio sonatas for flute and bass published...
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Frederick de Moucheron was one of a number of seventeenth-century Dutch artists who specialised in painting idyllic scenes of people with their animals among the antique ruins of the Campagna (the countryside around Rome).Here, a woman sits upright, holding a baby, while a man with his back to us...
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Jan Toorop was a Dutch-Indonesian artist, born to a Dutch father and Chinese-Indonesian mother. After travelling to the Netherlands as a young boy, he enrolled at the École des Beaux-Arts in Brussels in 1883, where he met many influential artists such as James Ensor and Théo van Rysselberghe.Toor...
In late fifteenth-century Venice, a striking style of portraiture – derived from Netherlandish portraiture – was being popularised in the city by the Sicilian artist Antonello da Messina; this is a typical example of it. The dark background, the three-quarter pose and the sharp lighting used here...
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This imaginary landscape in the flatlands of the Low Countries conjures a remarkably effective illusion of a vast panorama opening up before us. Koninck has used two particular techniques to create this effect. He’s made the figure in the middle ground the most prominent and painted the landscape...
Heaven and earth are united in this vast, dramatic scene. A dome-shaped vault has opened up in the sky to reveal Christ blessing the Virgin Mary. She kneels before him, her hands together in prayer. They are surrounded by ranks of neatly ordered angelic beings, saints and Old Testament figures: t...
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Christ hangs on the Cross, emaciated, blood dripping from the wounds in his hands, feet and side. His head is slumped in death, his face pale. His followers sit on the ground around him, inconsolable. Christ’s mother, the Virgin Mary, has collapsed in her grief.This panel once formed the pinnacle...
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Three dashing young boys stand on the steps of an impressive building. They are known as the Balbi children because the painting was once in the collection of the wealthy Balbi family in Genoa, but we don‘t know who they are. Some have suggested they were members of the Franchi family because t...
Pissarro and his family moved to Louveciennes in the spring of 1869, and he may have painted this picture shortly afterwards, or possibly in the spring of 1870. Only 30 minutes west of Paris by train, Louveciennes was an important location for early Impressionism, as it was one of the small towns...
This portrait has long been known as ‘L’Avvocato‘, meaning the lawyer or counsel in Italian. The sitter’s air of well-paid theatricality and his supercilious regard, as though he is summing up evidence, may have suggested this title. It might also derive from a misreading of the folded letter in...
Jan van der Heyden clearly enjoyed the discipline of painting very fine details. Although this is a very small picture, he has delineated many of the leaves of the trees individually. If you look closely at the grey roof of the church, you can see that he has used incredibly fine lines of black p...
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This group portrait shows the officers of the Coopers‘ and Wine-rackers’ guild of Amsterdam, which included men who made barrels for the wine imported into the city and those who sampled and bottled it. The name of the guild is written on the seal which hangs over the edge of the table, while in...
An atmospheric light, something characteristic of Emanuel de Witte’s many church interiors, falls on the congregation gathered in Amsterdam’s Oude Kerk to hear a sermon. De Witte started his career as a figure painter but became a master of this genre, in which architecture and the effects of lig...
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This picture may have been made as a record of a larger work by El Greco in the Escorial, which he probably painted for Philip II, King of Spain. The letters ‘IHS’ – which stand for IHSOUS, the Greek spelling of ‘Jesus’ – are its main focus.The figures in the left-hand corner are the members of t...
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This is a typical example of the small but exquisitely executed still-life paintings which were Adriaen Coorte’s specialism. He used a dark background and dramatic lighting to highlight the contrast between different shapes and surfaces, such as the translucence of ripe gooseberries and the musty...
A group of cheerful young people crowd around a small table in an elegant room. The fashionable clothing they wear, some of which is very colourful, differs from the sombre black costumes we can see in many Dutch portraits of the time.Dirck Hals specialised in scenes of people feasting and enjoyi...
Aelbert Cuyp is best known for landscapes which evoke a strong sense of peace, plenty and prosperity. This picture, which is probably an early work, is very different. It is defined by the lightning which flashes across the sky above Cuyp’s home town of Dordrecht. It captures an instant – the mom...
This very small and very unusual painting shows the view of the Nieuwe Kerk in Delft as though through a wide-angle lens. The effect is emphasised by two musical instruments, set out on a table by the man – probably a maker of, or dealer in, such instruments.The violin (or possibly a viola da gam...
This painting, which has suffered extensive damage and is currently undergoing conservation, is signed and dated on the paper on the marble ledge. The writing translates as: ‘Andrea thread and needle follower of Giovanni Bellini painted this in 1504.’ Andrea Previtali signed himself ‘thread and n...
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The Scribes and Pharisees (experts in religious law) brought to Christ a young woman caught having sex outside marriage (John 8: 1–11). They asked him whether she should be stoned to death in accordance with the laws of Moses. Jesus, seeming not to hear them, stooped down and wrote on the ground....
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An angry light breaks through threatening clouds, illuminating a wave that beats up against the side of a galjoot, the small boat keeling over with the wind. An explosion of white spray looks almost as if it is reaching up to swallow the man hauling in the foresail. The blue and white flag at the...
The title of this painting originates from the idea that it portrays Diego Velázquez at the Spanish court, surrounded by royal personages and prominent humanists. The main figures in Velázquez’s Las Meninas (Prado Museum, Madrid) – including Velázquez himself and the young Spanish princess Margar...
This portrait of Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was painted after he had defeated the French forces of Napoleon and entered Madrid victorious in August 1812.Wellington sat for Goya shortly after his arrival in Madrid, and the artist produced a large painting of the Duke on horseback (A...
This altarpiece is the earliest known example that shows the baptism of Christ as the central image – in large multi-panelled altarpieces it was usually the Virgin and Child.It was made for a chapel in Santa Maria degli Angeli, the Camaldolese monastery in Florence. The chapel was dedicated to th...
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A number of boats navigate a pale turquoise lake that is surrounded on all sides by dark trees. The white sail of the vessel in the middle ground provides a bright accent, its curve complementing the shape of the branches at top left. In the foreground, two men stand on the shore, talking and lea...
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Two men in turbans are seated under a tree that provides little shade. One has his back to us; the other, who wears his clothing in elaborate layers, has a bushy moustache that gives him extra character. He rests his right arm on a jar and looks across the scene, though his eyes are hidden by his...
Virgin kneels in adoration of her new-born son before a ramshackle shed, emphasising Christ’s humble birth. She is accompanied by her husband Joseph and two shepherds, one of whom points to the divine light falling on the shed’s stone wall through a hole in its roof. Music-making angels provide a...
This painting is part of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. It depicts Saint Gaudioso and is situated to the left of an image of the Nativity, above a panel of Saint Alexander.Saint Gaudioso was included in the altarpiece as he was a fifth-century bishop of Brescia. He died...
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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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God the Father makes a blessing gesture with one hand and holds an orb, representing the earth, in the other. The small size and round shape tell us that this panel probably once decorated part of the frame of an altarpiece.Whoever painted this picture was interested in making sure that the figur...
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This painting is among the earliest known works by Filippino Lippi, probably made when he was still a member of the workshop of the Florentine painter Sandro Botticelli. It shows the Virgin Mary holding the infant Christ in her right arm. He plucks seeds from a pomegranate – the fruit was a symbo...
This engaging little scene, full of lifelike detail comes from a series of panels that tell the story of the life of John the Baptist, the prophet who preached the coming of Christ as the Messiah. They once formed a predella, the lowest part of a multi-panelled altarpiece.The saint has just been...
Cornard Wood is on the outskirts of the village of Great Cornard, two miles from Sudbury, where Gainsborough was born. The view is taken from Abbas Hall, looking towards the village of Great Henny. The church of St Mary’s Great Henny appears in the background, our eyes led to it by the path windi...
This small painting of the Pentecost shows Giotto’s skill at transforming complex biblical stories into images that were easy to decipher. Jesus’s followers were gathered together 50 days after his Crucifixion to celebrate the Jewish Feast of Weeks. A strong wind began to blow and flames like ‘to...
Two men are crammed into this long, thin painting which was once the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). In front is the donor. He wears the white habit of a Premonstratensian canon; the mitre (headdress) in front of him shows that he is a mitred abbot. Behind him is Saint Ambro...
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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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A woman sits beside a bath, drying her hair. She pitches forward, one arm raised to rub the towel on her neck, the other reaching back awkwardly, perhaps to steady herself or perhaps to grasp the towel on the back of the chair. The ungainly but authentic-looking pose makes it easy to believe that...
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This intimate view of Venice, weatherbeaten and dilapidated, is one of Canaletto’s masterpieces. In the early morning sun, workmen chisel away at pieces of stone. Everyday life continues around them: a mother rushes to comfort her crying child, watched by a woman on the balcony above.This square...
A large tent or booth has been set up on top of a hill above a military camp, next to a blasted tree. They stand upright against a big, luminous sky, together filling nearly half the picture.Dramatic though this backdrop is, it’s the cavalrymen gathered in the foreground whose antics are the main...
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In this, one of Titian’s earliest portraits, the sitter turns to look at us over his shoulder and momentarily meets our gaze. Our attention is focused on the raised brow above his right eye, which is positioned midway across the picture. The man’s elbow rests on a parapet and his voluminous quilt...
Saint Mary Magdalene is here depicted with eyes raised heavenward, a sign of her devotion and penance. The Gospels describe Mary of Magdala as one of Christ’s followers, a witness to his burial and resurrection. Mary Magdalene was later identified with another biblical figure, an unnamed woman un...
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Hogarth certainly painted this sketch from life, and although he may never have known the girl’s name, this is definitely a portrait of an individual. For at least a century before and after Hogarth painted The Shrimp Girl, most of the travelling sellers of shellfish in London were women, usually...
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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Anna Maria van Schurman (1607–1678) was one of the most important thinkers of her day and the first woman in the Netherlands to attend university. She was well known in European intellectual circles, and was an accomplished artist, poet and linguist, as well as a passionate advocate of women’s ri...
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This elegant blonde woman with a jewelled crown and a martyr’s palm is Saint Catherine of Alexandria. She rests her left hand on the edge of the spiked wheel, just visible in the corner – she was tortured on one, and it became her attribute (a symbol traditionally associated with her).The strange...
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The story of the Tower of Babel (Genesis 11: 1–9) is intended to explain the existence of different languages. After the Great Flood, all of humanity spoke the same language. Noah’s great-grandson, Nimrod, decided to build a tower in Babel that would reach heaven. When God saw it, he was angry an...
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Paintings depicting the interior of large stables were first made popular by Philips Wouwerman in Haarlem in the 1650s. They tend to depict day-to-day activity in large rural stables – a gentleman horseman, surrounded by his servants. Van Calraet was working 30 to 40 years later in Dordrecht and...
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If pictures had a smell, then Ambrosius Bosschaert’s paintings would fill the air with exotic scent. His many different flowers are displayed against a dark background to show their colours, shapes and textures to the fullest – pale roses, yellow and white narcissi, a single yellow chrysanthemum...
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This panel comes from the predella (the lowest part) of an altarpiece made for the church of San Domenico, Fiesole, near Florence. Its figures look towards the central panel, which shows Christ resurrected from the dead.Lined up in neat rows are – from top to bottom – 21 biblical figures regarded...
In this altarpiece, Pittoni has depicted both the Nativity (the birth of Christ and his adoration) and the Trinity (God the Father, Christ and the Holy Spirit) – an unusual, but not unique, combination. It was painted around 1740, though we don‘t know for which church it was commissioned.Saint Jo...
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The resurrected Christ has appeared to the Virgin Mary in a room in a fifteenth-century Netherlandish house. The appearance of Christ to the Virgin is not mentioned in the Gospels, but it was widely believed that immediately after the Resurrection he revealed himself first to his mother.In the ni...
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Saint John the Baptist sits on a rock in a wooded landscape. He is preaching to a group of people in Oriental dress: according to the Gospel of Luke (3: 1–17), John spent some years living as a hermit in the wilderness, preaching repentance and baptising people in the river Jordan. His followers...
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...
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This panel comes from the predella (the lowest part) of an altarpiece made for the church of San Domenico, Fiesole, near Florence. Its saints face right toward the central panel, which shows Christ in glory after his resurrection from the dead.The Virgin kneels at the head of the top row of saint...
A young girl tenderly holds a lamb, which is decorated with a blue ribbon. Her loose-fitting white chemise has slipped off her shoulder. The girl and lamb occupy the immediate foreground, making them seem close to us and giving the picture a feeling of intimacy.The lamb here probably symbolises i...
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At the centre of this painting is the Virgin Mary, seated in a narrow space, a wall behind her and a ledge before her. She holds the infant Christ, who seems unsteady on his feet as he leans to the right. He makes direct eye contact with the viewer. The young Saint John the Baptist, identified by...
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Jean Joseph Xavier Bidauld was a member of the early generation of neo-classical landscapists. He was taught by Claude-Joseph Vernet, who had introduced oil sketching to the influential artist and teacher Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes. Bidauld was in Italy from 1785 to 1790, where he produced stud...
This painting on canvas, together with another Group of Heads, is a copy of part of Correggio’s destroyed fresco, The Coronation of the Virgin, which was painted in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. A number of fragments of Correggio’s original fresco depicting the heads of infant ang...
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This picture is one of five portraits painted by Dirck Santvoort of the daughters of the Spiegel family showing the girls as personifications of the five senses. Here, the four-year-old Geertruyt Spiegel represents Touch and holds a finch that pecks her finger. Santvoort, a friend of Rembrandt,...
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Henri-Joseph Harpignies' garden was clearly a great joy to him: it became one of his favourite subjects and he painted it many times, making sketches and watercolours as well as oil paintings. In this picture, painted a few years after he retired to the country, he has depicted the garden in grea...
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This is one of the most well-known views of classical Rome. We are looking across the Forum towards the Palazzo Senatorio on the Capitol. Although the Forum had yet to be fully excavated, the three surviving columns of the Temple of Castor and Pollux can be seen here on the left. The remains of t...
In seventeenth-century Holland there was a fashion for depictions of winter scenes; this was a period of harsh winters that brought heavy snowfall and caused rivers to freeze over. This scene with people skating on a frozen river in Holland is similar to pictures made by Johan Barthold Jongkind,...
On display elsewhere
The story of Hagar and Ishmael is told in the Old Testament Book of Genesis. Unable to have a child with his wife, Sara, Abraham has a son called Ishmael by her Egyptian maidservant, Hagar. When the aged Sara miraculously conceives and gives birth to Isaac, she demands that Hagar and Ishmael are...
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We are clearly looking into heaven in this large painting. The Virgin Mary sits on a carved and gilded throne, the Christ Child standing on her lap. They are flanked by Saints Catherine of Alexandria, dressed as a princess, and Catherine of Siena in the habit of a Dominican nun. The figures are l...
This altarpiece is a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) but parts of it are missing. The two halves were not originally next to each other, but were on either side of a painting of the Assumption of the Virgin formerly in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany.The w...
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This scene depicts an intimate moment between Christ and Saint John the Baptist, here identified by his camel-skin garment and reed cross.The pair are more frequently portrayed meeting as young children, in an episode drawn from biblical apocrypha, or during Christ’s baptism, which was performed...
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This is the second painting in Lancret’s series The Four Times of Day. A sculpted cherub (Love) sits on top of a sundial, the shadow of which points to the Roman numerals for 12 inscribed into the stone. The man and two women note the moment on the sundial, and one of the ladies holds her pocket...
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Two people, one draped in bright yellow and blue, take us from their high viewpoint into this dramatic landscape. A river leads from the bottom left corner, through a rocky gorge, to the lake in the middle distance, set in a valley below snow-covered mountains. A storm has broken over the peacefu...
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Duccio was the leading artist of fourteenth-century Siena. His style is characterised by elegant, flowing lines, soft colours and tender representations of the divine. Here, the Virgin’s cloak is defined by a fluid gold hem. Mother and child share an affectionate gaze as the infant Christ plays w...
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Although not the most recent painting in the National Gallery’s collection, this picture is perhaps the most self-consciously modern. It is also the Gallery’s only example of Cubism, the early twentieth-century art movement initiated by Pablo Picasso and his colleague Georges Braque, which radica...
The painting divides neatly down the middle. On the left side we have books and globes, then considered key repositories of knowledge. And on the right is the world of thought and reflection represented by the sitter, who adopts the classic thinker’s pose: hand on chin, eyes apparently unfocused,...
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Rachel Ruysch’s elegant bouquet carries a breath of autumn. Pear blossom, peonies, honeysuckle and columbine all bloom early in the year, but the burnt orange and deep green of the lilies, the seed pod straggling over the edge of the shelf, the ripe wheat and the dry, veined leaves turn away thou...
On display elsewhere
John Plampin is portrayed here aged about 25. The portrait was probably painted around five years before he inherited Chadacre Hall and the manor of Shimpling, Suffolk, in 1757. Gainsborough shows Plampin on Plampin land. The church tower in the background, though brushed in with only a few touch...
The sitter for this portrait by the Spanish artist Raimundo de Madrazo has not yet been identified, but her clothes can be dated to the late 1880s or early 1890s. As the clothing is unfinished, this may be a study for a larger portrait.Born in Rome in 1841 into a family of artists of noble descen...
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A fair-haired man stands in an interior, gazing past us. Through the window behind him we can see a landscape with a church in the distance. The date on the back wall makes this the earliest datable – and in fact the only dated painting – by Bouts, and the earliest dated portrait to include an op...
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This is the first in Hogarth’s series of six paintings titled Marriage A-la-Mode. They were painted to be engraved and then sold after the engravings were finished.The Earl of Squander is negotiating the marriage of his son to the daughter of a rich Alderman of the City of London. The Alderman’s...
Here, the arduous journey of a laden wagon from farm to market is a town dweller’s dream of life in the country. Jan Siberechts lived in the city of Antwerp and earned his living producing such scenes for an urban clientele. Drawing on his experience in the countryside around the city, he idealis...
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In 1884 Pissarro settled with his family in the village of Eragny. He painted a number of views of this meadow which is planted with small trees still surrounded by their protective cages. It is late afternoon and the long shadows thrown by the trees radiate out in a fan shape towards the left co...
An elderly, bearded saint, wearing a bishop’s mitre and holding a book and a crosier, gazes directly, almost challengingly, out at us. We are not sure exactly who he is. He has traditionally been identified as Saint Ambrose, the fourth-century patron of Milan, but he lacks the saint’s traditional...
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A young man kneels beside a wooden block and cuts stakes with a hatchet. A line of stakes has already been set in the field, which is ploughed into rows ready to be planted, perhaps with vines or olives. The stakes would be used to support the young plants.This is one of 12 small pictures that to...
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Christ, hovering on wispy clouds, is surrounded by angels who sing, dance and play musical instruments. He is shown triumphant over death: his red and white flag was associated with his resurrection; the wound in his right hand, caused when he was crucified, is a reminder of his physical sufferin...
This is a copy after Pierre Subleyras’s Charon ferrying the Souls of the Dead over the River Styx (Louvre, Paris), which was probably painted around 1735. The date of this copy is unknown, but it must have been made before the early nineteenth century, when the canvas was lined, and probably date...
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Jan Wijnants specialised in pictures that depicted figures moving through this particular type of rural landscape. As far was we can tell, they weren’t usually a real view, but were composed to give a pleasing effect and an impression of the countryside around the town of Haarlem, where Wijnants...
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A single mop-headed rose is caught in an intense beam of clear light, which also glitters down the graceful sweep of the handle of the slender jug placed opposite. Fantin-Latour has left the rest of the picture in semi-darkness, making it difficult to see which of the fruit in the pewter dish are...
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Seurat produced many oil sketches and drawings as studies for his monumental painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte of 1884–6 (Art Institute of Chicago). Many of these concentrate on the landscape but others, including this one, focus on the scale and position of figures within the final picture.He...
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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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Erminio Soldera was born in Cappella Maggiore, near Treviso, and trained with Cesare Tallone (1853 -1919) at the Brera Academy in Rome. He produced frescoes and decorations for churches, but also painted portraits and landscapes, of which this is an early example.Dense greenery dominates the fore...
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This painting was almost certainly exhibited with the title The Lake in the Bois de Boulogne at the Fifth Impressionist exhibition in 1880 together with another picture by Berthe Morisot, In the Bois de Boulogne. The two paintings show the same two women (possibly professional models) who wear id...
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This sketchily painted landscape is dotted with groups of figures in seventeenth-century Spanish dress. We are not certain where the scene is set, although it may be the forest of the Palace of El Pardo, north-west of Madrid. This palace had vast hunting grounds, which are probably those represen...
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Although the many craft in this picture are humble inshore vessels, Jan van de Cappelle’s vision turns their sweeping curves and luminous reflections into a majestic panorama. The sky takes up almost two thirds of the picture, but the soft, grey, formless clouds do nothing to detract from the for...
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Corot painted this view of the landscape and river Seine west of Rouen from the top of the Tour du Gros Horloge, a popular viewing platform in the city for the vistas it afforded of the surrounding countryside. The island just visible at the far left is the Ile Rollet, which is now connected to t...
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The Reverend William Holwell Carr (1758–1830) was the son of an Exeter apothecary. In 1797 he married Lady Charlotte Hay, eldest daughter of the 15th Earl of Erroll and his wife Isabella Carr. The following year Lady Charlotte inherited large Carr estates in Northumberland.From about 1805, Holwel...
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This portrait was probably commissioned at the time of this woman’s marriage, probably by the family of her future husband. She is presented in the finest jewel-encrusted accessories: her headdress is sewn with pearls and gems in a fan pattern, and the pearl adornments of her transparent veil tic...
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Romanino made this painting for the high altar of Sant' Alessandro in Brescia. It may have been commissioned by the Confraternity of Corpus Christi – a lay brotherhood which venerated the body of Christ – who were responsible for the high altar.The central panel shows the Nativity, with Mary and...
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The Adoration of the Shepherds and The Dead Christ were originally joined with hinges to form a diptych – an object made up of two painted panels – that could open and close, creating a visual prayer book. It probably belonged to Eleonora of Aragon, Duchess of Ferrara. An inventory of her posses...
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This painting of Lady Cockburn (1749–1837) with her three energetic infant boys combines a portrait of an individual with the personification of a virtue. It is based on traditional pictures of Charity, one of the three theological virtues, often shown as a mother selflessly caring for her childr...
A young man with fair hair and blue eyes is shown from the side, with nothing to indicate his identity or social status. The picture is painted on a paper support, which may originally have been laid down on a panel; it is now mounted on canvas.Profile portraits like this had largely gone out of...
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Eugène Fromentin (1820–1876) was a French painter who specialised in scenes of life in North Africa. He travelled there several times during his career, storing up a stock of images that he could turn into pictures to satisfy the French taste for oriental subjects. The Banks of the Nile of 1874 w...
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God tells Abraham to leave Haran and go to Canaan. He obeys, travelling with his whole household and goods (Genesis 12:1).The towers and walls of Canaan are just visible in the distance as God appears to the elderly Abraham in a burst of golden light. The young man in the turban beside Abraham is...
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Saint Lawrence, a deacon in the early Christian church in Rome, was executed in AD 258 by the pagan Roman authorities; this painting tells the story of the events that led to his martyrdom.The Roman prefect Decius ordered Lawrence to hand over the treasures belonging to the Church. Having already...
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This still-life painting – one of the most popular genres in seventeenth-century Holland – celebrates the challenges of depicting the play of light on different surfaces and textures. Look at the subtle highlights on the weave of the Turkish carpet, the sheen and lustre on silver and glass, the...
Artemisia Gentileschi, the most celebrated female artist of the seventeenth century, appears in the guise of Saint Catherine of Alexandria, a Christian saint martyred in the early fourth century. She leans on a broken wheel studded with iron spikes, to which she was bound and tortured, and which...
This oil sketch was painted in preparation for a large picture of 1872 (now in the Clark Art Institute, Williamstown, Massachusetts). Puvis de Chavannes used it to work out the composition and colour harmonies for a scene in which a group of girls pick flowers in a meadow, oblivious to the sleepi...
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This is the lunette, or upper panel, of an altarpiece for the chapel of the Visitation in S. Andrea in Vineis, Faenza. The dead Christ sits on the lid of his stone tomb supported by two angels. The lid is placed obliquely so that it appears to project into our space, as do Christ’s legs. Zaganell...
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A young woman sits at a table weaving straw, her head tilted to one side as she concentrates on her task. Her hands have not been painted behind the rapidly brushed-in wooden post, but we can imagine them busy at work.This sketch, made in about 1880, is a first idea for one of Signorini’s most f...
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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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This small painting of the sorrowing Virgin once went with another painting in our collection, Christ Crowned with Thorns. They originally made up a diptych, a folding painting in two parts. It was probably intended for private prayer: the Virgin’s grief was intended to inspire empathy in the vie...
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In a forest, in fading light at the end of the day, a huntsman guts a stag. He looks efficient and seemingly quick – this is an everyday procedure for him. His gun lies beside him and his two hounds stand alert, ready to rejoin the hunt shown in the distance through the gap in the trees.In the se...
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An old man sits in a window, a glass in his hand, a pile of plump, pink shrimps on the table in front of him. Vine leaves hang down overhead, and on the windowsill is a violin. Carved into the wooden panel beneath the sill are the Latin letters for 1660, ‘MDCLX’ – the year the original picture wa...
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The Virgin Mary tenderly supports the infant Christ in her arms. Gilded backgrounds like this derived from icon paintings produced in the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire. By the time the picture was made, they had largely been replaced in Italian painting by landscape or architectural backdr...
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This is the outer face of the left-hand shutter of an altarpiece from the Benedictine abbey in Werden, near Cologne. It would have been visible when the shutters were closed over the central part of the altarpiece, which has not been traced. The outer face of the right-hand shutter, which is also...
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Christ’s dead body is lowered gently into his tomb. Mary Magdalene and two other women mourn him; Saint John the Evangelist, who was present at the Crucifixion, kneels beside the Virgin Mary, his back to the viewer. The other men are Joseph of Arimathea, who offered his family tomb for the burial...
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According to the Old Testament, Moses was born in Egypt at a dangerous time: the Pharaoh had ordered the deaths of all newborn Hebrew boys to prevent them them from later rising up against the Egyptians. Moses' mother hid him in the bulrushes beside the river Nile, where he was discovered by the...
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In the Book of Genesis, God orders Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, his only son, on one of the mountains in the land of Moriah (near Jerusalem). This painting shows them walking on a path towards woodland on the third day of their journey as they approach the place of sacrifice. Isaac struggles under...
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This tiny jewel of a picture was made at a time when landscape painting was beginning to be appreciated as an important genre of its own. While no longer a poor relation of pictures of great historical events or of stories from the Bible or Greek myths and legend, it was common for landscape pain...
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Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo based this painting on a picture of the same subject by Rembrandt (also in the National Gallery’s collection). Both make dramatic use of light and shade. Here Christ’s pale, limp body is highlighted by a white shroud. The two men crucified alongside Christ still hang on...
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This unidentified bearded man is depicted bust length, gazing obliquely into the distance. His right hand holds the edge of his black robe, revealing a small gold ring with a green stone on his little finger. He wears sober, unostentatious clothes, and a black skullcap with a large black hat.The...
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Barocci represents the holy family in the charming domestic setting of a bedchamber in a Renaissance palace. The infant Christ turns from feeding at his mother’s breast to observe his cousin, John the Baptist, who is teasing the household cat with a goldfinch. The bird is a traditional symbol of...
Turner’s painting of the North African city of Carthage, founded by Dido, its first queen, was inspired by Virgil’s epic poem, the Aeneid. The figure on the left dressed in blue and wearing a diadem is Dido herself, visiting the tomb that is being built for her dead husband, Sychaeus. The man in...
Venetian artists Canaletto and Guardi specialised in view paintings, which were so popular with local and foreign collectors in eighteenth-century Venice that countless imitations were made. These made their way, alongside genuine works by both artists, into art collections throughout Europe. Des...
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In the 1330s the Sienese city council commissioned four altarpieces showing scenes from the life of the Virgin Mary, the city’s protector, to decorate the cathedral. This panel by Pietro Lorenzetti, one of the city’s most important artists, comes from the altarpiece dedicated to the birth of the...
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During the Dutch Revolt of 1568–1648, when the northern Netherlands fought against their Spanish overlords, military scenes became increasingly popular. Willem Duyster was one of the artists who specialised in guardroom scenes showing soldiers relaxing off duty. Most such pictures were peaceful b...
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A wicker basket tumbles on its side, pouring ripe fruit out into the light. At the foot of the luscious heap of melons, peaches and heavy bunches of grapes, two large tomatoes glisten. On the right, a black vase holds a profusion of autumn flowers. The two elements of the painting are held togeth...
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Located just outside Copenhagen, the Citadel (Kastellet) was a former military fort where Christen Købke and his parents lived from 1819 to 1833, although Købke often returned there to paint. He painted this view in 1837, possibly for his mother as a souvenir of their former home.This picture sho...
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The beginning and end of Christ’s life on earth are juxtaposed in this small panel painting. On the left, the Virgin Mary sits with the infant Christ on her lap in front of the stable where he was born. Saint Joseph, her husband, sits on the ground in the left-hand corner. In the middle, three fi...
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Bathed in a bright spotlight, a man stands alone in front of a fairly plain background. His clothes – he is wearing boots with spurs, a short cape and a wide brimmed hat with an ostrich feather – suggest that he is a soldier.Quast made a number of small full-length portraits of sitters in similar...
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Tourgéville-les-Sablons, with its great sweep of beach, lies on the Normandy coast between Deauville and Benerville. Here, the two jetties at the mouth of the river Touques, which form an entrance to the harbour of Trouville-Deauville, can be seen in the middle distance, to the left of the chalk...
On display elsewhere
We stand inside a church, although it is not clear which one; the picture is attributed to a follower of Bartholomeus van Bassen, who specialised in painting both real and fictional architecture. Van Bassen was appointed the official city architect of the The Hague in 1638, a role which no doubt...
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This panel once formed part of the uppermost tier of a large altarpiece. Christ is shown as the ‘Apocalyptic Christ’ – that is, how he appears in the Book of Revelation, the biblical text that describes the end of the world. There, he is described as the ‘Son of Man’ wearing a long robe with a go...
Saskia van Uylenburgh, the daughter of a burgomaster of Leeuwarden in Friesland, was Rembrandt’s first wife. Here, she is 23 years old; they have been married for a year. She is dressed as Flora, the Roman goddess of spring and fertility.Her gorgeous gown is a seventeenth-century version of Renai...
The unidentified young woman in this portrait turns to look at us with a slight smile. Her youth is emphasised by her pale downy flesh and the bloom on her cheeks, which echoes the delicate pinks in some of the flowers with which she is garlanded.Tocqué uses areas of textured thick white paint, k...
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An unidentified woman and boy kneel in prayer before the Virgin and Child with saints in a landscape. Saint Lucy, the bearer of light, holds a martyr’s palm and a burning oil lamp. The woman, wearing an ornamented dress and cloak, is probably the mother of the kneeling boy presented by Saint Jose...
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Saint Jerome, wearing his red cardinal’s hat, and Saint John the Baptist stand side by side on a grassy hillock. Saint John’s sturdy toes interrupt a carpet of wild flowers, including yellow dandelions, violets and strawberries.A lion sits at Saint Jerome’s feet – according to his legend, when li...
These saints come from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in about 1450 for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. Other parts of this altarpiece are also in the National Gallery.San Giovanni was a Camaldolese nunnery and the saints on its altarpieces were...
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The everyday quality of this simple functional bridge may have particularly appealed to Jacob Maris, and he paints it without embellishment or narrative incident. He also made a watercolour of the same view in 1875, but in this oil painting he emphasises the bridge’s monumentality by increasing t...
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Metsu has highlighted the woman seated at the table – light from the high window falls on her bright red bodice – to confirm her as the centre of our attention.Her companion or teacher tunes his violin in the background, catching our eye with an inscrutable stare. It isn’t clear whether the viola...
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This painting belongs to a series depicting the Seven Works of Mercy that Sweerts painted during his stay in Rome. The central figure is a bald pilgrim poised to drink from a bowl. Sweerts shows the fundamental Christian charitable act of quenching the thirst of others, set amidst the vibrant bac...
Zoffany has portrayed Mary Oswald at the age of about 50. Probably born in Kingston, Jamaica, she was the only child of Alexander Ramsay, a Glasgow-born merchant who settled in Jamaica, acquiring plantations there and in the South American colonies. In 1750, she married Richard Oswald, a Scottish...
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In 1999 this panel was reunited with its pair, an image of Christ known as the Man of Sorrows. Together they formed a diptych, a painting made of two panels joined with a hinge.The Virgin Mary gestures towards the Christ Child, bowing her head towards him. He looks up towards her and makes a bles...
Jan Jansz. Treck’s complex but sombre picture is a vanitas, a type of still life that holds a moral message. A still life often presents costly objects in an elegant composition to be admired and discussed by the viewer, like the musical instruments, lacquer box, Rhenish jug and scarf made with g...
A thin-faced man kneels in prayer, surrounded by three saints. This is Bernardijn Salviati, illegitimate son of a Florentine merchant, and canon of the Collegiate Church of Saint Donatian in Bruges. The saints are, from left to right: Martin of Tours, with the beggar he gave his cloak to on the r...
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A path runs along a white wall with a grassy common to the right. The wall features two pale brown gates. Trees behind the wall suggest a garden or orchard. The tonality is light, with the pale grey paint of the wall overlaid with small, square touches of creams, yellows and pinks, giving a sense...
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In the grey early light of morning, on a glassy sea, the boats in van de Cappelle’s painting hardly seem to move. There’s no wind, the sails are hardly filled, nothing disturbs the water. Even the clouds seem buoyed up in the air like balloons bouncing along gently in the vast sky.Close to us, an...
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Martin Archer Shee painted this portrait of the actor William Thomas Lewis for himself. It was one of seven works that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1792 when he was just 22. Shee loved the theatre and many of the portraits he exhibited over the years were of actors and actresses.William T...
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Images showing the Adoration of the Kings were particularly important in Florence, where the citizens celebrated Epiphany – the feast which commemorated the event – with costumed parades. The shape and scale of this picture suggest that it was made as part of a piece of furniture.The vast entoura...
The infant cradling a dove to his cheek closely resembles Cupid in two versions of Titian’s Venus and Adonis, dating to around 1560, in Washington and New York. Yet the way in which the picture is painted and the range of colours used are characteristic of Titian’s work of the 1520s.This apparent...
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Christ gazes directly out at us from this small panel. Raising his right hand in blessing, he holds in his left hand a glass or crystal orb, decorated with gold bands set with pearls. On top of the orb is a jewelled gold cross and Christ wears a brooch set with precious stones.This is Christ as S...
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We can piece together who this saint is: his mitre (hat) and crosier (crook) identify him as a bishop, and a faint inscription in white paint to his right reads ‘OL VS’. The inscription on the left probably read ‘ROM’, identifying him when both sides were put together as Romulus.This seems likely...
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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...
One of the most important British paintings of the eighteenth century, Whistlejacket is probably the most well-known portrait of a horse. It is also widely acknowledged to be George Stubb’s masterpiece. The Arabian chestnut stallion had won a famous victory at York in 1759, but by 1762 had been r...
Painted chests like this are called cassone (literally ‘a large chest’). They were made to celebrate a marriage and were often used to store a new bride’s dresses and linens. Cassone were in such high demand in Florence that painters like Apollonio di Giovanni had workshops specialising in their...
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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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Although this picture shows an imagined interior rather than a real church, it is highly detailed. The lead of the windowpanes is visible, and the subjects of some of the paintings that hang on the pillars can be identified (on the closest pillar on the left, Christ is depicted with the woman of...
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This woman is most likely Sophonisba, an ill-fated but brave Carthaginian princess; she drains a glass of poison. In 206 BC Massinia allied with the Roman general Scipio to defeat the western Numidians, ruled by Sophonisba’s first husband, Syphax. Massinia fell in love with Sophonisba, but could...
This is the aftermath of the Crucifixion. The soldiers are riding away, and only Christ’s followers are left. Christ hangs from the Cross, dead or near death. The Virgin and Saint John the Evangelist stand on the left, while Mary Magdalene clings to the foot of the Cross. On the left Joseph of A...
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This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each painting Gonzales Coques has used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense. This is Sight, dep...
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This is one of three sections of a predella, the lowest part of an altarpiece. The main panels of the altarpiece show the Virgin and Child, surrounded by narrative scenes of the lives of the saints. The predella originally showed Christ at the centre with the 12 apostles, his followers who preach...
The Virgin Mary clasps two small children – Christ and John the Baptist – to her lap. Saint Elizabeth, mother of the Baptist, kneels beside her. In shadow, behind the brightly lit group in the foreground, are Mary’s husband Joseph and angels. Although the characters in this scene are from the Bib...
In the 1890s and early 1900s, Cezanne painted numerous views of the Bibémus Quarry. Situated not far from Aix-en-Provence, the site was renowned since Antiquity for its yellow-ochre limestone. But while the artist was mesmerised by the quarry’s chromatic qualities, he also had personal and intell...
Filippo Fasanini, who died in 1531, instructed the executors of his will to commission this altarpiece for his chapel dedicated to Saint Philip and Saint James in S. Domenico, Bologna. It is signed on the throne’s plinth: IERONIMVS. TREVISIVS. P.[INXIT] (‘Girolamo of Treviso painted this’).Filipp...
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This is a very unusual depiction of the Virgin Mary. She is shown standing, with eyes trained towards the viewer, the Christ Child perched in the crook of her arm. Her attire is exceptionally sumptuous and, as with the garments of the surrounding angels, it reflects contemporary Florentine fashio...
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This is an old copy, badly damaged in places, of a now lost painting that Michelangelo made for Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, in 1530. The Duke had recently received three mythological paintings from Titian, including the National Gallery’s Bacchus and Ariadne, so in accepting the commission M...
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An effeminate youth recoils in pain as he is bitten by a lizard, which clings tenaciously to his finger. In the foreground is a magnificent still life of fruit, with a rose and sprig of jasmine in a glass vase. Look closely and you can see the reflection of a room in the curved surface of the vas...
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A strong, determined woman is pushing a reluctant youth into a chariot on the left. This is Aurora, goddess of the dawn, who has fallen in love with a mortal, the hunter Cephalus. He resists her advances, for he is already in love with Procris, daughter of the king of Athens.This is one of two la...
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This is the final scene in Lancret’s series of paintings The Four Times of Day. By the silvery light of a spring or summer moon a group of women are bathing together in a woodland pond. One of the women standing in the pond is about to splash another who is lying on the ground, apparently testing...
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An Arab man wearing a turban attacks a woman. The dagger in his raised right hand points down directly towards her and he clasps her waist with his left arm. Her head is thrown back and her throat is exposed as she raises her left arm to defend herself. Another man lies dead before her, his turba...
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The Friedrichsgracht was a canal that ran though the centre of Berlin. While it still survives in present-day Berlin, much of the area has been rebuilt since the Second World War. This striking composition, dominated by the geometrical precision of the zinc roof in the foreground, is typical of G...
This elegant young woman is Christina of Denmark, the youngest daughter of King Christian of Denmark. In 1538, King Henry VIII of England was looking for a fourth wife, after the death of Jane Seymour the previous year. As Henry’s official court artist, Holbein was sent to Brussels to capture the...
A young soldier lies dead in a barren landscape, the sky growing dark around him. A deathly pallor tinges his face and his left hand rests on the hilt of his sword, as if to protect it. His bony, oversized right hand, the colour of decaying flesh, lies prominently on his chest. The man’s armour g...
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The damaged inscription to the right of the Virgin describes her: Maria, mater humilitatis (‘Mary, mother of humility’). The so-called Virgin of Humility is usually shown, as here, seated on the ground, but with the Christ Child breastfeeeding. In Venice, a city with which this artist had close t...
The luxuriant flowers in van Walscapelle’s painting loom out of the darkness. A single shaft of light makes them glow. His painting seems alive and moving – nature is busy. The flowers appear to nod as if a breeze has passed through, leaving leaves trailing, the petals of the tulip dropping, a ca...
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In this painting from early in Moretto’s career, Christ blesses his cousin Saint John the Baptist, who kneels beside a river, wearing a tunic of camel skin. This episode is not mentioned in the Gospels and is not otherwise known in art. It may be that Christ has just been baptised by the saint in...
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Greta Moll was a sculptor who, along with her German husband Oskar Moll, was enrolled in Matisse’s art school, which he opened in 1908. She had previously been a student in Berlin where her portrait had been painted by the German artist Lovis Corinth. On being shown a photograph of that portrait,...
Scenes of small groups of people making music were common in seventeenth-century Dutch painting. They reflected a popular social activity among sophisticated families and as such might symbolise the harmony of family life or friendship groups. But such parties were also an accepted way for young...
This painting was once thought to be a self portrait by Ducreux. However, it has since been identified as one of five pictures that he exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1791, where it may have had the title Portrait of a Gentleman by Du Creux, R.A. Based upon a handwritten note found in...
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An eighteenth-century label stuck on the back of this painting names the sitter as Marie Larp, and there was a Maria Larp living in Haarlem around the time the portrait was made. She married Pieter Tjarck in 1634, whom Hals also seems to have painted in a portrait now in the Los Angeles County Mu...
A bearded man wearing a yellow tunic trims vines that have been trained to grow up two trees. The branches of the vine are bare, while the trees have a few brownish leaves. Pruning vines is an activity carried out in Italy in winter when the plant is dormant, and in spring when the new leaves hav...
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A pale young man stands in a stone niche, almost naked and seemingly unaware of the arrows in his arm and leg. This is Saint Sebastian, a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity. When his faith was discovered, he was shot with arrows but miraculously survived.Here, the saint seems mo...
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Christ wears the rich cloak and the crown of thorns in which, according to the Gospels, he was dressed before he was crucified. But the wounds of the Passion (his torture and crucifixion) indicate that he has already died and been resurrected.Bouts brings Jesus’s torments vividly to life, showing...
Although he liked to paint scenes that looked highly realistic, Jan van der Heyden made adjustments to what he saw, and often created entirely imaginary scenes. Sometimes he would compose fantasy buildings, combining elements from more than one structure. Here his approach is slightly different....
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A young woman, dressed in a dazzling yellow skirt and red bodice, semi-reclines in a dark landscape setting, of which only some rocks and plants in the foreground are visible. Her wings and the trumpets she holds identify her as the allegorical figure of Fame. Normally Fame is shown with a single...
The Virgin Mary, in white, places her hand in Saint Joseph’s while the dove of the Holy Ghost hovers above the altar of the Temple in Jerusalem. The high priest joins the couple in matrimony, surrounded by a crowd of onlookers. Mary’s virginal companions on the right are balanced by her disappoin...
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According to legend, Saint Christopher was a giant, who was given the task of helping travellers across a river after he converted to Christianity. One day a child asked to be carried across, but Saint Christopher found him so heavy that he was bowed down with the weight. The child revealed that...
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This painting is one of a dozen views of the Gare Saint-Lazare that Monet painted in early 1877. He had known the station since his childhood, and it was also the terminal for trains to many of the key Impressionist sites west of Paris.One of the less finished paintings of the group, it is the mo...
This is the earliest surviving example of a life-size, full-length portrait on canvas or panel painted in Italy. We are not certain of the sitter’s identity, but he may be Gerolamo II Avogadro of Brescia (who died in 1534). He was the father of Conte Faustino Avogadro, who is shown in a portrait...
The Norwegian painter Peder Balke’s tiny monochromatic paintings on panel are among his most original works. He created them for his own pleasure after a lack of commercial success led him to give up trying to make a living as a professional artist in the 1860s. The fact that he was not aiming to...
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The Virgin is set against a gold-leaf background. Her heavenly nature is emphasised by her jewelled hood-trimming and the intricate patterns punched onto the painting’s gilded surface. The Virgin’s incomplete halo suggests that the panel may have been cropped at the top.A false attribution to the...
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Scholderer made several portraits of Luise Steurwaldt, whom he married in London in 1872. Here he has portrayed her almost in profile, leaning back against a shawl draped over her chair. She holds a Japanese fan on her lap but looks straight ahead as though lost in thought. The palette is almost...
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This is the left wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts) made for a convent near Delft in around 1510. The other panels, showing various episodes of the Crucifixion, are also in the National Gallery’s collection.Here we see Christ, his hands bound and the crown of thorns on his head, being...
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This panel was the first in a series showing scenes from Christ’s life, the Resurrection and his ascension to heaven and was part of a four-tiered altarpiece made for the Florentine church of San Pier Maggiore. These panels sat above the main tier of images showing the heavenly coronation of the...
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An unidentified female saint holds a martyr’s palm and a richly bound book. Her wrinkled skin indicates that she is no longer a young woman. Although her clothing is restrained, she is dressed as a laywoman rather than a nun.This painting formed part of the upper level of a large polyptych (multi...
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According to the legend, Saint Ursula, a Christian princess from Britain or Brittany, made a holy pilgrimage to Rome with 11,000 virgins. Dressed in yellow and holding a flag with a red cross, Ursula watches her companions embark on their return voyage. They carry bows and arrows, weapons that re...
On display elsewhere
This middle-aged man regards us with a serious and thoughtful gaze. Greuze took great care painting his face, using a series of glazes to capture his slightly droopy eyes, barely parted lips, pink cheeks and light grey stubble. His blue velvet jacket is decorated with a gold trim and gold-coloure...
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This work, with its preliminary drawing left visible, is typical of Rousseau’s later style. In the distance a chain of hills is sketched in blue. A plain in the foreground is dappled in yellow, echoing the fragmented light of the sky. In the sky itself the thin application of blue paint leaves...
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One of Raphael’s earliest works, this altarpiece was commissioned by the wool merchant and banker Domenico Gavari for his burial chapel dedicated to Saint Jerome in the church of S. Domenico in Città di Castello, Umbria.Christ’s body hangs from the Cross. Two angels balance on delicate slivers of...
This painting is a nineteenth-century copy of The Virgin and Child with an Angel by Francesco Francia (Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh). It is highly unusual because it is a forgery, made to deceive.When the painting was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1924 it was thought to be by the la...
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This is a landscape full of sunshine, energy and life. The strong sweeping curve of the track dominates the middle of the picture. Two greyhounds bound along while a horseman and his companion chat easily as they go, and in the distance a pedlar with his pack ambles along behind them. The woodlan...
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The Virgin Mary crosses her hands in adoration as she gazes down at the naked Christ Child who sleeps on a ledge or table in front of her. His sleep is intended to foreshadow his death. This type of composition with saints accompanying the Virgin in an informal grouping is known as a sacra conver...
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This Dutch river mouth is a busy place. Vessels of all kinds are moored close to us, and others move across the water further out to sea. Jan van de Cappelle has broken up the vast sky with moving clouds that cast deep shadows in the foreground and with geometric – almost abstract – shapes made b...
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A little boy or girl leans on a cushion holding an apple. The child is positioned in the extreme foreground of the picture before a dark blank background, the closeness to us creating a sense of immediacy. The intense gaze of the glistening blue eyes and slightly parted lips – which Greuze has pa...
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This small and intimate painting is a cabinet picture intended for private domestic display rather than public exhibition. It illustrates a story from Metamorphoses, the epic poem by the Roman poet Ovid. The wood nymph Syrinx is chased by the god Pan to the river Ladon, where she begs one of the...
A shaft of light from the low sun seems to point the way forward for the ox cart between the craggy cliffs. Long-haired goats chew on the brittle leaves of scrubby plants, but there’s lush greenery on the distant hillside above the lake. The cart is laden with household goods resting on straw, su...
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This huge oval-shaped painting, which is about 3 metres long, was commissioned to decorate a ceiling in a palazzo belonging to the Contarini family. The scale of the figures and the sense that they are above us hint at the intended destination: this work was made to be seen from below, and at a g...
This triptych – a folding picture in three parts – was most likely made for private contemplation and worship. The central image shows Christ crowning the Virgin Mary after her ascension to heaven. Orderly tiers of cherubim and seraphim (the blue and red winged creatures at the very top), angels...
This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each of these paintings Gonzales Coques has used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense.Here, Tou...
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This is Henry Dawkins II (1727–1814) of Over Norton, Oxfordshire; Standlynch Park, Wiltshire and Portman Square, London. He was a member of the Jamaica Assembly during the years 1752–8, and a member of its Council in 1758–9. His fortune was made through the ownership of slaves. By May 1759 he had...
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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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According to the Old Testament Book of Exodus, the Israelites and their flock were thirsty after failing to find water during their long journey through Egypt. God instructed Moses to stand in front of the people with the elders of Israel and strike the rock of Horeb with his staff. A fresh strea...
Following his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig on 19 October 1813, Napoleon was forced to withdraw west of the Rhine and retreat to France. As the French withdrew, they met a force of Austro-Bavarian troops, under the command of Karl Philipp von Wrede, on 30 October at the town of Hanau, near Fran...
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Figures placed carefully across the landscape lead us through the painting, from the peasants resting by a path to the rider and his white horse, and on to those walking towards a ruined arch and tower. To the right, a cow herder and his animals rest by the river while two women on the far bank w...
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This small oil painting is typical of the still lifes which, together with scenes of everyday life, form the core of Bonvin’s art. His still lifes often include objects associated with a particular profession. The two coins and what might be a ledger book suggest bookkeeping is the profession her...
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Thomas Howard (1585–1646), 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, was a prominent political figure and a distinguished patron and connoisseur of the arts. Rubens met him on his visit to England in 1629/30, when Arundel was 44 or 45 years old. This portrait isn’t dated, but may well have been made during...
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This imperious lady once looked down from the walls of the studiolo (study) at Belfiore, the hunting retreat belonging to the dukes of Ferrara, part of a decorative scheme showing the nine Muses. The theme was chosen by Leonello d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, and was begun by a painter called Angelo da...
Saint Jerome kneels against a rocky ledge in the wilderness contemplating the crucified Christ. Savoldo was particularly admired for his depictions of dawn and dusk and the dramatic lighting effects they produced. The painting is signed on the rock below the open book: ‘Giovanni Girolamo of Bresc...
The man in this portrait appears to have just turned away from the darkness surrounding him to take a look at us. His lips are slightly parted as though he might speak.An inscription on the back of the panel names him as Battista Fiera, doctor at the court of Mantua as well as a poet, though we c...
Botticelli painted at least six scenes of the Adoration of the Kings. This, one of his most expansive and ambitious, is painted in a circular format called a tondo. The figures and animals in the outer circle face inwards to pay respect to the Christ Child, inviting the viewer to do the same. Bo...
The optical illusion created by this painting is a powerful one. Rembrandt has used contrasts between light and dark – for example, the blacks and whites of the sitter’s clothes, the highlights on her nose and the heavy shadow under her chin – to create a highly convincing three-dimensional effec...
A old women, her gaze unfocused, clutches a rosary – a string of beads used in prayer – tightly in her hands. According to the writer Joachim Gasquet, the sitter was a former nun who had escaped from a convent, wandering aimlessly until Cezanne took her on as a servant.Gasquet found this painting...
Canaletto’s sweeping view takes in everyday life on the Grand Canal. A stout helmsman stands aboard a finely decorated passenger barge to the left, while fishermen draw their nets in the centre. A boat carrying two women seems about to collide with one of the fishing vessels.Across the canal to t...
The Virgin Mary stands in a stone niche, her eyes tear-stained and her brow furrowed. Her hands are folded in prayer. We can't tell if this is meant to be a depiction of a very skilfully polychromed statue or one of Mary herself.This panel and Saint Luke painting the Virgin and Child are the back...
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A plethora of piscine produce is presented to us: fish of all kinds are piled in baskets, tumble over the edges of platters or slip from the stallholder’s grasp – there are even mussel shells scattered on the floor. The two vendors ignore their prospective clients and look directly at us, as if a...
On display elsewhere
Verrocchio had a large and active studio in Florence, and trained many artists who would become leading figures in the Florentine Renaissance, including Botticelli and Leonardo da Vinci. He usually collaborated closely with his students, giving them the opportunity to work on important parts of a...
According to his biography, the young Saint Francis of Assisi, the son of a wealthy merchant, gave his expensive clothes to a poor knight. The next night God sent him a vision of a great palace, and promised it to him and his soldiers (that is, the army of Franciscan friars he was to found). This...
The Virgin holds the infant Christ close to her, drawing his cheek to her face. The pair are flanked by four saints. We can't be sure of their identities, but the one holding a book wears the brown robes of the Franciscans, a religious order of friars.The tender pose of mother and son derives fro...
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Giovanni da Milano spent much of his career in Tuscany, and may have painted this small panel in Siena. Christ and the Virgin are shown as King and Queen of Heaven, carrying orbs and sceptres. Images of them seated on a double throne are rare, though there are a few examples by Sienese painters t...
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Martin Colnaghi (1821–1908) was a picture dealer and collector with a keen interest in old master paintings, especially Dutch and Flemish pictures. He is portrayed in his outdoor clothes, sitting on a buttoned red leather seat in front of a large gilt-framed landscape oil painting; he has removed...
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We look across the Grand Canal towards the facade of the domed church of San Simeone Piccolo, completed in 1738 – it dwarfs the surrounding houses and a small workmen’s hut to the left. People potter along the quayside and climb the church’s steps to take a closer look. On the canal, several gond...
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The glowing Christ Child lies in a manger in a dark and dilapidated stable. The Virgin Mary kneels on the right beside Saint Joseph. Two angels hover in the darkness behind and three shepherds peer at the baby; the one in the foreground carries a lamb by its feet.The night sky above has opened to...
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This altarpiece was painted for the Buonvisi Chapel in the church of S. Frediano in Lucca. It shows the Virgin Mary with her mother, Saint Anne, and the infant Christ enthroned and surrounded by saints, from left to right: Saint Sebastian, Saint Paul, Saint Lawrence and Saint Benedict.In the main...
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Willem van de Velde was the leading Dutch marine painter of the later seventeenth century. This is one of his smallest paintings – it’s only about the size of a sheet of A4 paper.In the foreground, two boats known as kagen speed shorewards before a stiff breeze. These were sturdy, flat-bottomed v...
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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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A monkey pauses while picking peaches from a pile of fruit to snarl viciously at another monkey gazing longingly at the hoard. The setting is ambiguous: the rich display of corn, grapes, apples, pears, quinces and peaches is positioned on a stone ledge and overflows onto a smooth floor, where two...
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This dark-haired man with his striking ginger beard is said to be an ancestor of Count Lupi of Bergamo. The picture is typical of Moroni’s bust-length portraits of the 1560s. The sitter’s body, truncated by a marble parapet, is turned at a sharp angle to us and his eyes meet ours with a direct, a...
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This is one of the few surviving intact scenes which once formed part of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in the west of Germany. This painting is likely to have originally appeared to the right of the main scene showing the Crucifixion.Shortly after birt...
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Teniers’s imaginary landscape shows peasants at their leisure. The sheep on the far side of the river enjoy the best of the fitful sunshine, but with a few strokes of the brush Teniers created a shower of rain over the substantial village and the church in the distance.The men in the foreground p...
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This small picture could be the ruined remains of a competently painted portrait – it’s in poor condition, but the near eye has a complex catchlight consisting of at least three brushstrokes. The surface is badly rubbed, much repainted and obscured by dirt and discoloured varnishes. Thin brown ov...
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Two women retrieve a baby from a basket floating in a river, while four others look on from the bank. According to the Old Testament story (Exodus 2: 5), the infant Moses was hidden by his mother in a reed basket on the River Nile to save him from Pharaoh’s order that all the male children of the...
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In 1871 Monet moved with his family to Argenteuil, a suburb north-west of Paris. During his six-year stay there he painted around 200 pictures of the town and its surroundings. This picture is one of 18 Argenteuil canvases that record the snowy winter of 1874/5. The figures trudging along the roa...
This richly dressed lady, whose identity is unknown, sits behind a parapet against a plain, dark background. Her body is turning slightly away from us and her hand rests on the parapet, making it look as though she might be sitting at an open window. The parapet was a common device in Venetian po...
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Not many portraits by Jacometto survive but the National Gallery has two, including this one. The man’s costume tells us that he is a Venetian citizen. He’s painted in a style fashionable in late fifteenth-century Venice, which derives from Netherlandish painting: the three-quarter pose was new a...
On display elsewhere
This large painting tells the dramatic New Testament story of Saint Paul at the moment of his conversion to Christianity. He had persecuted Christians in Jerusalem but was struck down on the road to Damascus by a vision of Christ, who asked him why. Paul was blinded, and Christ sent a man to rest...
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This very large painting was cut in half sometime before 1900. In 1915, the halves were rejoined in the National Gallery and some missing portions replaced.The way the family is grouped, with clear division between male and female, is significant. Father and son are together. They turn towards ea...
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This small preparatory oil sketch was painted as Puvis de Chavannes worked on a larger picture, The Toilette of 1883 (Musée d’Orsay, Paris). There are many differences between the two versions, not least that the finished work shows a more idealised scene. The topic of a young, partially clothed...
On display elsewhere
The Virgin looks up from her book at us and Christ, sitting on her lap, gestures to himself – his future crucifixion is the subject of her text. The young Saint John the Baptist, wearing his traditional rough camel skin, clasps his hands in prayer.Saint Paul stands to the left holding his usual a...
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It is the animals which take centre stage in this picture. On a grassy riverside knoll, four cows and a magnificent jet black horse are spotlit by the warm afternoon sun. Aelbert Cuyp was a brilliant painter of these beasts, especially cattle. He knew exactly how to convey their languor and ponde...
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This painting of the Virgin and Child enthroned was once the central element of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. In it, heaven and earth mingle. The Virgin is depicted as Queen of Heaven, although she has no crown: behind her is a green silk...
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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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Saint Catherine sits reading a book on the left, beside the broken spiked wheel on which she was tortured during her martyrdom. The Virgin Mary’s elderly cousin Saint Elizabeth sits on the right holding her son, the infant John the Baptist. He wears his traditional camel skin and holds a scroll...
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Lippo di Dalmasio painted several images of the Virgin of Humility, so-called because she is shown sitting on the ground. Here she sits in a grassy meadow holding the Christ Child on her lap. Mother and child are absorbed in each other, and the infant Christ tugs at her veil as any baby might.Th...
There’s no doubt about where our gaze is directed here. A dramatic shaft of sunlight cuts through the gloom to highlight the empty eye sockets and gap-toothed grin of a skull which lolls to one side on the edge of the table. We are staring death in the face, while the snuffed-out lamp and ticking...
The Virgin Mary is shown in close-up with the Christ Child cradled in one arm. She wears a purple dress, which now looks greyish, with turned back cuffs. Christ is balanced rather precariously on the shelf at the front, his limbs awkwardly splayed in a contorted pose, perhaps to display his genit...
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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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A fierce-looking old man with a fantastically curled beard glowers from a gilded background. He wears a monastic habit (a long, loose garment) – this is Anthony Abbot, the founder of Christian monasticism. He almost certainly once formed part of a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) and was p...
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Solomon was an Old Testament King of Israel known for his great wisdom. The Queen of Sheba came to Jerusalem from South Arabia to test Solomon’s wisdom for herself (1 Kings 10: 1–13). She was accompanied by a great retinue bearing spices, gold and precious stones.She kneels in reverence before K...
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Philips Wouwerman has captured the violence and cruelty of battle as it was in seventeenth-century Europe, when Holland was closely involved in the wars that raged across the continent. Most of the scene is in shadow, with details picked out in one or two flashes of colour: a horse’s rump, a red...
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Haarlem’s Grote Kerk is filled with people, though they are dwarfed by the architecture of the church. Gerrit Berckheyde painted the exterior of Haarlem’s most important church many times, but interior scenes of the same building by his hand are much rarer.With a few exceptions, the vast congrega...
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This painting, like its pendant Buildings and Figures near a River with Shipping is a capriccio, a scene made up of elements drawn from reality and fantasy. The cascade at the right and the colourful figures on the opposite bank – resting shepherds, elegantly dressed ladies, and a milkmaid attend...
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When this portrait was made, Philips Lucasz. was in his thirties and an important official in the Dutch East India Company. He had been in charge of the company’s fleet, which had sailed home from the East Indies in December 1633 and was to leave Holland again on 2 May 1635, shortly after this pi...
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This panel depicts Saint Nicholas of Tolentino, a thirteenth-century mystic, and an unidentified bishop saint. It formed part of an altarpiece of which at least two other fragments are also in the National Gallery’s collection. It was positioned to the left of a central panel that depicts the Vir...
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The Virgin’s sculptural presence – her voluminous draperies look as though carved from stone – is a moment of stillness in this little panel that rings with colour, pattern and gold details.Gozzoli, who trained as a goldsmith and also painted illuminated manuscripts, was a popular artist among th...
A young man reclines in a rocky landscape, filling a bowl with water spouting from a rock. With his naked torso he looks more like a classical god than a biblical figure, but this is Saint John the Baptist, a forerunner of Christ (whom he baptised). John lived as a hermit in the desert, preaching...
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This exquisite little picture evokes the tranquillity of the early morning, perhaps – judging by the low, clear light and puffiness of the clouds – at the beginning of spring. The reflections in the calm water are perfect, undisturbed by the porpoises in the shadows. Two fishing boats appear on t...
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This small oil painting on millboard has a false signature of the Dutch artist Matthijs Maris. Maris studied in The Hague and Antwerp and also worked in Paris from 1869 to 1877 – his Men Unloading Carts, Montmartre (National Gallery, London) was painted during his time there. He settled in London...
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This is a cassone, or wedding chest, a traditional part of the furnishing of a wealthy Renaissance home. Pairs of chests were often purchased by the groom as part of the ‘counter-dowry’ and the paintings on them often told moral tales suitable for prosperous families.Here the wicked schoolmaster...
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This picture is made up of fragments from a circular painting (tondo) that was originally part of a ceiling decoration. It was commissioned in 1524 by Alfonso d’Este, Duke of Ferrara, for his castle in Ferrara. Originally it had five figures. The other surviving fragment, Boy with a Basket of Flo...
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...
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A lizard grasps at a shrub and tries to scare off a crane, which has trapped its tail under a clawed foot. A snake twisted around a vine above joins in, its long red tongue visible as it hisses at the bird.This is one of only two mosaics in the National Gallery’s collection as we no longer collec...
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This head and shoulders portrait is based upon a three-quarter length portrait of the Duc d’Orléans (1810–1842), the eldest son of King Louis Philippe and heir to the French throne, which Ingres completed in 1842. Following the Duke’s death in a carriage accident in July the same year, Ingres was...
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This canvas is the first of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.Trumpeters herald the arrival of the triumphal procession celebrating the victories of Julius Caesar during the Gallic Wars (55–50 BC). They are followed by men bearing flags and streamers. Ot...
Jan van de Velde was an Amsterdam artist who specialised in still-life painting. His compositions were simple, like this arrangement of glass, oysters and lemons. The knife handle protruding from the table was designed to demonstrate his skill in showing perspective.A seventeenth-century Dutch st...
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On 12 October 1654 – the date inscribed on the painting – one of the gunpowder stores in the city of Delft accidentally detonated, flattening a large part of the city. A local artist, Egbert van der Poel, was so fascinated by the event that he painted this scene at least 20 times. Judging from co...
The small size and rectangular shape of this panel indicate that it once formed part of a predella – that is the lowest section of an altarpiece. Predellas usually illustrated events from the lives of the saints depicted in the main section of the altarpiece. The saint who is about to be beheaded...
This exhilarating scene shows the annual regatta (boat race) along Venice’s Grand Canal, and Canaletto has successfully captured the crowd’s excitement as the competitors skilfully manoeuvre their craft up the canal. Although many of the figures in the foreground have their backs to us, we still...
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Barent Fabritius’s bleak, shadowy stable is coldly lit. The rays radiating from the Christ Child in the manger light up the people close to him, but even they bring little comfort. Only the deep, dusty pink of Mary’s gown and the shepherd’s extraordinary red hat bring a touch of warmth to the sce...
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This painting is probably a collaboration between Jan Wijnants, who was a specialist landscape painter, and Jan Lingelbach, who added the figures and the animals once the landscape was finished. It was not unusual for painters to work in this way in seventeenth-century Holland.What we see is prob...
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This panel is like a miniature altarpiece. The Virgin Mary and Christ Child occupy the central arch, with Saint Mark on the left and Saint John the Baptist on the right.There is a Latin inscription in gold next to the Virgin, which means: ‘Holy Mary of Humility’. This title was often given to ima...
During the final two decades of his life Monet devoted himself to painting the water garden he had created at his home in Giverny, producing around 250 innovative canvases. His paintings became increasingly experimental as he gradually abandoned depictions of the banks of the pond, its Japanese b...
In this rare survival – a Renaissance painting done on linen canvas – the Israelites, having escaped slavery in Egypt, are led through the wilderness by Moses and Aaron. The fleeing families, encumbered by bundles, dogs and even a monkey, make their way down a winding road. In the centre, a group...
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In this lively, informal portrait, Anthony van Dyck presents to us someone he had known for several years and whose company he clearly enjoyed. François Langlois was an engraver, art dealer and publisher who lived in Italy in the 1620s, which is where he must have met Van Dyck. Langlois was also...
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The conversion of the Pharisee Saul is described in the Acts of the Apostles (9: 1–9). As the Jewish conservative Saul was approaching Damascus to persecute disciples of Jesus, a light from heaven suddenly blinded him, making him fall to the earth. ‘Saul, Saul,’ Jesus called, ‘why do you persecut...
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Hobbema was a specialist landscape painter – this is his only known city view, a depiction of the ordered and harmonious relationship between people and water. We are looking towards the Haarlem Lock at the point where two of Amsterdam’s most important waterways meet – the Singel on the right and...
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Born in Honfleur, Boudin – the son of a ship’s captain – was constantly fascinated by the life of Normandy ports. He based himself each summer from 1864 on the coast, in Trouville and its sister town Deauville, which sit either side of the river Touques. In 1884 he even built a house in Deauville...
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This puzzling painting seems to be a picture in two halves. At the top the Virgin and Child embrace in a gilded sunburst. Below, Saint Anthony Abbot rings his bell and glowers at an elegant knight. This is Saint George, dressed in fifteenth-century armour, and a stylish straw hat – a contemporary...
In the late 1890s a number of dance troupes from Eastern Europe visited Paris and performed at the Moulin Rouge, the Folies-Bergère, the Casino de Paris and at a brasserie near Degas’s Montmartre home. This pastel may have been one of three showing ‘dancers in Russian costume’ that Degas showed a...
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This small painting is one of the earliest in the National Gallery’s collection. It was probably made in Siena – it shares many features with Sienese painting of the period – but its combination of images is rare. It is possible that it’s based on a Byzantine (Eastern Christian) painting.The Virg...
The magnificently dressed Virgin Mary is seated in a garden, on a turf bench supported on planks of wood. The Christ Child is on her knee, playing with a whirligig. Pulling the string on the toy would make the part with sails fly upwards like a helicopter.Such benches seem to have been common in...
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This small picture shows the moment that Christ, resurrected after death, appeared to Mary Magdalene. Mary – identifiable by her red robes and her long, flowing hair – had gone to Christ’s tomb to anoint his body with spices. She found it empty. Christ appeared to her, but as she reached out he s...
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This is one of a pair of panels from a piece of painted furniture, a cassone (large chest). They show the story of the Roman Emperor Trajan, widely known from Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend of about 1260 and retold by Dante in the Divine Comedy in the early fourteenth century. As Trajan prepa...
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Two women gather sticks by a watery clearing in front of a group of trees. The trees are arranged in an arc, with the most prominent left of centre and the others set back on each side. The composition, which shows the influence of Théodore Rousseau, is typical of those used by Diaz in his views...
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Portraits by Daubigny are quite rare, as he was primarily a landscape painter who was closely associated with the Barbizon group. He and Daumier, who was an artist, printmaker and caricaturist, had been friends since meeting in Paris in the 1840s. This portrait may have been painted between 1867...
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Wearing her finest clothes and jewellery, Madame Moitessier gazes majestically at us. She is the embodiment of luxury and style during the Second Empire, which saw the restoration of the French imperial throne and the extravagant display of wealth. Her distinctive pose is based upon a Roman wall...
This portrait of Mr Robert (1725–1806) and Mrs Frances Andrews (about 1732–1780) is the masterpiece of Gainsborough’s early career. It has been described as a ‘triple portrait’ – of Robert Andrews, his wife and his land.Behind Mr and Mrs Andrews is a wide view looking south over the valley of the...
Country peasants and smartly dressed gentlefolk assemble for a feast on the rolling hills outside Antwerp, seen silhouetted on the horizon. Cooks are busy preparing the meal in large cauldrons while birds wheel in the sky above, anticipating the pickings soon to be had. A stone cross carved with...
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It is night-time, and we are looking into the dimly lit apse of a Catholic church. An elaborate metal baptismal font stands on red marble steps in the foreground; the column next to it is a font crane, which supports the font cover. There are still several visitors in the church and the side chap...
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We do not know the identity of this elegant young man in armour. Neither the wig nor the costume allows us to date the portrait precisely. He turns to look at us, as though glancing back for a moment, his lips slightly parted and his eyes directly meeting ours. The medal decorating his armour is...
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Pictures of mysterious characters dressed in exotic clothing against a background of dangerously steep mountains and distant castles were very popular in seventeenth-century Flanders. The idea of the romantic wanderer caught the imagination, and inspired attractive narrative paintings that were o...
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The Virgin Mary sits between two male saints, the naked Christ Child on her knee. The young man holding a book is probably Saint John the Evangelist, author of one of the four Gospels: he was conventionally shown as fair haired and beardless. The old man with the white beard and bishop’s crosier...
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This peculiar object is a perspective box – a rectangular wooden cabinet painted on the inside and outside, and open on one end to let in light. The inside is painted in such a way that it’s only when we peer through a peephole – there’s one on either side of the cabinet – that we see the illusio...
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A dark-haired, rather fleshy young man with a prominent nose and a distinct five o‘clock shadow on his chin, jowls and upper lip is shown in an interior. To his left, a window opens onto a hilly landscape with a walled city on the shore of a lake, under a cloudy sky. We don’t know who the sitter...
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A young lady kneels before an altar on which two tall candles have been lit. Her hands are touched in prayer on a large open Bible, but we have interrupted her devotions and she turns to look at us. The writing in a Gothic script above the altarpiece is the first part of the Lord’s Prayer: ‘Our F...
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King David and his companions emerge from the cave of Adullam. They cannot enter the city of Bethlehem and the valley below as the Philistines, whose pitched tents are just visible in the bottom left corner, occupy both. Nevertheless, three of the King’s soldiers have bravely ventured out to fulf...
Although dated 1874 on the canvas, Sargent most likely painted this study of a shaded veranda the following year at Saint-Enogat in Brittany. He spent the summer of 1875 there, when he was just 19 years old. The fluid brushwork shows the influence of Impressionism, a new way of painting, particul...
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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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The dark background and absence of any furnishings focus attention on the Virgin Mary, who makes direct eye contact with the viewer. She stands underneath an open curtain, holding her infant son as if to prevent him from falling from the narrow ledge in the foreground. A transparent veil does lit...
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Picked out in the glow of a soft evening light, a sleepy toddler lies on his mother’s lap, his eyes half closed, one chubby arm dangling at his side. His mother smiles down at him, the last of the sun catching her wide brow and her white shawl. Beside them a man leans forward with a smile, lullin...
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A lone tree, stark against the skyline, almost tumbles down the side of a dune. It seems to stand for the hard life led by farmers close to the sea in seventeenth-century Holland. But a patch of sunlight picks out two men on horseback, seemingly chatting, and a woman nursing a baby with a child b...
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The meaning of this scene is difficult to decipher, largely because the painting is very damaged and many areas are not original. The two foreground figures are genuine and may represent Saint Roch and Gothardus, who tended the plague sore on Saint Roch’s thigh. If this is the case, the picture m...
The infant Christ stands on the lap of the Virgin Mary, reaching forward to give her a kiss. She turns her cheek to receive her son’s embrace, supporting him as he seems to be a little unsteady on his feet. Strong lighting emphasises the smooth, pale skin of both figures as well as Christ’s golde...
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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Boudin, who was born and grew up in the Normandy port of Honfleur and later owned a framing shop in Le Havre, had a lifelong fascination with the Channel coast. He is best known for his paintings of affluent holidaymakers on the beaches of Trouville, but this painting shows a different aspect o...
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The Virgin Mary sits on a grand throne, a chubby Christ Child balancing precariously on her knee. This is the central panel of a two-tier altarpiece. It was painted between about 1456 and 1461 by Giorgio Schiavone for the funerary chapel of the wealthy Roberti family in the church of San Nicolò i...
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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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This is one of two panels, almost mirror images of one another, that flank either side of the central and uppermost panel of the large altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, Florence.Gathered together against a completely gold backdrop representing heaven are groups of angelic being...
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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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Saint Catherine rests her hand on a wheel studded with metal spikes – the instrument on which she was tortured for her Christian faith, according to legend. Saint Bartholomew holds a knife, the symbol of his martyrdom: he was flayed alive.The panel probably formed the right-hand side of a triptyc...
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A young man stands next to a dead stag which he has just shot with an arrow: his bow lies on the ground. His hands are flung up in horror, and greenery is growing from his fingers and head. This is the story of Cyparissus, a favourite of Apollo, who accidentally killed his own pet stag. He was so...
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Saint John the Baptist sits on a stone ledge, his attribute of a reed cross leaning against his shoulder. John was a hermit and prophet who lived in the wilderness, baptising people in the river Jordan and preaching repentance of sins. The scroll in his right hand bears a Latin inscription: ECCE...
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A group of fashionably dressed aristocrats canter and prance round a stag at bay, threatened by hounds in for the kill. Other riders gallop up or splash through the shallow river to join in the excitement, hat feathers flying and horns whooping. The horses in particular are beautifully painted in...
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The Christ Child stands on the Virgin Mary’s lap, making a gesture of blessing. She is seated under a red canopy, between John the Baptist and Mary Magdalene, who looks up towards heaven.Mary Magdalene raises up a small pot, a reminder of the spices she used to anoint Christ’s body after his deat...
This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.A young huntsman in a red cap and jacket holds the leashes of his two hounds. He looks at his hawk, which perches on his hand. A hunting horn is...
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The story of Saint Paul’s shipwreck on the island of Malta is described in Acts (28: 1–6), and Adam Elsheimer has taken advantage of the biblical description to portray a night scene: ‘And the barbarous people shewed us no little kindness: for they kindled a fire, and received us every one, becau...
The Virgin Mary, dressed in blue, visits her older cousin Elizabeth, who is pregnant with Saint John the Baptist. This episode is described in the New Testament and happens immediately after the angel visits Mary to announce her own miraculous conception of Jesus Christ.In the Bible, the women re...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.In what we believe is the final painting of this series, a man wearing a white apron and holding a knife slaughters a grey pig by slitting its th...
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Three men have followed a star – you can see it just inside the stable – to pay homage to the infant Christ. These wise men, sometimes called kings – here they all have crowns – are shown kneeling before him. One has set his crown aside and kisses the newborn’s foot, showing reverence to him.This...
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Christ’s body, wrapped in a white shroud, is being placed in a tomb by his grief-stricken family and followers. His mother Mary, clasping his wrist, seems on the edge of collapse; John the Evangelist holds her up. Behind them are Mary’s sisters, one wiping tears from her eyes, the other holding h...
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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A young saint has been locked up with four lions. This is Saint Mamas of Caesarea, a Greek martyr who was tortured and executed for his faith by the Roman Emperor Aurelian. According to his legend he was imprisoned and then thrown to lions – although not at the same time, as here.This is one of f...
An unknown man sits at an inlaid table wearing a large black fur-lined coat and black hat. His eyes do not fix on us but appear to be watching something slightly to our left. He holds the so-called Durazzo Book of Hours by Francesco Marmitta, created about 20 years earlier (now in the Biblioteca...
In this, the first of Lancret’s Four Times of Day, a priest attends a young lady as she takes her breakfast and gets dressed. The clock records the time as 9.08 am. The young woman, her breast exposed, has turned away from her dressing table to pour hot water into the priest’s teacup. As the pair...
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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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We don't know the identity of this girl, but she surely belonged to an important dynasty. Her large, rounded cheeks suggest that she is still quite young, but nonetheless she’s dressed in a stiff formal outfit: a ruffled collar peeks out from beneath a high-necked net bodice woven in alternating...
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In AD 8 the Roman poet Ovid, author of the poem Metamorphoses, was banished for life by the Emperor Augustus to the port of Tomis on the coast of the Black Sea. At that time, this region was inhabited by the Scythians, nomadic warrior-tribes who originally came from the area now known as southern...
This picture was made for King Charles I of England and given to him by Rubens, who was acting as an envoy of Philip IV of Spain, in 1630. The two countries had been at war for five years and both sides were keen for a peace deal. The painting is an allegory, the figures representing different vi...
This picture, painted in fresco (directly onto wet plaster), was part of a series of eight which decorated the walls of the palace belonging to Pandolfo Petrucci, the ruler of Siena. He commissioned the frescoes to celebrate the marriage of his son to Pope Pius III’s niece. Two others survive in...
In his first letter to the Corinthians, Saint Paul outlines the importance of faith, hope and charity, naming charity as the greatest of the three. At the time this picture was painted, charity meant combining the love of god with love of one’s neighbour.From the sixteenth century onward, charity...
Princess Pauline Sander (1836–1921) was the wife of Prince Richard Metternich, the Austro-Hungarian Ambassador at the court of Napoleon III from 1860 to 1871. Known as the ‘ambassadress of pleasure’, she was a glamorous figure in Parisian high society during the Second Empire. A pioneer of fashio...
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The subject of this painting is taken from the Old Testament Book of Ruth. The youthful widowed Moabite Ruth is gleaning (gathering up corn left after the harvest) to support her widowed mother-in-law, Naomi. The landowner Boaz has heard of her situation, and impressed by her devotion has instruc...
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...
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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Positioned on the waterfront of the East River, we are looking across the partly frozen river towards the tall buildings of Lower Manhattan. The warehouse in shadow on the left and the massive hull of an ocean liner on the right form two powerful diagonals that meet at the sunlit Manhattan skylin...
The strong wind blowing towards us in this picture is almost tangible. Water roars and tumbles over bare rocks that jut up through the foam. Clouds pile high and rush overhead, echoing the shape of the tossing trees below before they swirl and reform to make room for more, perhaps bringing gusts...
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A young woman gazes dreamily out of the picture, but not directly at us. She appears to be outside in a dark woody landscape. She gathers her semi-translucent shawl about her head but does not seem to have noticed that the front of her flimsy muslin dress has fallen down, revealing her left breas...
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The sun sets roughly in the centre of the picture, behind two tree trunks. The thick yellow paint expands from the sky to the foreground, and Monticelli has applied it using short, directional brushstrokes which allow him better to convey the light. Portions of the wooden panel used as a support...
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The coronation of the Virgin was a very popular subject in Florentine painting. Inspiration for the images came not from the Bible but from legends recounting the Virgin’s glorious reception into heaven by Christ, where she took her place by his side.Daddi and his large workshop of assistants pai...
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This panel was once part of a multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Florentine church of Santa Croce. The altarpiece had four tiers of pictures; this would have appeared in the third.An inscription, now quite faded and damaged, identifies the saint wearing a violet drapery: S.THA. (Saint Thaddeu...
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An unknown man looks out from this portrait with a self-assured stare. His rosy lips, soft eyes and pale, youthful complexion are framed by a curly white wig that falls down his back. It is held in place with a neat black ribbon, as was fashionable for wealthy gentleman of the time.Carriera was n...
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In the courtyard of this vast and palatial complex of buildings, a woman stands with her young servants. The bright red of her dress and the dark blue of her attendants’ outfits are echoed in the feathers of the parrot that is perched on the pedestal to the right. Two men seemingly demonstrate th...
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Christ’s body has been taken down from the Cross and is being carried on a shroud to his place of burial. His head rests limply on his shoulder; his pale, foreshortened body is the focus of a whole retinue of grieving figures, each expressing their sorrow in a different way.This small picture is...
This praying saint comes from the upper tier of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order – friars who lived in towns...
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Two men, in robes of icy blue and pink, are engaged in a heated discussion, their expressive hands emphasising their strenuously argued points. They are watched by two bearded men; another, in green, looks at the bare wall in the background.The subject of the painting is unclear. It was once iden...
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This tall, narrow panel once hung over the tomb of a Franciscan holy man, the Blessed Gabriele Ferretti (d. 1456). Gabriele was Superior of the small convent of San Francesco in Alto outside Ancona in the Italian Marche. He was famous locally for his fervent piety and for his visions of the Virgi...
As punishment for revealing the future to mankind, King Phineas of Thrace was blinded and had his food continually stolen by the harpies, who were half human and half bird. The story is told in the Argonautica, an epic romance written by Apollonius Rhodius during the third century BC.A naked woma...
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This painting is from the back of the predella (the bottom tier) of Duccio’s Maestà – a double-sided, five-tiered altarpiece made for the high altar of Siena Cathedral.It shows Jesus healing a blind man, an episode told in John’s Gospel. Jesus is shown wiping a mixture – made from mud and his own...
This profusion of luscious fruit and flowers, just past their best, may be a celebration of nature, though it’s anything but natural. The pineapple balanced precariously on top of a tower of flowers is enough to place it in the realms of fantasy. The whole picture looks as if it has been blown to...
Not on display
This idyllic Italian garden with its elegant figures, classical sculptures and tall, slender Mediterranean trees is a product of Frederick de Moucheron’s imagination. As far as we know he never visited Italy, but the picture is probably based on drawings and sketches by artists who had. De Mouche...
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An old man in a grey habit, cheeks sunken and toothless mouth drawn down, clasps his hands in prayer. This is Bernardino of Siena, the most famous and charismatic Italian preacher of the early fifteenth century. On his chest is a red medallion with gold lettering; it reads ‘IHS’, the monogram of...
Not on display
A commanding male figure stares out at us, his white lace collar, shimmering silk sleeves and red sash standing out against his sombre black clothing and the nondescript background. This is Don Adrián Pulido Pareja, a distinguished captain in the Spanish royal navy.He wears the Knight’s badge of...
Christ is stretched on the cross on which he is to be crucified – he looks straight at us to invite our sympathy. At his feet, two soldiers haul on ropes to pull his legs straight as another hammers an iron nail into his feet. A fourth knocks a nail into his right hand.His pale skin and nakedness...
Not on display
Two Dutch men-of-war are lying at peace, but with their function abundantly clear: the gun ports are open and their canon protruding. Presumably this is for maintenance or as part of a drill; at anchor in a quiet estuary there would be no other reason to have guns at the ready.For Simon de Vliege...
Not on display
This is a fresco fragment from Correggio’s Coronation of the Virgin, which he painted in the apse of the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. The fresco depicted Christ crowning the Virgin in heaven, surrounded by the evangelists and doctors of the church, and little angels known in Italia...
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Jacob Ochtervelt has focused our gaze on a brilliantly dressed woman standing at a virginal. Light falls onto her bare left shoulder and on the huge double dome of red satin that forms the back of the skirt and its train. She seems cut off from an intimate exchange between a female singer and a v...
Not on display
Boats of all shapes and sizes are working hard to navigate a stiff breeze which is whipping up the tops of the waves and flattening the sails tight against the rigging. In the middle distance, on the right, is a frigate; in the left foreground there’s a gaff-rigged transport boat or wijdschip. Bo...
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In his great dramatic painting, Rembrandt tells a story from the Old Testament (Daniel 5: 1–5, 25–8). The man in the gold cloak, enormous turban and tiny crown is Belshazzar, King of Babylon. His father had robbed the Temple of Jerusalem of all its sacred vessels. Using these to serve food at a f...
A pale young woman is set against a dark background. She is dressed sombrely but stylishly: her fair hair is drawn back under an elaborate sparkling net. She has several necklaces and she wears an olive green gown which is tightly laced across her chest and slashed at the shoulder to show her str...
Not on display
This was once the central and uppermost part of a multi-panelled altarpiece, made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence. Although it would have been displayed very high, right at the top of this large altarpiece, the limited colours, bold shapes and simple design mean it would have been...
Not on display
Clear, soft light illuminates a peaceful landscape, giving a sense that everything is in its place and all’s well with the world. But the rider’s attention is caught by a young lad who seems to point anxiously towards something likely to disturb the tranquillity. Crouched in the bushes on the lef...
This is a fragment of a painting in fresco, a technique that involved painting directly onto fresh plaster. It has been repainted and only a layer of tin remains on the haloes, which may originally have been gilded.It formed part of an image showing the burial of Saint John the Baptist; here, two...
Not on display
This panel of the Archangel Michael fighting the Devil was once part of an altarpiece painted by Crivelli for the church of San Domenico in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Michael is shown as a youthful prince, his sword raised with nonchalant ease to strike the writhing devil beneath his fe...
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These musical angels were originally at the top of the left wing of an elborate altarpiece that sat at the high altar of the Abbey of St Bertin in Saint-Omer, northern France. Beneath them Guillaume Fillastre, abbot of St Bertin and the altarpiece’s commissioner, knelt at prayer inside a Gothic b...
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Philip van Santvoort’s picture shows a violent episode taken from the Old Testament. Amnon, the son of King David and heir to his throne, desired his half-sister Tamar. He faked an illness and asked her to come and cook for him, then raped her.Van Santvoort has depicted Amnon grabbing hold of Tam...
Not on display
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...
We look down on a captivating crowd of people and across the Piazza San Marco, one of Venice’s most famous landmarks. Characterful figures draw us into the scene – like the elegant couple in black cloaks who stride across the square, the gentleman dressed in a red cloak and powdered wig or the ma...
A pair of good-humoured and energetic musicians are visiting an inn – the sign hanging outside shows a jug and a pair of compasses. One plays a bagpipe, the other a fiddle. The picture is an example of an eighteenth-century German painter imitating a seventeenth-century Dutch artist; in this case...
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A servant presents Artemisia, queen of the ancient Greek city of Halicarnassus, with a cup containing the ashes of her dead husband Mausolus, which she was said to have drunk in order to become his living tomb. Artemisia gazes solemnly upward, her face pale. With her mouth slightly open, she is e...
Not on display
In the Middle Ages, the Old Testament prophecy that the Messiah would spring from the family of Jesse, the father of David, was interpreted visually as a family tree. Here, Jesse lies at the base of the tree which grows from his loins. The ancestors of Christ are shown emerging from the branches...
Not on display
An enormous, almost grotesque pile of fish is brilliantly illuminated amid the gloom of its surroundings. The heap seems to consist mainly of skate, but propped up against it is what may be a red mullet. Other highlighted objects break up the gloom, from the saucepan hanging up at the right to th...
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Cupid, the god of erotic love, is complaining to his mother, Venus, the goddess of love: he has been stung by bees after stealing a honeycomb. Venus directs her attention towards the viewer instead. Her narrowed gaze appears flirtatious and she clutches the branch of an apple tree, evocative of t...
Boudin started off painting seascapes, but he found a niche in the 1860s producing small beach scenes. These showed well-to-do holidaymakers from Paris and further afield who arrived at the fast developing resorts of Trouville and Deauville to sample the health-giving benefits of seabathing and t...
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A saint clad in shining armour raises his sword to strike a hideous demon beneath his feet. This is the Archangel Michael fighting the devil, as described in the Book of Revelation. His multi-coloured wings meet over his head and curve protectively around the man who kneels at his feet. This is t...
A biblical heroine, Judith, stands beside a mythological hero, Hercules, depicted as an infant; though seemingly unrelated, both are examples of fortitude. Judith, a Jewish widow, is shown holding the head of Holofernes, an Assyrian general. The Assyrians had besieged her city of Bethulia, and J...
Not on display
Christ’s disciple Judas – visible just beyond the river, leading a group of soldiers to Christ – has betrayed him. Aware of his imminent arrest and death, Christ prays; a cherub appears and presents him with a chalice. The chalice refers to the words of his prayer: ‘My Father, if it be possible,...
Christ, holding a white banner with a red cross over his shoulder, reaches out towards a crowd of figures who are squeezed into the right-hand spandrel (the space above the curved moulding of the main panel). On the opposite spandrel three devils are crushed under the fallen doors of hell, which...
Not on display
A supremely poised young woman is painted in three-quarter view. Her right hand curls around the handle of a mirror, while she appears to be caressing a lock of hair with her left. She wears a white blouse under a black velvet bodice and yellow detachable sleeves over her arms. This study is one...
Lit by a shaft of sunlight against dark shadows behind, the group of figures playing cards form a colourful distraction in a rather grey environment. We are witnessing a moment of triumph: the man in the red coat has just produced an ace while his opponent, in the blue jerkin, has the expression...
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The Virgin Mary is seated in front of a cloth of honour, her hands crossed on her chest. The Holy Ghost, represented by a white dove, seems to shoot out at her from the left hand side: he has been sent by God to impregnate her with Christ.This panel comes from the top of a large polyptych (multi...
Not on display
This small painting shows Christ coming down from heaven to receive the soul of his mother, who lies close to death. He floats above her accompanied by angels, two of whom hold a white cloth in which to carry the Virgin’s soul to heaven.The grieving apostles are administering the last rites to th...
Not on display
Small waves scud across the sea, the boats running before the stiff breeze. In the centre, its white sail straining, is a Statenjacht (state yacht), a vessel used by the ‘States General’, the Dutch chamber of provincial delegates in The Hague. It flies the Dutch colours and the arms of the Provin...
Not on display
A woman turns towards someone or something outside of the picture. She wears an elaborate lace shawl and headdress, known in Spain as a mantilla, the transparency of which is brilliantly conveyed.The sitter is Doña Isabel de Porcel, according to an inscription on the back of the original canvas....
On display elsewhere
Margaretha de Geer was married to Jacob Trip – an extremely wealthy merchant and arms dealer – for nearly 60 years. Rembrandt painted large-scale likenesses of each, which were originally designed to hang together. Both are now in the National Gallery.This smaller portrait of Margaretha was paint...
The demure young woman in this portrait is Susanna Stefan of Nuremberg. The picture may well have been painted around the time of her marriage to Wolfgang Furter, probably along with a pendant portrait of her husband. A damaged inscription gives her age as 18 and a date in the 1560s; the coats of...
Not on display
This is a picture of an idealised city square, carefully painted to make sure that the perspectives, proportions and the effects of light and shade make it look as realistic as possible. Dirck van Delen specialised in painting buildings and imaginary architectural views, and the attention to such...
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Philippe Rousseau is best known now as a still-life painter, but early in his career he painted a series of landscapes in such places as Normandy and Brittany. This landscape dates from later in his life. The view is along a sunlit valley under a bright sky. While the actual location has not been...
Not on display
This woman is engrossed in sketching a stone bust; hanging over the edge of the table is an engraving. Copying sculpture and images such as this was part of an artist’s training. In the background we can see an easel, as well as books, a globe and a classical arch and column, which evoke a wider...
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Saint George taming then slaying a dragon is one of the most fantastic saints‘ legends of the Middle Ages. Uccello has compressed two parts of the story into one small and strange picture. The saint plunges his spear into the head of a dragon, whose odd shape mirrors the entrance to his cave. An...
This may look like a portrait of an elderly man but his unusually dramatic expression suggests otherwise. He is Saint Peter, one of Christ’s apostles. We know this because his head is copied from a larger picture by El Greco, The Tears of Saint Peter (Bowes Museum, Barnard Castle), which focuses...
Not on display
This is the first in a series of four panels illustrating the different times of day that Corot painted for his friend, fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. Two tall trees with full foliage on the left of the panel are offset by two smaller trees on the right. Corot’s use of trees on either s...
Christ stares calmly out at us from the heart of this picture, his serenity a vivid contrast to the brutality of his tormentors. At the back are two soldiers, one about to force the crown of thorns onto Christ’s head. In front two men kneel in mock homage; one seems about to tear off Christ’s rob...
Stables were found everywhere in the seventeenth century – but this is no ordinary one. A peacock is perched on a branch at the entrance. Outside, there’s part of a weathered but grand building; birds nest on its roof and climbing plants drift over windows. The entrance and the trees give an air...
In a vaguely wooded setting a woman traditionally identified as Venus sits with two naked cupids pressing into her lap from either side. The whole is very rapidly and thickly painted. Venus’s skirt is painted in thick strokes of pinks and whites swirled together, with dashes of red-brown helping...
On display elsewhere
Against a grey sky threatening snow, the people of Dordrecht are out on the ice. In the foreground, a man chats to a woman with a laden basket. The sharp pink of her jacket is echoed on the saddle cloth of one of the horses on the left, the vivid colour enlivening the muted browns and greys of th...
On display elsewhere
Louis-Gabriele-Eugène Isabey was among the first of the nineteenth-century French painters to be inspired by the Normandy coast, which was to become an important location for artists such as Boudin and Monet. Yet despite its title, this small picture may not be set in Dieppe, a fishing port on th...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary sits on a carved and inlaid marble throne, the Christ Child perched in the crook of her arm. In a tender gesture he grasps his mother’s thumb; with the other hand, she holds the pink cloth in which he is wrapped between her slender thumb and forefinger.This large altarpiece has be...
Not on display
This isn’t a portrait – it is an allegory, an attempt to represent an idea or ideal. Interpreting the symbolism, however, is difficult. We see a young man, upright and slightly aloof as he turns his head to look us directly in the eye.The figure may be based on a book of iconology by Cesare Ripa...
Not on display
This wild and desolate landscape painting was once attributed to Rembrandt. In 1960, its attribution changed to Hercules Segers, but now it’s considered to be by an imitator of Segers’s imaginative and highly original etchings.As most of Segers’s are, the landscape is imaginary. The rushing strea...
Not on display
In 1621, at the age of ten, Ferdinand II de' Medici succeeded his father Cosimo II as Grand Duke of Tuscany, assuming power in 1627. He is shown here with Vittoria della Rovere, his wife; the couple had married in 1634.Ferdinand wears a commander’s sash and the cross of the military order of San...
Not on display
The Passion of Christ (the episodes connected with his crucifixion and resurrection) is narrated in five scenes from left to right, starting with the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane, moving through Christ’s betrayal and arrest to the Crucifixion, Deposition and Resurrection.This is the predella...
The Virgin Mary in her chamber is greeted by Christ, risen from the dead. He is accompanied by the multitude who followed him out of limbo. This painting belonged to Isabella of Castile, Queen of Spain, and was listed with 46 companion panels in an inventory in 1505. The panels – 27 survive in va...
This young, contemplative saint dressed as a bishop has been identified as Saint Augustine, the influential theologian and philosopher who was Bishop of Hippo (in north Africa) in the fourth century. The folds of the draperies he wears are so soft and light that they appear to be made of a very f...
Not on display
This painting is part of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. It depicts Saint Filippo Benizzi and is situated to the right of an image of the Nativity, above a panel of Saint Jerome.Saint Filippo Benizzi (1233–1285) was born in Florence. He became fifth general of the Order o...
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The dancers in Degas’s painting are clouded in a mist of tulle, but two striking heads of red hair seem to anchor the blurred forms moving in space. Arms and legs curve and stretch, delicate white skirts toss and sway. The white tutus depicted here are the practice dress worn by the younger dance...
This painting was made as part of a group of four works that tell the story of the life of Florence’s patron saint, Zenobius; it is the first of the series. It shows four scenes of his early life as a Christian, from his rejection of marriage to his ordination as Bishop of Florence.It can be read...
Not on display
An old man sits indoors by the fire with his elbow propped on the fireplace or stove, and his forehead leaning on his hand. He pulls his jacket closer round himself and wears a yellow wrap or blanket against the cold. The interior of his room is bare and simple, and not in good repair – the plast...
Not on display
A mountain massif in central Switzerland, Mount Rigi rises above the waters of Lakes Lucerne, Zug and Lauerz, its main summit reaching some 1,800 metres above sea level. This view is from Mount Rigi itself, looking west over Lake Lucerne to Mount Pilatus. To the left stands the Bürgenstock, with...
Not on display
This is one of at least four versions that Jan van der Heyden made of this scene of Cologne and its half-built medieval cathedral. It is an alluring view. He has captured the lengthy shadows and raking light of a bright morning in a city street populated with people from all walks of life.Most of...
Not on display
A saint, almost certainly Andrew, stands on a hillock in a mountainous landscape. On his right shoulder he supports the cross on which he was crucified. Andrew’s cross is usually depicted as an X-shaped saltire, but here it is T-shaped. Andrew had insisted that the cross on which he was to be mar...
Not on display
Lovis Corinth (1858–1925), was a key figure of German modernist art. Active since 1892 in the Munich Secession, in 1899 Corinth participated in the first exhibition of the Berlin Secession. That same year he painted Dr Mainzer’s portrait, also in Berlin, and shortly afterwards he relocated perman...
Not on display
Saint John the Evangelist is shown on the island of Patmos. According to tradition, this was where he wrote the biblical Book of Revelation, a description of the events leading up to the end of the world.Gripping an ink pot in one hand and a quill in the other, the saint is deep in concentration,...
Not on display
A man looks out at us with his shirt opened to reveal his neck, disfigured by a goitre (a swelling caused by an enlarged thyroid gland). Despite suffering this medical condition, he has an amused expression and the artist has portrayed him sympathetically. He is evidently poor, as can be seen by...
Not on display
An elderly man in a lynx-lined jacket looks up from the large book he has been reading. He sits at a table covered with a Mamluk carpet, on which a gilded clock and two letters rest.The letters are both inscribed identically in Italian: ‘To the most Reverend Monsignor Giuliano with the most honou...
Not on display
This life-size double portrait shows the youngest sons of the 3rd Duke of Lennox: Lord John Stuart, on the left, with his brother Lord Bernard Stuart. They were only about 17 and 18 but they ooze aristocratic superiority and are dressed in extravagant fashion.Van Dyck’s ability to evoke the textu...
On display elsewhere
The Virgin and Christ Child are framed by a classical marble arch decorated with swags of fruit. Christ balances precariously on the sill, uncertain on his feet; his anxious mother clearly thinks he is about to fall off the edge. In a gesture familiar to all parents of toddlers, she holds her han...
This scene tells the story of the murder of Saint Peter Martyr, a friar of the Dominican Order who was killed by members of the Cathars, a heretical sect whose teachings he had spoken against publicly. The saint is shown on the left – he has collapsed to his knees, an axe lodged in his skull. His...
We do not know this young woman’s identity. She wears an elaborate black velvet gown, the bodice of which is decorated with embroidery in white and gold thread and rows of vertical slashes through which the white fabric of her chemise can be seen. She stands before a green silk curtain and a tabl...
Not on display
Threatening clouds loom over the distant mountains and dwarf the cluster of buildings and stone bridge in the middle ground. Above the clouds, the sky is dark.There is a sense of movement throughout the scene, from the trees and clouds blown by the wind to the fishermen hauling in a net from the...
Not on display
Forty days after his birth, Mary and Joseph brought the infant Christ to the Temple in Jerusalem. According to Jewish custom, all first-born male children were to be taken to the Temple to be presented to God in a ceremony that involved the sacrifice of two doves or pigeons, visible here at the f...
In an unidentified landscape streaked with the long shadows of evening, a variety of people go about their business. Among the figures are courting couples and a number of gardeners, both suggestive of fertility and fruitfulness. In the front right corner, three women make music. The fourth membe...
Not on display
This panel, the first of a series of three in the National Gallery’s collection, shows part of the story of Griselda, a young peasant woman. We see her meet and then marry the Marquis Gualtieri di Saluzzo, who would go on to put her through a series of tests. Her loyalty throughout the ordeal ear...
A group of men out on a lion hunt are now being hunted themselves. In this brown monochrome sketch, Rubens – famously an accomplished painter of horses – has masterfully captured the movement of the rearing horses and thrusting spears, and the terrified faces of the men as they struggle to fend o...
This panel is a section of a predella, the lowest part of an altarpiece. The main panels of the altarpiece show the Virgin and Child and narrative scenes of the lives of saints. The predella originally showed Christ surrounded the 12 apostles, his followers who preached his message after his deat...
This small portrait is puzzling in many ways. We don‘t know who this man was or why he is holding a scroll, which is – rather strangely – inscribed on the outside. The painting’s tall, narrow shape is unusual and there are mysterious inscriptions carved into the very large, cracked stone parapet...
This is one of Zurbarán’s most austere and intensely spiritual works. Saint Francis is shown kneeling in fervent prayer, his clasped hands cradling a skull. Shadow obscures his face, giving us only a glimpse of his features. He wears the robe of the Franciscans, the religious order he founded in...
A little girl looks out at us, as if eager for us to tell her that she’s doing her job well – her smile a little nervous, the hand on the cradle clutching it tight. She looks no more than five years old, but she’s been given the responsibility of looking after the baby that sleeps soundly, button...
Not on display
Threatened with marriage to a monster Psyche, a mortal, is blown away by the West Wind. She awakens near a magical palace and falls in love with Cupid. He makes Psyche promise not to look at his divine face, but she breaks this promise and Cupid abandons her. The subject of this painting is taken...
Not on display
The young woman in this portrait is shown half length, hands folded in the conventional way for women sitters at this time. We don’t know who she is, or who painted her. Her dress is demure but fashionable and costly. She wears satin and lace, and pearls round both wrists, round her neck and on t...
Not on display
This painting was the right half of a decorative panel commissioned by Jean Schopfer, a writer who published under the pen name Claude Anet. In 1935, over 30 years after its completion, Vuillard cut the panel into two and reworked it; the other half, La Terrasse at Vasouy, the Garden, is also in...
Not on display
Cadmus, a prince of Tyre, travelled to the Delphic Oracle after his sister was stolen away by Zeus, chief of the Greek gods. There he was told that, instead of searching for his sister, he should ‘follow the cow outside and wherever it rests, build a new city’.When the cow stopped Cadmus’s follow...
Not on display
This young lady appears to be drawing back a green curtain to look out of an open window. She does not look directly at us, but sidelong at something or someone else. She holds an object in her hand which she may be about to drop over the window ledge as a token to her admirer below.The provocati...
Not on display
A small fishing boat tosses on a choppy sea close to the shore, its crew energetically poling their vessel away from the clinging shingle. High puffy clouds soar and spiral in a bright sky, the surf below running fast on to the beach and ebbing to leave wet sand behind.Once a calligrapher, Bakhui...
This is a painting of sheer animal power. Brilliant white light builds up the turbulence and excitement of the scene. Rosa Bonheur has made the convulsion of the muscles and the flying manes almost tangible, capturing the rearing, plunging animals and the strength and dexterity of their handlers...
This appears to depict a moment of bliss: an idyllic landscape, painted in an Italianate style by Jan Both, is suffused with the warm glow of a summer’s evening. In the foreground a group of elegantly poised nudes, added by Both’s collaborator Cornelis van Poelenburgh, catches the sunlight.But th...
Not on display
A young man gazes past us and into the distance, his hand resting on a marble shelf. We don‘t know who he is, but he holds a scroll bearing his age (20), the date (1494) and a monogram, apparently ’AMPRF‘. This is probably an early portrait by the Milanese painter Marco d’Oggiono, a pupil of Leon...
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...
Not on display
It is rare to see images of the baptism of Christ at the centre of altarpieces and this is quite possibly the first example where it takes this position in Italian painting.Christ stands in the centre of the river Jordan, naked but for a transparent loin cloth. He gazes directly at us, making a b...
Not on display
Paintings of the coronation of the Virgin Mary typically show her being crowned by Christ and God the Father, often accompanied by the Holy Ghost in the form of a dove. This work, however, mixes elements of the coronation with those of Mary’s assumption (when angels carried her body and soul to h...
This long panel is a twentieth-century copy of the predella of an altarpiece by Francesco del Cossa and Ercole de‘ Roberti made for the Griffoni chapel of the church of S. Petronio, Bologna. The original predella, attributed to Ercole de’ Roberti, is in the Vatican Museums, Rome.It shows scenes f...
Not on display
The classical-style pillar and red silk curtain add grandeur to this portrait of a proud-looking young man. The inscription on the balustrade to the right includes the artist’s monogram and the date 1662. The first part of it, ‘Cop’, stands for Copenhagen, where Heimbach lived for several years i...
Not on display
This is the only painting by Klimt in a British public collection, and it’s a fine example of the portraits of society women he painted in the early years of the twentieth century. Wearing a shimmering dress made of translucent white chiffon, Hermine Gallia appears almost to float before us. The...
An elderly couple stare past each other – and us – in this astonishing study of old age. Although prosperously dressed, the pair seem disappointed: their mouths are turned resolutely down, their eyes dull and their jowls sagging. Although they overlap, each figure makes a self-contained triangle;...
We are looking at a miraculous event. An elegantly dressed huntsman has been stopped in his tracks by an apparition: a large stag with a Crucifix between its antlers. This is Saint Eustace, a Roman soldier who, while out hunting one day, had a vision of a stag with Christ on a shining cross betwe...
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...
Not on display
A lone driver steers his horses and wagon down a steep bank into what seems like a deep ford. It’s an idyllic scene evoking afternoon light filtering through woodland, and the subject is typical of Rubens’s burst of interest in landscape painting in the last five years of his life. Rather than pa...
The portrait has long been known as ‘La Dama in Rosso’ – the lady in red. Moroni especially favoured pink or orange-reds. Here he has complemented the colour of the dress in the pinky-orange circles of Verona marble set in the floor. The sitter’s clothes are made of the most luxurious materials a...
On display elsewhere
These saints come from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in about 1450 for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. Other parts of the altarpiece are also in the National Gallery.San Giovanni was a Camaldolese nunnery, and the saints included are those who...
Not on display
Christ is shown nailed to the Cross at his crucifixion, flanked by the two thieves who were crucified alongside him. His mother, the Virgin Mary, and his disciple John (known as the beloved disciple) stand at the foot of the Cross.The panel comes from the predella, which was the lowest part of an...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
Piero de‘ Medici (1416–1469) was the son of Cosimo ’Pater Patriae‘ (’father of his country‘), and father of Lorenzo the Magnificent. They were all members of the Medici, the leading family in Florence during the Italian Renaissance. Although Florence was a republic at the time, Piero was in effec...
Not on display
A young man kneels in a prison cell, wearing the robes and horned cap of a doge (the elected head of the Venetian state). On the ground are wooden stocks and heavy chains with manacles from which he has just been freed. Christ empties a cup over the young man’s bowed head. Two angels arrive holdi...
Not on display
A bunch of flowers in a ceramic vase is displayed on a table. The tablecloth is decorated with flowers and blue stripes that help create a sense of recession into depth.Like most of Monticelli’s works, this picture is painted on a wood panel, much of which is left visible. Thick paint and blobs...
Not on display
This is the second of Lancret’s series of paintings depicting The Four Ages of Man and represents Adolescence (L'Adolescence).A young lady stands in the centre of the painting in a grand circular room with tall windows. She admires herself in the mirror held up by a young page while her hair is d...
Not on display
The Christ Child sits on the lap of his mother, the Virgin Mary, and looks directly at us. He holds a little bird in his left hand. In many religious paintings Christ is shown with a goldfinch, a symbol of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion). The bird here is missing the typical red pl...
Not on display
The four stages of human life are represented by figures with objects relating to their age. Childhood holds an empty bird trap, showing his innocence and naivety: he has let the bird escape. Youth plays a lute, symbolising pleasure and desire. Adulthood in armour wears a victor’s laurel wreath a...
Not on display
God the Father, seated on a cloud, holds a cross with the crucified Christ. The dove of the Holy Ghost hovers between them. Together they are known as the Trinity, the three elements which make up the Christian God. This kind of Trinity was especially suitable for an altarpiece: it emphasises Chr...
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This small oil sketch on paper, mounted on canvas, shows a dense mass of trees in a deep ravine. At the bottom of the picture some pale pink flowering plants suggest that we are at the edge of a cliff looking across a gully that drops steeply below us. Including these flowers and the tall tree on...
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The Virgin Mary sits in front of a parapet, gazing tenderly at the Christ Child on her lap. Behind her is a cloth of honour, of the kind which was hung behind royalty. The plump infant turns his head away from his mother to look at something outside the picture.Christ’s position is curious: it’s...
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In this small and intimate painting, everyday objects appear monumental and take on a mystical intensity. On a tabletop or ledge, a ceramic cup of water with delicately curved handles sits in the centre of a silver plate. A thornless rose in full bloom balances on the plate’s edge.That these obje...
A black eagle soars into the clouds with a naked youth clutched in its talons. In Greek mythology, Jupiter was infatuated with the handsome youth Ganymede, whom he abducted in the guise of an eagle and carried away to the home of the gods, Mount Olympus, where he was made their cupbearer.The sole...
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Although we do not know his name, we can tell a lot about Baldung Grien’s mature sitter from the details of his costume. The large fur collar of his coat, the jewel on his cap and the two gold chains around his neck show off his wealth. The longer chain bears two badges: the Virgin and Child with...
This panel, which comes from an altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence, belongs to a sequence of narrative scenes showing events from Christ’s birth, the Resurrection and Ascension. These sat above the three panels of the main tier showing the coronation of the Virgin sur...
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This must be one of the most famous and intriguing paintings in the world. A richly dressed man and woman stand in a private room. They are probably Giovanni di Nicolao di Arnolfini, an Italian merchant working in Bruges, and his wife.Although the room is totally plausible – as if Jan van Eyck ha...
One of Gauguin’s favourite paintings was Cezanne’s Still Life with Compotier, Glass and Apple, (1879–80, Museum of Modern Art, New York), which he acquired for his own collection around 1880.This still life is a homage to that picture, and repeats many of its elements: the fruit, the pottery, the...
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Sat at a grand table, Cleopatra, ruler of Egypt, is about to dissolve one of her priceless pearls in a goblet of vinegar, showing her contempt for wealth to the Roman general Mark Antony, who, dressed in red, recoils in surprise. The moment is described by the Roman historian Pliny in his Natural...
This scene is set in an imaginary Mediterranean port facing south into a gentle breeze that scarcely ruffles the sea. The sun is nearly setting, tingeing the clouds with a hazy peachy light. A gentleman and two finely dressed ladies are standing on the harbour, which is also peopled with turbaned...
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Gerrit Berckheyde has placed us among the citizens and the most important buildings of his native Haarlem, and a visitor to the market square today would find a view similar to the one in this painting of 1674. The Grote Kerk (Great Church), which is dedicated to Saint Bavo, dominates the composi...
This is the fourth and final painting in Lancret’s series of The Four Ages of Man, entitled Old Age (La Vieillesse). Lancret dispensed with the usual depiction of old people warming themselves indoors before an open fire to take the scene outdoors. A young woman rejects an old man’s advances whil...
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An ageing bearded man looks out of the painting, holding a statuette in his left hand. He is painted within an oval fictive stone frame and the statuette emerges from the painted space into our own, making the sitter seem all the more lifelike. The statuette indicates that the man represented her...
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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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Dughet’s storm paintings were among his most admired works during his lifetime and in the eighteenth century. Two shepherds tending their flock struggle against the wind, their arms raised in alarm as they encourage their sheep to move down the path. The tree branches bend and twist against the f...
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A young woman floats above a landscape, standing on a translucent moon and with a crown of 12 stars. This imagery is based on the New Testament Book of Revelation. In it, Saint John the Evangelist records his vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse, who bears a male child and is threatened by a dra...
Stratford Mill was the second of the six monumental paintings of the Stour landscape Constable exhibited at the Royal Academy between 1819 and 1825, a group that includes The Hay Wain (National Gallery, London).Stratford Mill was a water-powered paper mill (now demolished) on the River Stour near...
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The Virgin Mary adores the Christ Child sleeping on her lap. Giovanni Bellini was one of the first Italian painters to use natural settings to enhance the meaning of his pictures. Here, the still Virgin contrasts with the landscape, where the varying shapes of the clouds, from thin and wispy to f...
Although the grandest of the many portraits of Madame de Pompadour, this is also the most naturalistic image of her, which avoids the rigid formality or mythological trappings of much court portraiture. The former mistress of Louis XV, Madame de Pompadour had become an international celebrity by...
Breenbergh shows us an Old Testament story taking place in an imaginary Egypt, with luxuriant European foliage under a grey Northern sky and exquisitely detailed portrayals of antiquities: obelisks, a column, a pyramid and a stela (a carved commemorative slab of stone). Not all these antique obje...
Two young lovers sit on the steps of an inn under an Italian sky, wiling away their time flirting. He gazes up at her as she dips a sweet into his glass of wine, a pearl earring lightly brushing her neck, a feather wafting over her fair curls. A young Black servant boy in magnificent uniform watc...
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This uproarious crowd of mythical characters is noisy and ill-behaved, but meant to make you smile. The old man who has lost his clothes in the revels is Silenus – in Roman myth, the teacher and mentor of Bacchus, the god of wine. In the seventeenth century, the Roman myths were popular as subjec...
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This is the second in Hogarth’s series of six paintings titled Marriage A-la-Mode. It is a few months after the wedding of the Earl of Squander’s son to the Alderman’s daughter. The bride stretches sleepily, apparently after spending the whole night playing cards. The groom sprawls in his chair,...
It has been suggested that this picture shows Attila driving Beauty, Art and Pleasure before him. Attila, who is often known as Attila the Hun, was ruler of the Huns, a nomadic people who lived in Central Asia, the Caucasus and Eastern Europe between the fourth and sixth centuries AD.The painting...
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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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This panel of Saint Bonaventure and one of Saint Louis of Toulouse, also in the National Gallery’s collection, are part of a series of nine paintings by Pordenone from a ceiling in the Scuola di S. Francesco ai Frari at Venice. The original arrangement showed the Four Evangelists on square panels...
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The tall chimneys of the house hidden among the trees seem the most stable things in van Ruisdael’s picture, holding on to the steep hillside that slides down towards the river. The slender trunks of the birch trees on the right are twisted and crooked, and the leaves turning yellow are ready to...
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Guardi’s picture takes in the view across the Grand Canal, towards some of the grandest palaces in Venice: the imposing facade of the Palazzo Pesaro is in the centre and the Palazzo Corner della Regina at the far left.A funeral boat glides along the water, carrying churchmen and ornate burning ca...
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Claude takes the subject of this painting from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The nymph Echo is in love with the beautiful youth Narcissus, who rejects her. In Claude’s painting, the goddess Nemesis punishes Narcissus by making him fall in love with his own reflection in a pool of water.The castle in the...
We don't know who the boy in the portrait is, or who painted it. It was once thought to have been the work of François Duchastel, a Flemish painter living in Ghent, but the attribution is now considered uncertain. From his ornate, costly costume, fashionable in the Southern Netherlands in the 166...
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The Virgin Mary appears to the patron saint of Spain, Saint James the Greater, as he prays beside the Ebro River. He extends his arms ready to receive the statuette of the Virgin and Child and the column of jasper being carried by a swirling mass of putti (winged infants). The Virgin instructed S...
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The sun sinks behind a steep Italian hillside, casting a soft, gold light over a meandering river in the valley below. But the chill of evening is perhaps settling in. Huddled in his coat, his hat well down over his ears, a man rides his mule side-saddle.Behind them, a peasant drives two oxen dow...
A cardinal sits in a red velvet chair decorated with gold braid. One of his hands lies on the arm rest, the other holds his cardinal’s biretta (hat) on his knee. Behind him is a bookcase, the shelves of which are lined with very large leather-bound volumes.The sitter is identified by the inscript...
Self Portrait in a Straw Hat is a signed copy by the artist of a very popular self portrait that she painted in 1782 and which is now in the collection of the baronne Edmond de Rothschild. The pose is deliberately modelled on Rubens’s Portrait of Susanna Lunden (?) (also in the National Gallery’s...
It is likely that Corot painted this small oil sketch on paper in the spring of 1826, a few months after beginning his first of three trips to Italy. He painted a number of views that included the Aqua Claudia, a Roman aqueduct, which you can see in the distance, around five kilometres south-east...
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1682–85. Ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery's collection, and this one represents one of the four Cardinal Virtues. First identif...
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A young man kneels before a richly dressed woman enthroned in a classical alcove, and looks at a portable organ sitting on the step beside him. She is an allegory of Music and, along with Rhetoric (National Gallery, London), was part of a series showing the seven liberal arts that was painted for...
In some paintings a vast, empty landscape might evoke feelings of loneliness or even melancholy, but this small picture, probably painted by Jan van Goyen, seems to do just the opposite. It’s light and airy, with a patch of sun on glowing soil, and tiny, almost comical, trees, their branches mis...
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This portrait bust of the Italian Renaissance artist Andrea Mantegna (1431–1506) was made around 1880, and presented to the National Gallery three years later by the British collector Henry Vaughan.The bust is made of plaster of Paris with a ‘bronzed’ finish. It is one of an edition of casts that...
At the end of their long journey, three magnificently dressed kings offer gifts to the Christ Child, who is seated on the Virgin’s lap. Behind them, their retinue winds its way through the hilly landscape from Jerusalem, visible on a distant hilltop. This is the Adoration of the Kings (Matthew 2:...
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This scene of rural tranquillity is typical of the work of Paulus Potter, who was famous in his lifetime for his paintings of domestic animals. The hilly terrain and summer light are more reminiscent of Italy than Holland, but these are most definitely Dutch cows. Potter has observed them with gr...
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This painting is very similar to but roughly half the size of another landscape by Aelbert Cuyp, also in the National Gallery’s collection: A Distant View of Dordrecht, with a Milkmaid and Four Cows, and Other Figures. We don't know which was painted first but presumably one of Cuyp’s customers s...
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Two tall, slender olive trees stand on the rough ground at the top of a hill overlooking the sea. Their trunks are crooked and gnarled, the brittle bark catching the sun and glinting here and there.This is Menton on the French Côte d‘Azure. It was a fashionable resort in Harpignies’ time, but he...
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At first glance, Caspar Netscher shows two delightful children, both busy. The girl is learning to read while the boy plays with the dog, his toys, including a top, thrown down on the floor.There may be moral in the painting, though it was more likely to have been bought for amusement. In a popul...
Two shepherdesses relax in a lush woodland garden as the younger of the two attaches a sealed love letter (a billet-doux) to the neck of a white dove or carrier pigeon.This painting is typical of the pastoral scenes at which Boucher particularly excelled. It is one of numerous studio copies made...
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This painting shows Rinaldo, a Christian knight who has been enchanted by the Saracen sorceress Armida. He turns away from his own reflection in a magic shield that has been given to him by one of his companions to break the spell. Rinaldo later gives up his love for Armida and escapes.The scene...
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A man seems to be kneeling in a doorway or a window frame, hands folded in prayer. We don't know his identity, but he seems to be an Augustinian friar. Members of the Augustinian Order, which was founded in the thirteenth century, took vows of poverty and lived a monastic life. In public they wor...
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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 unusual shape of this picture is the first clue to its purpose, and the lively literary story painted upon it, the second. It was probably made as a commemorative but also functional household object, known as a birth tray or desco da parto. Such trays were given as gifts to celebrate a pregn...
This view is of the Piazzetta, an area between the Piazza San Marco and the waterfront (known as the Molo). Elegantly dressed Venetians and foreign visitors – like the trio at the bottom right – mill around the square, while government officials in black robes emerge from the Doge’s Palace.Beyond...
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The nymph Callisto was the favourite of Diana, virgin goddess of the hunt. Jupiter, king of the gods, noticed her beauty and disguised himself to seduce her. Titian has painted the moment Diana forces Callisto to strip and bathe after hunting and discovers her pregnancy. The drama is heightened b...
This painting makes up the right panel of a portrait diptych (a painting made of two parts) that depicts two future electors of Saxony, Johann the Steadfast and his son, Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous.Johann Friedrich was six years old when this portrait was made. Against convention, he was por...
Philips Koninck, who is said to have been a pupil of Rembrandt, is known for his panoramic landscapes in which a road or a stream leads the eye into the far distance. This vast landscape seems strange and rather eerie under grey, lowering clouds.Although there’s no sun, a lone woman shields her e...
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We are watching an intimate family moment, apparently unnoticed. Two children are being introduced – they are the Christ Child and his cousin, Saint John the Baptist. Although this meeting is not mentioned in the Bible, it prefigures the Gospel moment when Christ comes to John to be baptised.The...
Giovanni Agostino della Torre was a distinguished doctor and citizen of Bergamo. He had taught at the University of Padua, and the costume he wears is official or academic dress. In 1510 he was elected prior of Bergamo’s College of Physicians, an office he held until his death.The texts on the tw...
We don't know the identity of the artist, but he painted a group of works for Franciscan patrons in and around Assisi. These include the image of Saint Francis for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli, after which he is named.He made several painted Crosses on this scale. They were probably for...
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These scenes come from a text written in twelfth century by an English monk called Eadmer, an early supporter of the idea that the Virgin was conceived without sin; they conclude in Helsinus Preaching the Celebration of the Feast of the Conception and (below) The French Canon restored to Life.The...
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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This is no shy, hide-in-a-corner painting. It’s meant to dazzle and it does. It would have taken a long time to identify each flower and this is part of the picture’s purpose. Van Huysum is after, and achieves, excess: a celebration of nature, an entertaining puzzle and a display of wealth, cultu...
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The Aeneid, an epic poem by the Roman writer Virgil, tells the story of Aeneas, a Trojan hero and son of the goddess Venus. In Book I, Aeneas comes to the city of Carthage. Worried for his safety, Venus devises a plot to protect him: she sends Cupid to the city disguised as Aeneas' son Ascanius,...
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–85. The overall theme of these highly elaborate, showpiece frescoes is the progress of mankind by means of Wisdom and Virtue.T...
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A monumental Virgin Mary sits on a stone pedestal. The Christ Child, a solid toddler, is perched on her raised knee, his left hand resting tenderly in the curve of her left thumb and forefinger. He clutches at his mother’s veil; she cups the fingers of her right hand around his naked leg to suppo...
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A dark-haired man gazes to his right in a picture that must once have formed the right wing of a diptych or triptych (a painting made up of two or three parts respectively). He has not joined his hands in prayer, but his right is placed on his heart and he holds a rosary: he is clearly at his dev...
A grave, statuesque young woman gazes down at a positively enormous child, who lies sideways across her lap. Her deep red gown is open to reveal her breast, which she offers to her son – though he seems uninterested. He turns his head away from his mother to look out at the viewer, at the same ti...
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The high viewpoint in this painting opens up the prospect of the vast distance, heightening its very real feeling of terror – yet the viewpoint also places us at a safe distance from the scene, without it losing its hold. The chaos of the overturned coach, the rearing horse and the bodies flailin...
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The coat of arms on the left resembles that of Johann Feige, chancellor of Hesse (a state in central Germany) between 1514 and 1542, while the shield on the right may represent that of his mother. Feige moved in the same Protestant circles that employed Cranach, and is likely to have known the ar...
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Christ’s body has been taken down from the Cross and brought to be entombed by his grieving mourners. The Virgin Mary gently touches her son’s hair and face. Mary Magdalene, her long hair uncovered, takes Christ’s hand tenderly in her own. Beside her, one of the holy women present at the Crucifix...
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This panel comes from an altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore in Florence, and belongs to a sequence of narrative scenes showing events from Christ’s birth, the Resurrection and his ascension to heaven. They appeared above the three panels of the main tier, which show the coronatio...
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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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The scarlet coat of the horseman catches our attention and we instinctively follow the direction of his whip, which he points away into the distance. And the concept of distance – just as much as the animals and figures in the foreground – is at the heart of this painting. Aelbert Cuyp has constr...
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This painting was the central panel of an altarpiece commissioned in 1506 by the foreign students of Pavia University for their chapel in S. Maria del Carmine, one of the most important churches in Pavia. Saint Sebastian was especially revered in the town as, according to legend, the plague of AD...
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Boudin is best remembered today for his paintings of crowds of affluent holidaymakers on the beaches of Trouville and Deauville, painted in the 1860s. In this freely painted oil sketch, however, the mood is bleak rather than festive. Dark clouds have gathered in the sky and a torrential downpour...
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We don't know who this little girl was, but she was clearly the daughter of very rich parents. She wears a black, gold and white cap decorated with black beads, real and artificial flowers and tassels, as well as an ornament on her right ear. Her collar seems to be lace and her dark blue dress is...
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This altarpiece was commissioned by Francesco de Strata for the high altar of his chapel in the church of S. Paolo in Vercelli. The altar was dedicated to Saint Mary Magdalene, who appears twice in the painting. She stands in the place of honour on the right-hand side of the Virgin and Child, hol...
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The stories on this panel describe the conception of the Virgin Mary by her mother Anne. In the upper part we see a man slouched on the ground: Anne’s husband Joachim. His sacrificial offering was rejected at the temple because of his childlessness, so he fled to the hillsides with his sheep. Whi...
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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A rather anxious-looking bishop holding a book and a crosier (bishop’s staff) gazes to his right, while behind him a demure female saint looks at the floor. These are probably Saint Donatus, first bishop of Arezzo in Tuscany, and Saint Antilla, patron of Montepulciano, whose remains were venerate...
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We do not know the identity of this lady. The downturned corners of her mouth give her a somewhat mournful expression. The painted framing at the top of the picture is similar to examples seen in Northern European portraits, suggesting that it might be by a German or Netherlandish artist who was...
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This elegant woman is Saint Lucy. She once stood on the Virgin’s left in a small altarpiece which Crivelli painted for a side chapel in the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Lucy holds her cactus-like martyr’s palm in one hand, and a circular wooden plate in the othe...
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This is a rare example of a work by Niccolò di Buonaccorso – one of the most gifted Sienese artists of the fourteenth century. The panel belongs to a series of three: the others show the Virgin as a child in The Presentation of the Virgin (Uffizi, Florence) and The Coronation of the Virgin by Ch...
Propriety, order and temperance were important virtues in Dutch Calvinist society in the seventeenth century. People admired hard work and disapproved of wantonness. But they also liked a good laugh and the way that Jan Steen could make moralising entertaining.Some of his jokes are immediately cl...
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Rembrandt’s painting, unique for him in its tender intimacy, shows a young woman almost up to her knees in a stream. She lifts her shift and looks down with a little smile of pleasure at the cool water rippling against her sturdy legs.Although it’s not certain, this woman may be Hendrickje Stoffe...
Saint John the Baptist is shown between Saint Zeno, the fourth-century Bishop of Verona, and a female saint. Because of the finery of her clothing and her long flowing hair, she may be Saint Catherine, who was a princess from Alexandria. However, the saint is usually shown with the spiked wheel u...
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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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Géricault was a keen horseman, and his passion for horses was matched by his expert understanding of their anatomy. In 1813 he produced a number of oil studies and finished paintings, possibly including this one, of horses at the Imperial stables at Versailles. These paintings are characterised b...
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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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A young woman gazes provocatively at us. A long gold necklace lies on her flushed chest and loops between her breasts. A red carnation, sprig of thyme and frond of white jasmine are tucked into her chemise, which has slipped from her shoulder to reveal her left breast.Carnations were popular in b...
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The figure in black is the Greek archbishop John Bessarion. In 1453, after the fall of Constantinople, the capital of the Byzantine (Eastern Christian) Empire, to the Islamic Ottoman Empire, Bessarion became a permanent resident in Venice. He joined the Scuola della Carità, a religious confratern...
An elderly but muscular man with an impressive beard sits in a rocky landscape. Beside him is a pile of books, on top of which sits a skull wearing a cardinal’s hat. He leans on a second pile, and points to the text of an open volume resting on a rocky ledge. This is the fourth-century scholar an...
A merchant ship, probably an Indiaman, comes to anchor. After a long and dangerous journey, perhaps to the Far East or the West Indies, the white sails are being lowered one by one. The flag on the foremast suggests that this is the vessel of the vice admiral of a small fleet. The crew is busy an...
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A bearded Saint Philip stands in a landscape, immersed in a book. A slender cross rests against his shoulder, with another cross attached to it where Christ’s crucified body would have been hung, a reference to Philip’s martyrdom (he was crucified upside down).This painting was originally part of...
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We do not know the origins of this mysterious painting. It has the wide rectangular shape typical of Venetian votive pictures made to thank the Virgin Mary or a patron saint.The Virgin sits on a stone throne ornamented with sphinxes, symbolising wisdom, while Saint Joseph stands beside her. A war...
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In August 1874 Manet began work on a large picture of the Brasserie de Reichshoffen, where he was fascinated by the skill of the waitresses. While working on the picture, he radically altered his plans and cut it in two, completing each half separately. This snapshot view of the cafe is the right...
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This is the second of a pair of panels from a piece of painted furniture, a cassone (large chest). The panels show a story from the life of the Roman Emperor Trajan, widely known from Jacopo da Voragine’s Golden Legend of about 1260 and retold by Dante in the Divine Comedy in the early fourteenth...
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On his first visit to Paris in 1875 Mancini signed a contract to supply pictures to a leading dealer, Goupil & Cie. On a second visit to the French capital in 1877, cut short by a mental breakdown – he never returned – Mancini delivered five paintings to Goupil, including this work. It shows an e...
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We're looking at a landscape in the Low Countries, probably the flatlands between Nijmegen and Cleves in the eastern part of the Netherlands, which Cuyp had visited in the early 1650s. But the golden light, and that implied heat, is more reminiscent of southern Europe than the north. It was a com...
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At first sight this looks like a busy sixteenth-century street scene. A man sells poultry and other produce, piled up in baskets and barrels, in the corner of a market square. He lifts up two hens by their legs, feathers from their flapping wings drifting down and settling on the coop below. On t...
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We do not know the identity of the elegant young woman portrayed here, but her costume suggests a date of about 1540. She sits before a green curtain and meets our eye with a direct, confident gaze. The green curtain and the woman’s appearance and headdress are very similar to Bronzino’s Portrait...
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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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This bearded cardinal once stood at the left side of a small altarpiece that Crivelli painted for a side chapel in the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Jerome, one of the Fathers of the Church and a favourite saint of the Dominican Order as a defender...
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The Virgin, Christ Child and Saint Anne, the Virgin’s mother, sit in a small ‘paradise’ garden. Saint Anne holds a fruit, probably a pear, in one hand and reaches out to Christ with the other. A book lies open on her knees.The garden is edged by a turf bench supported by bricks, on which Anne is...
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Exciting pictures of ships pounded by high waves with a threatening sky overhead were Ludolf Bakhuizen’s speciality. One of the finest of the late seventeenth-century Dutch marine painters, his skills in portraying the turbulence of the sea were famous. The sea in Bakhuizen’s pictures has real de...
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In this small, oval-shaped portrait, an unidentified man turns his head slightly towards the viewer and looks directly out of the picture. A white shirt collar emerges from beneath his sober black jacket, which has small buttons running down the front. The reverse of the painting is inscribed wit...
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Saint Paul, who is dressed in a red cloak, directs the men in the foreground to burn a pile of books that represent the pagan tradition. He has travelled to the city of Ephesus (now part of Turkey) to encourage the Jews and Greeks to convert to Christianity, and his success is shown by the figure...
This is the main panel of an altarpiece painted for a Dominican church in Fabriano, in the Marche region of Italy. The Virgin Mary sits on a marble throne in a walled garden. She looks lovingly at the Christ Child balanced on her left knee, and her long fingers curl protectively around him. They...
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The Three Kings – Caspar, Melchior and Balthasar – present gifts to the Christ Child in the ruins of a grand building. The Virgin Mary sits on the edge of the manger while Saint Joseph, her husband, comes down a staircase just visible to the left. A crowd of curious onlookers, some wearing turban...
This crowded banquet scene shows Christ’s first miracle (John 2: 1–10). He, his mother and the disciples were invited to a wedding feast at Cana in Galilee. When the wine ran out, Mary told her son and he asked to have six stone jars filled with water. When tasted the water was found to be wine...
This painting by an unknown artist is based on Michelangelo’s drawing The Dream (Courtauld Institute, London). Michelangelo’s presentation drawings were made as gifts for his friends and were always intended as self-sufficient works of art. The Dream is probably one of an important group of such...
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We know very little about this lively, unusual painting of three men and three youths apparently celebrating the spoils of a shoot – the men all hold dead game birds. It’s hard to determine their relationship to each other. Perhaps we see a father (far left) and five sons, with their family estat...
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Four Roman soldiers – the guards of Christ’s tomb, stationed to prevent anyone stealing the body – sleep on the ground. Christ, holding the flag of the Resurrection, steps out of the tomb, its lid cast aside on the ground behind.This panel was part of the altarpiece Ugolino made for the church of...
Van Gogh painted this view from his window at the asylum in Saint-Rémy, following a severe epileptic attack which had prevented him from painting. Typical of his work at this date, the scene is based on direct observation but is laden with personal meaning. The hardworking ploughman, tilling the...
This portrait of the careworn Pope Julius II (1443–1513) is usually dated to the one-and-a-half-year period during which he wore a beard. He grew it in 1510 as a token of mortification while recovering from a serious illness brought on by the loss of Bologna to the French, and vowed not to shave...
This portrait was bequeathed to the National Gallery as a work by the fifteenth-century Florentine painter Pietro Pollaiuolo; its former owners were unaware that it is in fact a nineteenth-century forgery.Whoever painted it was clearly trying to imitate fifteenth-century Florentine portraiture; i...
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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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A herdsman heads across the scene with his cows to follow the path away to the right. The evening light catches his white shirt and the tops of the tumbling waters of a stream at his side. A slender birch tree seems to cling on to the side of the rocky slope, its tall trunk vanishing into the da...
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This panel shows Saint Ursula, and was once the right-hand shutter of a three-part folding altarpiece made for Paul Withypool, an English merchant and courtier. The opposite shutter, also in the National Gallery’s collection, shows Saint Catherine, while the central panel (in Bristol Museums and...
On display elsewhere
A love-struck man stares lustfully at a young woman. She in turn stares directly at us with a knowing smile, holding his chin with her left hand – a look and a gesture which clearly underlines her power over him. Meanwhile, in the gloom at the back of the room, an old lady looks in at the door: s...
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Mars, the god of war, is presented with a choice. Should he continue his march into war, or should he show mercy and retreat? Figures representing the different qualities of war and peace surround him, encouraging him to follow their example. Alecto, one of the three goddesses of vengeance (known...
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This was the central panel of a multi-panelled altarpiece commissioned in 1512 by Clarice Manfredi, a Dominican prioress, for the chapel of Saint Thomas Aquinas in the church of S. Andrea in Vineis in Faenza. Side panels showing Saint Thomas Aquinas and Saint John the Evangelist were placed to th...
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A blue-eyed man with a brown beard gazes past us. The date, 1543, appears in the top right-hand corner. The sitter has been identified from this portrait’s resemblance to a drawing in the Musée Condé, Chantilly. He is almost certainly Jehannot d‘Andoins, soldier, courtier and intimate of the Fren...
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Two saints, Peter and Paul, are deep in conversation over an open book, one pointing out a particular passage to the other. This painting comes from a polyptych – an altarpiece made of a number of panels – painted for the high altar of parish church of Porto Saint Georgio, the harbour of the city...
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Born in the fourth century, Saint Jerome was a scholar and a monk. His translation of the Bible from Greek into Latin is known as the Vulgate, and it is still used by the Catholic Church today.Antonello offers a peek into the saint’s environment through a fictive stone wall pierced by a broad arc...
On display elsewhere
Diana, goddess of hunting, stands between the huntsman Cephalus and his wife Procris. Procris gives her husband a spear, carried here by an attendant, and a magic dog. The painting is loosely based on a story in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The title suggests that the pair are being reunited after a fal...
The Three Kings kneel before the Virgin Mary and infant Christ, presenting their gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. This is the finest and most complex of Dolci’s paintings of The Adoration of the Kings.The painting is in superb condition: the richness of paint and refinement of detail are ex...
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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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The identity of the man in this bust-length portrait is unknown but it appears to be a true likeness with little attempt at flattery. The top of the man’s head is visible through his thinning hair, and the texture of his skin and beard have been meticulously painted. Although he frowns, the wrink...
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Domesticity reigns in this exquisite little picture. A delightfully pretty Virgin Mary balances a squirming, curly-haired Christ Child on her knee. She herself is perched rather precariously on a laundry basket, and her nephew, the young Saint John the Baptist, tugs at her blue mantle. On the oth...
Originally from Aix-en-Provence, François-Marius Granet studied with both Jean-Antoine Constantin and Jacques-Louis David. In 1802 he travelled to Rome with Comte Auguste de Forbin (1777 -1841) (later curator of the Louvre) for a brief visit; he returned soon after for a stay of 21 years, only re...
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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This little painting for private devotion was almost certainly painted for the Olivetan monk who is being presented to the Virgin Mary and infant Christ by Saint Peter. Saint Catherine of Siena stands on the Virgin’s left. The two little keys hanging just below the monk’s elbow are cleverly echoe...
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Christ’s body has been taken down from the Cross and lies on the white shroud in which he will be placed in the tomb. Behind him is the Virgin Mary, eyes raised to heaven in grief, and alongside her Saint John the Evangelist, mopping his eyes with a handkerchief, and a second woman, probably Mary...
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Pietro Longhi is best known for his small-scale paintings that give a glimpse inside the houses of middle-class Venetians and show people engaging in the activities of polite society. We don't know what this painting depicts, though it might be a scene from a play. In an elegant room, a servant h...
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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...
This portrait of Gainsborough’s daughters is likely to have been painted in Bath a year or so after the family moved there in late 1759. Mary appears to be about ten or eleven years old, and Margaret about eight or nine. Margaret leans her forehead back against her sister’s cheek as she holds the...
The objects on the table – an innkeeper’s slate, playing cards, a pipe, a silver cup, a tankard and a backgammon box – imply that this is a tavern. The sleeping woman might be the innkeeper’s wife, a barmaid or, possibly, a prostitute, and the painting is drawing attention to her vices. Cards and...
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A young soldier looks up in desperation at the horse bolting towards him, its hoof outstretched to trample him down. The beast throws back its head, frothing at the mouth as it whinnies in terror. The soldier’s own horse rolls to the ground; splayed over the rocks beside it, an armoured foot sold...
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Saint Lawrence is dressed as a deacon and holds a book and the grill on which he was martyred. This panel was part of a small triptych (a painting in three parts) made around 1480 for Benedetto Pagagnotti of Florence. The central panel shows the Virgin and Child and is now in the Uffizi, Florence...
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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...
This young woman appears to have been startled by something – she turns her head and clasps her blouse to her chest. Her expression seems calm, however, perhaps suggesting that she is familiar with whatever has distracted her. Her pose is based on the Medici Venus, a famous marble sculpture of th...
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Interrupted from her reading, the Virgin Mary raises one hand in surprise at the Angel Gabriel’s announcement that she will bear the son of God (Luke 1: 26-8). Rays of golden light beam down upon her as she conceives Christ by the word of God. Her lectern and folding chair, of the so-called ‘Savo...
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As with many of Turner’s paintings that were never exhibited in his lifetime the title of this picture was not his choice, but was decided on some 50 years later. We can’t be sure that it shows the north Kent seaside town of Margate, but the white cliffs just visible on the horizon recall other v...
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This apparently simple portrait of a young man was revolutionary in Italian painting. Until this moment, artists painted people either in profile view, so only half their face was visible, or by turning them three-quarters to face the viewer.Here, Botticelli paints the boy head on, mapping his wh...
It seems as if these roses have been tossed almost carelessly into the wicker basket – they tumble over the edge and onto the table – but the disarray is artful. The subtle colours – pure white, cream, pale apricot and pink – have been carefully balanced to establish harmony and the heads of the...
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Two peasant women and a child stand on the left, and black and white cart horses on the right. In the background two wagons are fully loaded with hay, and a dog perches on top of the one in the centre. The skyline of a village is shown in the distance.Monticelli made a number of paintings of peas...
On display elsewhere
At the age of 12, Jesus was taken to the Temple in Jerusalem by Mary and Joseph, who became accidentally separated from him. They found him three days later debating learnedly with the theologians there (Luke 2: 41). This is the moment at which Christ first identifies himself as the son of God: ‘...
The man in this portrait was once thought to be Gerolamo Casio, a poet from Bologna. He and Boltraffio knew one another and Casio even mentioned Boltraffio’s skill at painting in his sonnets.This attractive idea is now doubted, but there’s no question that the work is by Boltraffio. One of Leonar...
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The Virgin Mary stands behind a stone parapet, supporting her infant son with one hand; Christ balances on a green cloth lying over the sill. In the background you can see monks in white habits strolling in the grounds of a large church – one is accompanied by a layman and his dog.The monks are C...
According to the Old Testament, God instructed Abraham to sacrifice Isaac, Abraham’s only son by his wife Sarah, as a test of his faith and obedience (Genesis 22: 1–19). Abraham and Isaac make their way to the place of sacrifice. Isaac carries a bundle of wood for the altar fire on his back, whil...
This scene probably doesn't represent a particular place but is rather an impression of the Danube valley, where Altdorfer lived. It is one of two paintings by Altdorfer without figures, which reflected the development of landscape painting as a subject in its own right.The low viewpoint emphasis...
On display elsewhere
This little picture completely captures the atmosphere of a late winter’s day. The soft, muted colours convey the cold bleakness of the scene but also suggest the promise of coming warmth. The snow has mostly gone, although small patches hold on tenaciously, especially at the back of the house –...
Not on display
This painting was probably once the centre panel of a triptych (a painting made up of three sections) showing episodes from the Passion (Christ’s torture and execution). The dead Christ hangs from the Cross, and three angels collect the blood from his wounds in chalices.On the left are the Virgin...
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A soberly dressed man turns to look at us, his arm leaning on a large red book with gilded corner pieces and a central boss. Although the Latinised name ‘Leonardus Salvaneus’ was added to the portrait later, this may be a true record of his identity.The inscription on the ornate book translates a...
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This picture, inspired by the landscapes of Salvator Rosa, was probably painted by an Italian artist working during the eighteenth century. A rock in the foreground to the right of the figures bears a prominent ‘SR’ monogram – a ruse to encourage potential buyers to believe that the painting was...
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This is perhaps the most poignant image in the National Gallery’s collection of the pietà – the lamentation over the dead Christ following his crucifixion. It was a subject to which Annibale Carracci returned frequently, especially during the last decade of his life.Here, the limp and lifeless bo...
This intriguing picture is Boilly’s painted imitation of a print after one of his own compositions (possibly now lost). Although Boilly was an expert in trompe l’oeil, it is unlikely that he intended to trick the viewer into thinking they are looking at an actual print because he does not include...
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–85. The overall theme of these highly elaborate, showpiece frescoes is the progress of mankind by means of Wisdom and Virtue....
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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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Saint George plunges his lance into the jaws of the dragon which, according to legend, inhabited the lake outside the city of Lydda in the Holy Land. He has arrived just in time to save the princess, who had been presented as a sacrifice to the creature. The dead body of one of the dragon’s earli...
According to the Gospel of Luke, Christ was circumcised, like all Jewish baby boys, when he was eight days old (Luke 2: 21). He is shown naked, sitting on a cushion upon a table or altar, clenching his little fists as a priest performs the ritual. His mother, the Virgin Mary, gently props him up;...
The Virgin and Child are seated on a throne in front of a cloth of honour in this large and highly decorative altarpiece. They are surrounded by saints, in a composition known as a sacra conversazione (‘holy conversation’). On the Virgin’s right are Saints John the Baptist and Gall, the patron of...
Not on display
This painting was once a portrait, but it was altered to represent a saint. The hair of the figure was originally completely different, her hand was resting on a different object and her dress was decorated with gold around the edges. Later, after the dress and background had been completed, she...
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As ruler of the expanding Islamic Ottoman Empire, Sultan Mehmet II was one of the most powerful men in the world when this portrait was painted. Fascinated by portraiture and European culture, he sent a request for a painter to the Venetian authorities in 1479. Gentile Bellini, having recently co...
On display elsewhere
This triptych (a painting in three parts) shows the Virgin Mary just after her birth. Saint Anne, Mary’s mother, props herself up in her bed while midwives and attendants make food and prepare a basin for washing. This scene was particularly popular in Siena, a city devoted to the Virgin Mary.The...
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Cornelis Decker is a little-known Dutch landscape painter who lived and worked in Haarlem, often painting in the manner of Jacob van Ruisdael – as he does in this picture. It shows the view of a hilly landscape with trees tossing in the wind and a stream running through rocky terrain. On the hill...
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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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This small roundel of the Virgin Mary comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in Florence in about 1450. It was made for a side altar in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio. Other panels from the same altar are also in the National Gallery’s collection.This...
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This small roundel of the Angel Gabriel comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted in Florence in about 1450. It was made for a side altar in the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio.This is half of an image of the Annunciation, the moment Gabriel appeared to the V...
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Philip IV, King of Spain, and his entourage are hunting boar in a forest clearing. The King appears on horseback just right of centre, weapon pointed at a charging boar, accompanied by his first minister and possibly his two brothers. To the far left another boar is being attacked by a pack of do...
Two angels carry a small, naked figure upwards. Below is part of a roof; above, God the Father sits on a Gothic throne, ringed by angels with multiple wings. This is the top part of the right wing of an altarpiece that stood on the high altar of the Abbey of St Bertin in Saint-Omer, northern Fran...
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This small panel may be linked to Seurat’s earliest sketches and ideas for Bathers at Asnières (1883–4), although it is not normally included in the 13 sketches which have been tied to that painting.The carefully organised geometry of the scene, which divides the picture into distinct sections, c...
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A seated nun and a schoolgirl hold a skipping rope for three girls as another nun and more girls approach to join them. The ruins of the Tuileries Palace can be seen in the background.Lépine painted over a dozen views of the gardens which surrounded the Tuileries Palace in Paris. The Parisian res...
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Two saints – Peter and Jerome – stand on an extravagantly carved stone pedestal. They once formed the left wing of a triptych (an altarpiece in three parts) painted by Antonio Vivarini and his brother-in-law, Giovanni d‘Alemagna, probably in the mid-1440s.The saints’ names have been painted as if...
This altarpiece is a unique example in the National Gallery’s collection of a work made by a late medieval artist working on both sides of the Adriatic, the sea between Italy and the Balkan coast. The picture may be one of the earliest painted representations of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conce...
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This painting illustrates the belief that Christ was both human and divine: the embodiment of the ‘Two Trinities’. At the centre of the composition the Christ Child forms part of the Heavenly Trinity with the dove of the Holy Ghost and God the Father above, and part of the Earthly Trinity with hi...
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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An unidentified young man looks out at us with a direct gaze. Painted by an unknown artist, he is shown leaning against a stone archway covered with a swathe of white satin curtain. His expensive lace collar and cuffs are well displayed. His youth is emphasised by his sparse moustache and wisp of...
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of twelve that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–5. This scene corresponds to that painted on one of the two short ends of the grand Galleria, in which Giordano presents a...
Not on display
A bright yellow sun rises in the centre of the picture, beside a tree. Its vibrant colour stands out against the rest of the composition, which is darker in tone than its companion piece, Sunset, also in the National Gallery’s collection.Both Cezanne and Van Gogh were admirers of Monticelli’s use...
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The fourth scene of Hogarth’s Marriage A-la-Mode takes place in the wife’s bedroom. Now a Countess, she is following the aristocratic French fashion of receiving visitors as she finishes getting dressed. A coral baby’s teether hanging from the back of her chair indicates that she has become a mot...
The Virgin Mary, bareheaded and richly dressed, holds the naked Christ Child, who rests on a white cushion on a ledge. We are not sure whether the painting was once part of a triptych (a painting made up of three sections) or stood alone. The infant Christ could be blessing a donor in a panel on...
We don't know who these people are, but they wear the restrained costume of prosperous, Protestant Dutch people in the 1660s. Either woman could be the man’s wife; it has also been suggested that the younger woman is a maid, or the couple’s daughter.There may be some clues. The younger woman hold...
Not on display
The central panel of this triptych (a painting made up of three sections) shows the crucified Christ. Angels cover their eyes unable to bear the sight as they gather the blood from his wounds in chalices, which resemble those which hold the wine of the Eucharist, drunk at Mass. The fainting Virgi...
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This painting is part of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. It is situated beside the main panel of the Nativity.Saint Alexander was patron saint of Brescia and the church was dedicated to him. His position on the holy family’s right-hand side puts him in the place of honour...
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This elegant and rather haughty young man dressed in fifteenth-century fashion is in fact an early Christian saint and martyr. Sebastian was a Roman soldier who secretly converted to Christianity and was executed for his faith by the Roman Emperor Diocletian.This panel formed part of the upper le...
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This is the main panel of the altarpiece Raphael painted for the Ansidei family chapel in the Servite Church of S. Fiorenzo in Perugia in 1505.The Virgin sits in majesty on a carved wooden throne with the Christ Child on her lap. She draws his attention to a passage in the book on her knee. A str...
This full-length double portrait of a married couple is a powerful image of the pride and prosperity of seventeenth-century Flanders and its citizens. Dressed in costly black silk garments, both sitters are looking confidently at us. The woman sitting in a red velvet upholstered armchair sports a...
In this scene of day-to-day life on the muddy shores of the North Sea, Jan van de Cappelle has depicted a virtually windless day. We see a smalschip (a traditional transport vessel), its helmsman doing his best to catch what wind he can by setting the sails out on both sides. But they hang almost...
Not on display
The unknown little girl in this portrait looks out at us, shy and uncertain. Her auburn curls hang loose, framing her pink cheeks. She is in her finest clothes, the bodice stiff and restrictive, the silk apron sparkling white. Her overskirt is looped up to show that as much attention has been pai...
Not on display
This is a fragment of a scene showing the Adoration of the Kings, which was part of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. Two of the three kings kneel before the Christ Child, who lies in the Virgin Mary’s lap on a white cloth. They had followed a star to fin...
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A barefoot and bearded saint sits in a rocky landscape, prayer beads in hand. Discarded behind him is a red cardinal’s hat, and he wears a cardinal’s ermine cape over his rough wool habit. This is Saint Jerome, monk, hermit and translator of the Bible.Here he seems to have been up all night worki...
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From the 1640s to the 1660s the Low Countries experienced a series of severe winters, and canals and rivers froze hard for weeks at a time. This wintry transformation of the towns and landscapes caught the imagination of many local artists, and Aert van der Neer was one of those who specialised i...
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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...
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...
Not on display
Saint John the Baptist – who, according to the Bible, wandered the desert preaching about Jesus – is shown in the centre of this panel. He carries a scroll with his declaration of the coming of Christ: ‘I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare the way of the Lord’. He stands betwee...
The story of the death of John the Baptist is related in the Gospel of Mark (6: 16–29). John had criticised King Herod for marrying his brother’s wife, Herodias, and she sought revenge. At Herod’s birthday feast, Herodias’s daughter Salome so delighted the King by her dancing that he promised her...
The Virgin Mary kneels and bows her head before the newborn Christ, while her husband Joseph sits behind her on a low rock. Three shepherds bow in worship to the left. Despite its small scale, the painting demonstrates Signorelli’s immense skill at drawing the human body in complex poses, coverin...
Not on display
We know this gentleman’s name – Giovanni Cristoforo Longoni – from the letter he holds, which is addressed to him. His left hand lies flat on the marble parapet before him, drawing attention to his rings, which may indicate his wealth or official status.The format of the portrait, with its landsc...
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Jan van der Heyden had an outstanding ability to make buildings seem almost photographically real (at least, that’s how we might describe it today). He worked with extraordinary delicacy and precision, taking the trouble to delineate and shade the finest details of stone and brickwork and the pla...
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In 1252 Saint Peter Martyr, a Dominican friar from Verona, was assassinated in an ambush by a group of heretics. This picture was once thought to be a ‘portrait’ of the saint: we can see the hilt of a dagger which has been plunged into his heart, and a cleaver lodged in his head.X-ray imagery sho...
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'He who plays with cats gets scratched’ – in other words, he who looks for trouble will get it. This is an old Dutch motto that appears to be a possible source for Judith Leyster’s cheerful picture, and it’s been suggested that the painting was intended as both delightful entertainment and a warn...
An unknown man gazes past us into the distance. There is nothing to identify him beyond the scroll in his hand, which tells us his age: 38. His clothing is sombre – there is no conspicuous display of wealth and status – but it does suggest that he was a man of means.The man’s costume and the styl...
The game of golf was played in the Middle Ages, but it became particularly popular in seventeenth-century Holland. It was called kolf, and was played on the ice. European winters in the mid-seventeenth century were severe. Rivers and canals froze so solid that the life normally lived in a village...
Not on display
This painting is of a summer landscape in Cezanne’s native Provence in the south of France. Like the Impressionists, Cezanne was interested in depicting the landscape primarily using touches of colour. Although this painting shows Cezanne’s debt to Impressionism, his method is more controlled. Fo...
The Virgin Mary is seated at the centre of this painting, in the middle of a landscape. She is breastfeeding the infant Christ; a little bird (a coal tit) perched in the large tree behind her also feeds its young. Saint Jerome, kneeling before the Virgin, looks on in devotion. He clutches the sto...
The marshy pond in the left foreground blends into land rising to a small hill on the right, where two buildings are nestled behind a row of tall trees. In 1867 Corot made the first of many visits to Coubron, which lies to the east of Paris. During a visit in April 1873 he made a sketch in the n...
Not on display
According to the Old Testament Book of Exodus, Pharaoh ordered all Israelite baby boys to be cast into the river, but Moses’s mother hid him in a basket among the bulrushes. He was discovered there by Pharaoh’s daughter, Thermutis, who is shown here dressed in a yellow robe and surrounded by her...
On display elsewhere
This panel once formed part of the uppermost tier of a large altarpiece. It shows the Virgin Mary with her arms crossed in front of her, a gesture of humility. It was placed to the left of a central image of the Apocalyptic Christ, and opposite one of John the Baptist (both of these panels are al...
The Archangel Gabriel, evidently arriving at speed, raises his hand to gesture to the Virgin Mary, the end of whose cloak can be seen trailing across the floor at the bottom of this picture.This was on the outside of the left wing of an altarpiece possibly made for a member of the Bollis family o...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary sits on a stepped bench in front of a bed of roses, the infant Christ resting on her lap. He hangs on to his mother’s veil, raising his other hand in a gesture of greeting. Both figures make direct eye contact with the viewer, while an angel to either side holds a jewelled crown o...
Not on display
Despite the presence of a village in the background, it is not possible to be certain about the location of this pastoral scene. However, the composition is similar to a view of the village of Gisors in Normandy, which Corot painted in October 1873. This picture may be a pared-down view of Gisors...
Not on display
This portrait of Dürer’s father, who is identifiable by the inscription, was given as a gift to King Charles I of England in 1636. When Charles was executed in 1649, it was sold. It eventually entered the National Gallery’s collection in the early twentieth century.There are four versions of the...
Not on display
In this strange little picture, Pieter Verbeeck appears to be telling us a story, though it’s impossible to say what it is. A man, apparently a vagrant, sleeps under a tree with his dog. A patient horse waits for them, its rein hanging down loose close to the man’s hand. Another man appears over...
Not on display
We don’t know who the sitter in this almost postcard-sized portrait is. Although he wears the grey habit of a Franciscan, his hair is not tonsured – shaved on top as a sign of humility – as was customary for them. The precise identity of the artist is also uncertain, although he seems to have bee...
Not on display
A description on the reverse of this painting identifies it as a landscape near Annecy, a medieval town adjacent to a large lake in the Haute-Savoie region of France. The exact location has not been identified, however. As was usual in his landscapes, Renoir has used strong colour combinations, o...
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This is almost certainly a portrait of Susanna Lunden (1599–1643), daughter of the Antwerp merchant Daniel Fourment, an old friend and client of Rubens. The portrait was probably made soon after her marriage to Arnold Lunden.It’s a highly distinctive painting – the sitter’s dark, oversized eyes a...
This is a modello (a preparatory sketch of an entire composition) for a large picture commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Johann Wilhelm, Elector Palatine, and Anna Maria Luisa de‘ Medici, daughter of Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, which had taken place in 1691.The groom, dre...
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The Cumaean Sibyl is one of 12 pagan sibyls, or prophetesses, said to have foretold the coming of Christ. The Cumaean Sibyl, who takes her name from Cumae near Naples, predicted that Christ would be born to a virgin mother in a stable at Bethlehem. The inscription on the stone slab here refers to...
This small painting depicts a solemn religious scene. Two angels kneel in quiet contemplation next to Christ, whose body has been taken down from the Cross following his crucifixion. While the Gospels make no mention of angels alongside the dead Christ, two are said to have been present at his to...
This is the left-hand shutter of a three-part folding altarpiece commissioned by the English merchant, Paul Withypool. The other shutter, which is also in the National Gallery’s collection, shows Saint Ursula.Saint Catherine holds a fresh green palm, the symbol of martyrs – those killed for their...
On display elsewhere
This portrait is unusual among Moroni’s works in that the sitter doesn‘t look out at us but gazes to the right, apparently lost in thought. He is identified by the letter he holds (a common device in Moroni’s portraits and others of the time), addressed to him as: ’The most reverend gentleman, Lu...
Not on display
A young boy stands at a small wooden table fully absorbed in building a house out of playing cards. He is Jean-Alexandre Le Noir, whose father, Jean-Jacques Le Noir, was a furniture dealer and cabinet-maker, who commissioned several paintings from Chardin.The theme of a child building a house of...
This picture raises all the questions usually prompted by an unidentified sitter: who is this person, where is he, how old is he? The dark background gives little information. He’s young, and his clothes suggest he’s well off, but there are no further clues to his identity.When this work entered...
A horse-drawn cart trundles along a woodland path on the way to market. Two boys and their dog walk alongside its giant wheel, while two girls sit perched on top of the produce. Carrots spill out of a basket, and turnips, potatoes and cabbages are loosely piled in. The older girl raises one arm,...
This painting depicts the mythological story of Europa, daughter of the King of Tyre, who, while playing on the seashore one day, was approached by a docile bull. Draping a flower garland on its horns, Europa unsuspectingly climbed onto its back. The bull, who was in fact the god Jupiter in disgu...
This altarpiece was made for the meeting room of the Florentine youth confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin and of Saint Zenobius, which was in the Dominican convent at San Marco.Saint Zenobius and Saint John the Baptist – the patron saints of Florence – are shown on the Virgin’s right-...
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An elderly man, barefoot and with an impressive grey beard, is perched on a rock, engrossed in a book. This is Saint Jerome, translator of the Bible into Latin. His only companion is an endearing lion which lies peaceably in the corner – he had tamed it by removing a thorn from its paw.Bellini pa...
On display elsewhere
The holy family rest as they flee from Bethlehem to Egypt, trying to escape King Herod’s order that all boys under two be killed. Mary sits on a low wall that encloses a courtyard and a fountain. She has opened her dress and chemise to reveal her right breast, evidently to feed her son. Saint Jos...
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A bishop saint – Saint Zeno, Bishop of Verona in the fourth century – is exorcising a demon from a young girl; you can see the little black figure jumping out of her mouth. Her parents watch anxiously. Her father, wearing a crown, kneels beside her: he is Emperor Gallienus. According to Zeno’s le...
The Virgin looks away as the infant Christ leans forward to touch his cousin Saint John the Baptist under the chin. The presence of the infant Saint John suggests the influence of Florentine art, as he is rare in Venetian art before this date. There are several versions of this design which may d...
Not on display
It’s hard to follow what’s going on in this large and busy painting, partly because it’s much darker now than when it was painted. This is one of three battle scenes by Uccello showing the Florentine victory at San Romano in 1432.The Florentine commander, Niccolò da Tolentino, rides a white charg...
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This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1682–85. Ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery’s collection, and this one represents one of the four Cardinal Virtues. First identifie...
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This painting shows an episode from the mythological Trojan War, as described by the Roman poet Virgil in the Aeneid. The Trojans rejoice as they pull a large wooden horse into their city, believing it to be a gift from the gods; it actually conceals a band of Greek soldiers. In the background, C...
Saint Jerome, who translated the Bible into Latin from Greek and Hebrew, is reading in his study, surrounded by books, an inkwell, an unlit candle and Crucifix. A lion, his traditional companion, lies on the ground near his creased slippers. The partridge may be associated with both truth and de...
Dujardin’s animals are alive and realistic. They’re softly lit, the white wool of the sheep almost glowing in the evening sun; their solid, rounded forms are echoed in the puffy white clouds overhead. The flesh under the wool appears plump and heavy, and the skilled painting of the wool itself ma...
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In this painting, Raphael transforms the familiar subject of the Virgin and Child into something entirely new. The figures are no longer posed stiffly and formally as in paintings by earlier artists, but display all the tender emotions one might expect between a young mother and her child. The pa...
The Virgin supports the Christ Child on a cushion that rests on a stone ledge. He returns her affectionate gaze, pointing to his breast. The Virgin’s thick mantle, turned over at the edge to reveal its rich yellow lining, dominates the picture. This striking feature is a good example of Vivarini’...
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The Virgin Mary gently lifts her newborn son while Saint Joseph, leaning on his staff, looks tenderly at the Christ Child. They are surrounded by figures including two shepherds who join their hands in adoration, while others offer poultry and lambs as gifts. Two bound lambs are strategically pla...
It is likely that Bonington made this around 1825-7 at La Ferté, on the estuary of the river Somme in northern France. He probably painted it on location using a wet-in-wet technique – painting directly onto wet paint rather than building up layers or glazes over time – that enabled him to recrea...
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A bearded saint is being raised to heaven by Christ, who leans out of a cloud to grasp him by the wrists. This is Saint John the Evangelist, usually shown as a young man, but here old, balding and bearded.This is the centre panel of a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) made for the hig...
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The huge sky and the grey – but luminous – tones of this painting are typical of Jan van Goyen’s landscapes and seascapes. About three quarters of the composition is devoted to the towering clouds and the grey haze which obscures the brighter blues above; still more space is used to capture the b...
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The dormition of the Virgin is the term used to refer to her death and literally means the ‘falling asleep’. According to the Golden Legend (a thirteenth-century compilation of the lives of the saints), Saint John the Evangelist was miraculously brought to her side, followed by all the apostles (...
Not on display
Although damaged, we can tell that this is an original work by Anthonis Mor. His sitters are usually lit from above and the left; their noses are narrow but have deep shadows and the eyes are too widely spaced. We don't know the identity of the sitter, but the cut of his hair, and the long beard...
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A beautiful nymph lying in the foreground seems to be asleep, although she may be enjoying a moment of solitary ecstasy. Beside her a golden-haired child watches as a satyr – a man with a goat’s ears, horns and legs – gently removes her delicate white robe. Another satyr peeps out from behind a t...
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Two gondoliers wearing traditional carnival costumes propel their boat across the Venetian lagoon, their oars stirring the water, their passengers sheltered by a canopy. On the horizon, sails catch the breeze.In the distance is the tower of Malghera, near Mestre on the mainland (Guardi’s larger V...
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A maid combs the hair of a girl who has been swimming; her bathing suit is stretched out on the ground to dry. Other objects – two parasols, a basket and a summer bonnet – are scattered around. A family group (some members wrapped in towels) is leaving the shoreline, as other people stroll in the...
On display elsewhere
This picture looks like an Italian Renaissance portrait but is in fact a forgery made in the early twentieth century. It includes elements found in the originals, such as the stone window opening onto a view of the Italian countryside and the view of figures in profile.It was purchased in 1923 as...
Not on display
Piazzetta left this large canvas – probably intended as an altarpiece – unfinished. It depicts the Old Testament story in which Abraham’s faith is tested when he is ordered to sacrifice his only son, Isaac.Wild-eyed, Abraham raises his arm and looks heavenward in despair. His bearded head is amon...
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The inscription tells us that this is seventeen-year-old Stefano Nani from Auro painted by Licinio in the year 1528. Auro is a village in the Alps to the north of Brescia in Lombardy, which at the time was ruled by Venice.Stefano is presented as a pensive young man, gazing dreamily into the dista...
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Three of Christ’s followers visited his tomb to anoint his body. When they arrived they found ‘a young man... clothed in a long white garment’ who told them that Jesus had risen from the dead (Mark 16: 1–8). In the Gospel of Matthew, the figure is described as the angel of the Lord; the painter o...
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This graceful, golden-haired princess is Saint Catherine of Alexandria, identifiable by her traditional attributes of a spiked wheel and martyr’s palm. She comes from the great polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted for the church of the Dominican Order in Ascoli Piceno in t...
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Jan Brueghel seems to have squeezed a whole world into his tiny picture. A crowd waits patiently for a turn to come closer to the little child on his mother’s knee. The baby is bare, to show us that he’s a real human baby, but the silvery arrow of light tells us something more.The old man kneelin...
Panini specialised in architectural views and painted about 30 pictures of the monumental interior of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome over several decades. This is a view of the main entrance, looking down the nave towards the tomb of Saint Peter. We look out over the church from an elevated position...
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A young couple sit on the grass in a shady glade. The woman’s hair is unbound, and her dress disturbed. In one hand she holds reed pipes, with the other she either restrains her lover or encourages him to move the crimson cloak over her lap. A naked, winged cupid crowns them with a wreath. A wood...
Not on display
Although there are no records telling us who this young woman is, we can learn quite a lot about her from her clothes and jewellery, and her pose. She is expensively dressed; the fan she holds was a costly accessory and in vogue at the time. Bol also seems to be emphasising her high social status...
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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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Time has not been kind to Jan van Goyen’s river landscape, and his soft muted colours have been dimmed under a coat of yellowed varnish. But we sense the tranquillity of the scene – the vast sky, the quiet ripple of the water under the small boat heading upriver and the patient cows cropping the...
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This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. Gonzales Coques used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense; here, we see a lutanist with a musical...
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The Virgin Mary is seated on a bench, holding the infant Christ. He raises his right hand to bless Saint Francis, who kneels with his hands raised to reveal his stigmata – marks on his body which correspond to the wounds suffered by Christ during the Crucifixion.Saint Joseph, Mary’s husband, lean...
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An officer stands in a stable yard resting his foot on top of a turned over washtub, while a peasant kneels to adjust his spur. This task was normally part of a page’s duties, as seen in guardroom scenes of the time, but in several of Pieter Quast’s paintings officers humiliate peasants by forcin...
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This is one of Domenichino’s most famous landscapes, and also one of his largest. It is closely based on Annibale Carracci’s Flight into Egypt, painted for the chapel of the Aldobrandini palace in Rome (Galleria Doria Pamphilj, Rome), one of the most influential classical landscape paintings in t...
Not on display
A young man in eighteenth-century costume leans back in his chair, pipe in hand, his expression dreamy. One leg is placed forwards to display a shapely calf, the other is hooked behind a chair leg. On the table beside him is a half-empty glass and a pewter jug of ale that glints in the dim light....
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A brisk wind brings a small fleet of fishing pinks to shore, tossed and buffeted by the choppy waves. A fitful sun breaks through the fast moving clouds. It lights up the long curve of the wide bay and the high dunes, but there’s a sense of mistiness, suggesting a fine spray from the sea and sof...
On display elsewhere
The Virgin Mary gazes to her right, her hands folded in prayer. She is richly dressed: her mantle is edged with delicate gold embroidery dotted with pearls, and her blue underdress is lined with brown fur. On her head is a circlet of three strands of pearls held with a jewelled catch, and a trans...
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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...
Not on display
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...
Within a sprawling rural landscape, the Virgin Mary is seated with the Christ Child in front of a classical building. She holds her sleeping son tenderly while three figures – an unidentified female saint and Saint George with the princess he rescued – gaze at him in awe. The infant Saint John th...
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A fortified town sits at the edge of a peaceful lagoon – we see just a few boats and a handful of people. These boats may be carrying supplies to and from Venice; for centuries, the city had profited from strong trading routes with mainland Italy and across the Mediterranean. The foreground figur...
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The Virgin and Child are shown as an affectionate mother and laughing infant. Christ holds an apple, alluding to the fruit with which Eve tempted Adam in the biblical story of the Garden of Eden, leading to the Fall of Man.Devotion to Mary was an important part of a great flowering of private rel...
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This signed painting is the only known work by Marie Blancour, a French woman who is thought to have lived during the seventeenth century.A bunch of flowers is crammed into a terracotta pot. Many are in the final stages of bloom: the daffodil’s yellow petals are fully open and the weighty white v...
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The Old Testament book of Exodus describes how the Jews fled from Egypt and crossed the desert to the land of Israel. Every morning they woke up to find the ground miraculously covered with an edible substance that looked like frost – they called this ‘heavenly bread’ manna and said it tasted lik...
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Panini painted a number of imaginary scenes in which a known monument is set within a fanciful arrangement of ruins. The crumbling stone pyramid here is based on the tomb of Caius Cestius in Rome, but all of the other elements are invented. Remnants of the city’s classical past fill the foregroun...
Saint John the Baptist is depicted here as though sitting for a portrait. The words on the scroll, ‘Behold the Lamb of God’, are taken from the Gospel of John (John 1: 29 and 26). They refer to Christ who, like a lamb, will be sacrificed for the salvation of mankind. The Baptist is shown bust len...
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Paul Cezanne was about 40 years old when he painted this self portrait in Paris around 1880–1. He was now middle-aged with a family to support, and the intensity of his earlier self portraits has here given way to a more distant and reflective presence. Although relatively small, the portrait has...
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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A young lady in an extravagant green dress sits on the floor, reading. Although she wears fifteenth-century clothing and is in a medieval room, she is a biblical figure: Saint Mary Magdalene. The pot of oil with which she anointed Christ’s feet – the object traditionally associated with her – sta...
Piero was the first artist to write a treatise on perspective – that is, creating an illusion of three-dimensional space on a flat surface. Here, he has painted objects in proportion, so that they appear as we see them in real life. This emphasises the depth of the landscape, but also the harmony...
An unidentified battle rages before a mountainous landscape. The picture may be a later copy of one of the lost frescoes by Piero della Francesca in the ducal palace in Ferrara. Leonello d’Este (1407–1450), Marquis of Ferrara, appears to be portrayed in profile at bottom left, suggesting that he...
Not on display
We are in the middle of a card game. One figure stares directly at us, a look of apparently benign amusement on his face as he holds his hand close to his chest. By contrast his opponent is focused intently – perhaps even short-sightedly – on her hand, deliberating on how to play next. Judging fr...
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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...
This fragment comes from the border decoration of a large painting in fresco – a technique that involved painting directly onto wet plaster – which showed the fall of Lucifer, the rebel angel who was cast out of heaven. It once decorated a wall of the church of the confraternity of Sant' Angelo i...
Not on display
This is the earliest known self portrait in oil by Gainsborough, and the only known one of him with his family. He sits with his wife, Margaret, and the little rosy-cheeked girl is probably Mary, their short-lived first daughter. It is likely Gainsborough began it before Mary’s burial on 1 March...
Throughout his life Corot painted images of women dressed in particular costume, often folk dress. They cannot be described as portraits, and the sitters are often unknown. In this example, the woman wears a white dress of perhaps muslin or organza decorated with pink satin ribbons. In her left h...
Not on display
This painting is typical of Giovanni Battista Viola, who specialised in landscapes with hunting and fishing scenes. Here, in a woodland clearing, a hunter dressed in yellow lets his dogs drink from a stream, while another sounds a horn to gather the hunting party. Smartly dressed figures on horse...
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This view is taken from the west bank of the Tiber looking towards the Castel Sant’Angelo. The specific event depicted has not been identified but river jousts were a popular official form of entertainment, and attracted large crowds of spectators.The flag at the stern of the boat at the left bea...
We are looking at a family group, a mother and father surrounded by their seven children with a nursemaid holding the latest baby. There are two centres of attention among the sitters, formed around the two youngest children – just what you might expect in a large family.These poses and interacti...
Jan Fyt was an extremely successful painter of bird and animal still-life pictures, using a light, frothy style of brushwork peculiar to him. Here, he has piled up the birds' bodies – a brace of partridges alongside a greenfinch, chaffinch, brambling, robin and quail – in a pyramid. The evening s...
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In the shadow of a group of Roman ruins, a nude woman stands on a low rock with her back to us, her long hair caught up to reveal shoulders and narrow waist. A young lad, crowned with a wreath of leaves and cradled in a peasant woman’s lap, gazes at her. She appears to be trying to turn his face...
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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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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...
This is the central panel from a three-panel altarpiece for S. Maria della Scala, Verona. The flanking panel of Saint Roch by Paolo Morando is also in the National Gallery’s collection, but the other flanking panel of Saint Sebastian by Francesco di Marco India Torbido is missing. It is quite unu...
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In the shade of a rocky cliff, a woman and a child wade in the shallow water of a ford. She looks down at the little boy as he takes a pee in the river. Images of small nude boys relieving themselves were unremarkable in the seventeenth century, although the boys were usually two or three years o...
In this small painting, the Virgin and Christ Child sit on an enormous and elaborately decorated throne in front of a distant landscape. Christ’s outstretched arms recall the Crucifixion, as do the cross and whip he holds.This was perhaps the work of at least two artists. Technical analysis revea...
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A saint holding a lily and a book gazes upwards, seemingly untroubled by the curved knife which splits his skull and the dagger in his shoulder. His hair is tonsured (shaved) to show that he was a member of a religious order, and he wears the black and white uniform of the Dominicans. This is Pet...
Not on display
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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This painting depicts an episode from the Old Testament: the Queen of Sheba embarking on her journey to see King Solomon in Jerusalem. Crowned and dressed in red, the Queen descends the steps. The meeting was often painted, but it was unusual to depict the Queen’s embarkation. The soft warm light...
This dramatic scene of divine punishment is described in the Old Testament. The Philistines are stricken with plague in their city of Ashdod because they have stolen the Ark of the Covenant from the Israelites and placed it in their pagan temple. You can see the decorated golden casket of the Ark...
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This bearded saint is one of four in the upper tier of a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the Dominican Church in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. He is Saint Andrew, the first Apostle, and a particular favourite of the Dominican Ord...
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The subject of this painting is taken from Book IX of Homer’s Odyssey. It shows Ulysses sailing from the island where Polyphemus, a one-eyed giant, had held him and his men captive. Wearing a helmet and a scarlet cloak, Ulysses raises his arms in victory as he stands on the deck of his ship, belo...
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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This painting of the Virgin Mary with the infant Christ was probably made for private devotion. Seated on a cushion, its thick tassels protruding from beneath the folds of her draperies, the Virgin is about to breastfeed her child. The flowers in the vase on the right are pinks, called Nelke (‘na...
Not on display
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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Saint Catherine of Alexandria stands among the fragments of the spiked wheel on which she was tortured, which miraculously shattered during her ordeal. She holds a sword, the weapon that eventually killed her. To her left is Saint John the Evangelist, whose symbol of the eagle perches on a rock a...
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...
Not on display
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1682–85. Ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery's collection, and this one represents one of the four Cardinal Virtues. First identif...
Not on display
People are hard at work on boats beside the small island of San Pietro in Castello, the eastern part of Venice. While the nearby district of San Marco was popular with tourists, as it is today, this quieter corner of the city was largely a working-class neighbourhood. Its residents sailed between...
On display elsewhere
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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This painting depicts a story taken from the Book of Genesis. Abraham had sent a servant to his homeland to find a bride for his son, Isaac. The servant came to a well, and waited for a woman kind enough to provide both him and his 10 camels with water: this woman would be the perfect bride for I...
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Christ sits upon a tree trunk, sheltered within a building that looks like a small chapel with a barrel-vaulted ceiling. He wears the crown of thorns, which was placed upon his head before the Crucifixion. Around his neck is a looped rope, a reminder of the Flagellation (when he was tied up and w...
Not on display
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–85. The overall theme of these highly elaborate frescoes is the progress of mankind by means of Wisdom and Virtue.This scene c...
Not on display
The subject of this painting has been much debated, but it’s generally thought to show an imagined view of a past and primitive society. Cranach made a number of similar paintings from 1527 to 1535. Since the twentieth century it has been assumed that the origin of the subject lies in a classical...
In this enormous picture, the doge – the elected head of the Venetian Republic – kneels before the Virgin and Child, asking for her support for the Venetian state. This is painting at its most official: the doge holds a banner showing the lion of Saint Mark, the symbol of Venice, and wears ceremo...
Not on display
A young man wearing only an animal skin is illuminated against a dark rock, leaning forward to drink water trickling from a spring. With one hand he props himself up on the rock and with the other he holds a reed cross – an attribute which identifies him as Saint John the Baptist, the desert herm...
Not on display
A young man pours red wine from an amphora onto the goat’s head on the altar; a young woman carries an upside-down torch, while an old woman balances a basket of pears, apples and grapes on her head. For many years the subject of this painting by Garofalo was believed to be a sacrifice of thanksg...
The subject is taken from the New Testament (Mark 6: 22–9) and shows Salome being presented with the head of Christ’s cousin, Saint John the Baptist. The swarthy executioner dangles the severed head by its hair above a dish; Salome turns away as if she cannot bear to look at the prize King Herod...
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...
Not on display
This small panel painting of the Virgin and Child was, until its theft in the 1970s, one of the earliest pictures in the National Gallery. Probably painted in Tuscany in the thirteenth century, it was inspired by Byzantine (Eastern Christian) painting.The Virgin and Child are shown embracing aff...
Not on display
This unfinished portrait of Thomas Gainsborough’s youngest daughter, Margaret (1751–1820), playing a theorbo (a kind of lute) unites two particularly personal aspects of the artist’s life and career: his deep affection for his family and friends, and their shared passion for music.The Gainsboroug...
The story of Actaeon is told in the Metamorphoses by the Roman poet Ovid. In Titian’s earlier Diana and Actaeon, painted for King Philip II of Spain in 1556–9 and now jointly owned by the National Gallery and the National Galleries of Scotland, Actaeon disturbs the goddess Diana and her nymphs at...
The story of Jupiter and Semele is told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The god Jupiter takes the mortal woman Semele as his mistress and makes her pregnant. When Jupiter’s wife, the goddess Juno, finds out, she disguises herself and suggests to Semele that her lover may not really be Jupiter. She tells...
Not on display
A scowling man wearing a scholar’s cap and brown gown appears before us. His drapery, wrapped tightly around him, has the smooth, solid look of a sculpted Roman bust. Half of his face is in shadow and the cold lighting emphasises his long, narrow nose, unkempt hair, unshaven face and furrowed bro...
This fragment comes from the border decoration of a large painting in fresco – a technique that involves painting directly onto wet plaster – which showed the fall of Lucifer, the rebel angel who was cast out of heaven. It once decorated a wall of the church of the confraternity of Sant' Angelo i...
Not on display
According to the Gospel of Matthew, an angel appears to the Virgin Mary’s husband, Joseph, in a dream. Champaigne shows the angel gesturing towards both heaven and the Virgin Mary, confirming that Christ has been conceived through the Holy Ghost. Kneeling in front of an open Bible, Mary glances t...
In this painting we see Esther, the Jewish heroine of the Old Testament, presenting herself to Ahasuerus, King of Persia, in an attempt to save the Jewish population of Persia, who he had condemned to death. In doing so, she risked her life: approaching the King without his permission was punisha...
The Angel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will bear the son of God (Luke 1: 26-8). His words, ‘Hail Mary full of Grace, the Lord be with you’, appear in abbreviated form in Latin on the scroll. The low vanishing points of this scene and its companion The Virgin Mary, also in the Nat...
Not on display
We do not know who this man is. Set against a very dark background, only his face can be seen in any detail. The folds of his crimson cardinal’s robe are painted in boldly swept lines that may have been intended to look like the style of Tintoretto. The painting is in very poor condition, with se...
Not on display
This scene comes from the apocryphal Book of Tobit. Old and blind, Tobit had sent his son Tobias on a long journey to collect a debt on his behalf. Here, Tobias drags an enormous fish across the ground. He is watched closely by the Archangel Raphael, who had instructed the boy to catch a fish, th...
This picture was part of a classical-style frieze made for Francesco Cornaro, a Venetian nobleman, in celebration of his ancestors, the ancient Roman Cornelia family. Mantegna painted the figures to look as though they are carved from stone, not painted, and set against colourful marble.In 204 BC...
Saint John the Baptist stands in a rocky landscape, a reference to the wilderness in which he lived as a young man, dressed in a camel-hair tunic and eating only locusts and honey.He embraces a lamb, a symbol of Christ’s sacrifice, and points towards heaven. According to the Gospel, when Saint Jo...
Not on display
Heavy, rain-dark clouds loom over a rugged landscape of scrubby trees, crags and three pines dramatically silhouetted against the sky. Right in the centre of the picture, a river emerges black and mirror-like from a fold in the hills, transforming into a seething cauldron as it tips over a rock l...
Not on display
This picture by an unknown artist was once thought to portray Lucius Cary, Viscount Falkland, but a portrait of him in the collection of the Duke of Devonshire shows a different man. He looks out at us with a faint smile, his long, thick hair brushing his forehead and pale cheeks. His costume see...
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This is one of Aert van der Neer’s largest paintings. A river takes centre stage, stretching into the middle distance beyond and reflecting back the slanting light of an evening sky and the darker shadows of the boats and trees.These effects and this mood are typical of van der Neer’s work, but u...
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An apocryphal addition to the Old Testament describes how two lecherous elders threatened to accuse Susannah, a beautiful young woman, of adultery – a crime punishable by death – if she did not give in to their desires. Guido Reni here illustrates the episode: one man grabs at Susannah’s robes an...
This is Saint Mary Magdalene, one of Christ’s followers, identifiable from the pot of expensive ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet. This painting was once joined to another panel, and was probably the left wing of a triptych (a painting made of three parts).Mary’s dress is cloth-of-go...
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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...
Hélène Rouart stands in her father’s study, her hands resting on the back of his empty chair. Works from his art collection can be seen behind her, including three Egyptian statues in a glass case and, above her, a Chinese wall hanging. Although Degas set down the final composition with little su...
This sunlit scene on the river Seine is typical of the imagery that has come to characterise Impressionism, and Renoir includes several familiar Impressionist motifs such as fashionably dressed women, a rowing boat, a sail boat, and a steam train crossing a bridge. The exact location has not been...
Alexander the Great (356–323 BC) lies on a bed drinking medicine given to him by Philip, his doctor. Philip has been accused of treachery against his leader in a letter, which he is reading aloud to Alexander. Hands raised in horror, eyes widened, their companions wait to discover the truth. Alex...
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Looking across the basin of San Marco, this vast view captures the scale and splendour of a ceremony taking place along the waterfront. Boats carrying spectators and animated gondoliers surround the gold and red state barge or Bucintoro, its upper deck crowded with figures. Every year on Ascensio...
The story of Eurydice and Aristaeus is told by the Roman poet Virgil. In the far distance Orpheus, Eurydice’s husband, charms wild animals with his music. Three nymphs gather flowers, unaware that the shepherd Aristaeus is pursuing Eurydice. She is bitten by a snake as she runs away. Identifiable...
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Following his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig of 1813, Napoleon and his army were forced to retreat to France. This picture shows one of Napoleon’s last military successes on French soil before his initial fall from power. On 11 February 1814 he defeated two allied forces – the Russians and the P...
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This small picture once made up a diptych (a folding painting in two parts) with another in our collection, the Mater Dolorosa. It was probably intended for private devotion: Christ’s pain was meant to inspire empathy in the viewer, who was encouraged to meditate upon his suffering as a means of...
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This was the first of four battle scenes painted by Vernet for the Duke of Orléans. It shows the Battle at Jemappes, which took place on 6 November 1792 near the Walloon town of Jemappes. At that time Jemappes was in the Austrian Netherlands but is now part of the city of Mons in south-western Be...
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The infant Christ is seated on the Virgin’s lap, accompanied by saints in the meadows of a mountainous landscape. The large semi-ruined classical building behind the Virgin and Christ divides the composition into three, making them appear enthroned in the centre.Saint James sits reading on the ne...
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A naked golden-haired youth sits on a rock, playing the panpipes; another set of pipes hangs from the tree behind him. An older bearded man sits nearby on the ground, his panpipes also hanging from a branch. This is perhaps the satyr Marsyas; the youth may be Olympus, described in classical sourc...
This small portrait was attributed to the French Romantic painter Eugène Delacroix (1798–1863) when it was presented to the Tate Gallery by the British artist Walter Sickert in 1922. However, this attribution is now rejected on stylistic grounds. The sitter is traditionally identified as the Fren...
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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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The washerwoman at the right, a common motif in Daubigny’s river scenes, dips some blue cloth into the water. Close inspection reveals that she is kneeling in a box, commonly used by laundresses at the time to keep themselves dry and relatively comfortable. To the front of her the water is punctu...
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There’s an air of stillness in this large painting that is unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael’s work. The clouds hang as if suspended over the forest and the leaves of trees – often restless in his other pictures – are quiet, though by no means lifeless. Reflections tremble a little in the water, and...
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A bearded saint stands reading a book, his left hand resting on a sword, in this quietly contemplative picture. We know, from his dark hair and beard and from the objects he holds, that this is Saint Paul: the sword is the weapon with which he was martyred and the book represents his many writing...
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Two saints stand on a fantastically cusped stone plinth in front of a rose hedge. They are Francis and Mark, identified by their attributes – the symbols with which they are traditionally associated – and by the inscriptions in the front of the plinth. Mark, one of the four authors of the Gospels...
Saint Jerome, a fourth-century Christian scholar and hermit, is seated in a nocturnal landscape, absorbed in the book that lies open on his lap. He is celebrated for producing what is considered to be the first Latin translation of the Bible, known as the Vulgate. He spent four years living as a...
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This porphyry sculpture represents the head of a young beardless man who turns to the left and looks upwards as though he is suffering mental or physical anguish. It is a copy of a famous antique marble head (now in the Uffizi, Florence) which was long known as ‘The Dying Alexander’ due to a late...
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A nymph – a mythological spirit of nature imagined as a young woman – lies on a patch of grass in the foreground, blood streaming from wounds on her throat and hand. A satyr, half man and half goat, kneels next to her, mourning her death. A dog sits at her feet, balancing the stooping figure of t...
The crown and the millstone, faintly visible at her right side, suggest the woman may be Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, who according to legend, after her death cured the hand of man after it was crushed by a millstone. Though royal, she joined a Franciscan lay order and took a vow of poverty, dedi...
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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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Rembrandt’s pensive Saint Paul belongs to a series of half-length pictures of religious figures that the artist painted in the late 1650s and early 1660s. The dark picture is devoid of unnecessary details, but the saint’s traditional attributes are just about visible: an open book sits on the tab...
In the sunlight of a quiet afternoon this courtyard seems to radiate tranquillity. Everything is still, including the figures: a young maid, clean and calm, who holds the hand of a little girl, and the shadowy figure of a woman in the passageway to the left, presumably the child’s mother, who tur...
Francisco Gerónimo Simón (1578–1612) was parish priest of San Andrés in Valencia. In 1612 he had a miraculous vision: here he is shown kneeling in front of the towering figure of Christ carrying the Cross, tears streaming down his face, as he reaches out to embrace him. Christ is followed by a pr...
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Small-scale images of the Virgin and Child made for private worship were a speciality of Bellini’s. This picture was thought to be by the artist’s assistants, but recent technical analysis showed that it was made by Bellini. The holy figures are separated from a landscape by a cloth of honour, an...
On display elsewhere
This is one of three self portraits Rembrandt made just before his death in 1669. About 80 survive from his 40-year career, far more than any other artist of his time. He painted them for different reasons – to practise different expressions, to experiment with lighting effects, and also to sell...
On display elsewhere
Saint Peter fled Rome after Christ’s crucifixion, scared that he too would be executed by the Romans; here, he stands in shock as Christ passes him on the road. When Peter asked Christ where he was going – the question in this painting’s title – he replied that he was headed to Rome to be crucifi...
Under the arches of a pink arcade, Bishop Guido of Assisi wraps his cloak around the naked Saint Francis of Assisi. The saint’s discarded boots, shirt and hose lie in a heap on the floor. To the left, Francis’s father, enraged by his son’s rejection of their wealthy lifestyle, has snatched up the...
This panel comes from the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in Westphalia. The scene may have been inspired by the central panel of the altarpiece made by the same artist for the abbey’s high altar, fragments of which are also in the National Gallery’s collection.Its horizontal shape suggests that it...
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This small oil sketch of Oetzthal, a mountain valley in the Austrian Alps, was painted by the Danish landscape artist, Vilhelm Petersen, when he was travelling to Italy in the summer of 1850. Close to the Italian border, the area is the site of some of Austria’s highest mountains. We are most lik...
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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This landscape is one of a number painted by Corot in his later years, which combine a foreground of trees and figures, a lake or sea at the right, and in the left background sunlit buildings descending a hillside. Corot would interweave elements from different locations, juxtaposing views of suc...
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This is the second of two panels from a cassone (a large chest made for a domestic setting), which depict one of the founding stories of ancient Rome. When the Romans couldn't find wives, their leader Romulus came up with a devious plan: he invited the neighbouring Sabines to attend some celebrat...
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The Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist support the body of the dead Christ, which rests on a stone slab. This composition is based on a plaquette by Moderno, the pseudonym of a goldsmith and medallist active in north Italy at the turn of the sixteenth century, datable to around 1508–13. It...
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Two women sit on a bed playing with a baby – one of them holds out an apple for the little boy to grasp in his chubby fingers. With an encouraging smile, the other points it out to him. The baby is Christ’s cousin, John. This is his naming day and he will grow up to be known as John the Baptist.Z...
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A wine drinker – a stout fellow with a handsome moustache – represents Autumn in a series of paintings by David Teniers that gives each season a human form. A white sash cradles a comfortable belly, and stretched over it is a wine-coloured jacket. His fat neck disappears into the collar of his ja...
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This painting is one of a series depicting the Seven Liberal Arts, which represent disciplines associated with learning and language – grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, music, geometry and astronomy – as half-length figures of women. Grammar is shown as a woman watering plants, conveying the...
This altarpiece commemorates one of the most important events of the papacy of Pope Gregory XV (born Alessandro Ludovisi). It shows the Jesuits Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier being canonised (officially declared saints in the Roman Catholic Church). This occurred on 12 March 1622, the feast d...
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Crivelli painted two altarpieces for the small church of San Domenico, in the town of Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Their history is complex and intertwined. A large, double-tiered polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) sat on the high altar, while a smaller altarpiece was in a side chape...
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An unidentified young man dressed plainly in black stares back at us from the canvas. He stands upright and motionless while behind him clouds race across the sky. The composition has been carefully centred so that a vertical line could be drawn straight down the bridge of his nose and through th...
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This modest portrait with a highly finished surface was formerly thought to be by Ingres, but there is no justification for this attribution. Although the sitter and the artist have not yet been identified, both the hair and the clothes enable us to date the portrait to the mid-nineteenth century...
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No other Renaissance painting of the Virgin and Child with saints shows the naked infant Christ sitting on a pillow on a coffin. This unique addition indicates Christ’s acceptance of and conquest over death. Meditation on Christ’s death encouraged understanding of his suffering for humanity’s red...
This unfinished oil sketch on canvas is by Paul Huet, an important figure in French 19th-century landscape painting. While a student in the 1820s, he often painted outdoors in the park at Saint-Cloud, in the west of Paris. He continued to visit the park throughout his life, and this sketch probab...
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The story of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion) unfolds across three crowded panels. On the left, Christ is led out from his trial; in the centre he has been crucified; to the right, his dead body is taken down from the Cross.The sacred events seem to be taking place near the city of...
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Born in The Hague, Jacob Maris trained at the city’s Drawing Academy and at the Academy in Antwerp. His interest in specifically Dutch landscape perhaps began on his first visit in 1859 to the artists’ colony at the village of Oosterbeek. After travelling in northern Europe, Jacob moved to Paris...
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The Virgin Mary, crowned with 12 stars and standing on a crescent moon, is surrounded by flowers associated with her purity, a mirror and the crown denoting her position as Queen of Heaven.The painting refers to the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception (the belief that the Virgin was conceived w...
Sisley painted this winter scene in the small village of Marly-le-Roi in early 1875, soon after he moved there. The village was the site of the Château de Marly, which had been built in the late seventeenth century for Louis XIV, King of France, as a retreat from Versailles. It was later demolish...
In Netscher’s painting, the hand resting gently on the little girl’s shoulder suggests that the woman is her mother. There is a faint likeness: the little girl still has the rounded cheeks of childhood, but the eyes and mouth of the two are similar.Netscher was famous for his brilliant representa...
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This painting illustrates an episode described in the Old Testament (1 Samuel: 6-12), which is rarely depicted in art. The Ark – a wooden chest covered in gold containing the Ten Commandments – is pulled along on a cart drawn by cattle. It is being returned to the Israelites after the Philistines...
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This grand country house has been identified as Kasteel d’Ursel in Hingene on the border between the old Duchy of Brabant and the County of Flanders. It was the private summer residence of the Duke of Ursel, a powerful aristocrat from nearby Antwerp and it still exists, though it has changed sig...
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There’s a delight in letting your eye wander across the vast landscapes of Koninck’s paintings and suddenly coming upon one of the tiny details within. In the foreground here, but still far away, are assorted animals and assorted people, some working, some chatting, some idling away the remaining...
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This arched panel was originally the top of a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted for the Franciscan church at Montefiore dell'Aso near Fermo in the Italian Marches.Two sad, child-like angels hold up Christ’s lifeless body, one nestling his head sorrowfully against Jesu...
The sitter’s identity is given in a later inscription at the top left as: ‘Le cardinal de Retz’ and confirmed by comparison with engraved portraits of him.Jean François-Paul de Gondi (1613–1679) was made Cardinal de Retz in 1652. However, later that year, as a leader in the Fronde (French civil d...
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The evening sun touches the sturdy cattle standing at the foot of the ruins of a Roman archway. The soft light casts shadows on the weather-worn stones, displaying the ruin’s age and former grandeur. The hills behind may have been recorded by Berchem during a possible stay in Italy, but the cows...
This altarpiece was commissioned by Benedetto Buonvisi for his family chapel in Lucca. The Virgin Mary and Saint Anne are seated on a throne. The infant Christ leans across his mother’s lap towards his grandmother to reach for the fruit she offers him.The Virgin appears lost in thought, perhaps c...
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This picture illustrates an episode in the life of Moses (Exodus 2: 16–19). Having fled Egypt, Moses was resting by a well in the land of Midian when seven women, the daughters of a priest named Jethro, approached to draw water for their sheep. A number of shepherds tried to drive them away, but...
This sketch was painted at Arleux-du-Nord, to the south of Douai in north-east France. Corot’s friend and fellow-artist Alfred Robaut, who lived in Douai, had persuaded him to leave Paris in April 1871 to escape the Commune following France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Corot spent the spr...
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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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The Virgin gently cradles her son. Luis de Morales sensitively observes the instinctive gesture of the newborn baby tucking his hand through her red gown searching for milk. Mother and child lean into each other, their gazes tenderly interlocking.Morales explores the sense of touch through both t...
On the banks of a wide meandering river, men and women are catching fish. Vernet has used the brightly lit woman in red and the jutting tree as devices to draw our eye into the composition. A man with a rod and a basket of fish sits next to the river with his back to a large mossy rock. His dog h...
On display elsewhere
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 painting reflects the simple and direct manner of German portraiture of the late fifteenth century. It was once thought to be a portrait by Holbein of the German religious reformer Martin Luther, but the sitter is in fact Alexander Mornauer, town clerk of Landshut in Bavaria; the letter he h...
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This is one of 12 surviving pictures that Camille Pissarro made while in self-imposed exile in south London from late 1870 to mid-1871 during the Franco-Prussian war. Perhaps the first picture he painted while in London, it is one of the more rural scenes of the group and is similar to landscapes...
This picture is unusual in Italian painting of this period in showing so much detail from the Gospel accounts of Christ’s crucifixion in one relatively small panel. Such images were usually reserved for large wall paintings. Christ is shown on the Cross between the two thieves who were crucified...
Once mistaken for a portrait of a cardinal, this painting in fact shows Saint Jerome dressed in cardinal’s robes. He was often painted this way as recognition of his high status in the Catholic Church, even though the office did not exist during his lifetime. His major achievement was to translat...
The Virgin Mary’s parents, Joachim and Anne, embrace at the Golden Gate in Jerusalem. Long childless, they had been told by an angel that they would have a daughter. On the right is Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks.This was the left side of a large altarpiece; the right side...
A young woman, wearing a crimson robe and pearl necklace from which a gold cross is suspended, stands in an imaginary architectural setting. An opening into what appears to be a brightly lit courtyard reveals a precarious, twisting flight of stairs. A man in a dark costume stands at the top, appa...
Not on display
This portrait was once attributed to Rembrandt, whose false signature it bears. The predominantly brown colours, the neutral background, the thick brushstrokes on the cuffs and handkerchief and the way that the artist has used layers of paint to depict, for example, flesh tones, are reminiscent o...
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This panel was most probably the right-hand wing of a diptych (a painting made up of two panels), and was probably made in Cologne in the 1530s. The location of the left-hand panel is unknown, but it most probably showed the dead Christ.The figures huddle together and look in the direction of the...
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After the Crucifixion, two of Christ’s disciples are walking to Emmaus when the resurrected Christ himself draws near and walks with them. They do not recognise him: he’s disguised as a pilgrim with a staff and a hat bearing the pilgrim’s shell (Luke 24: 13–35). When he asks why they are so sorro...
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The scenes on this panel describe the conception of the Virgin Mary by her mother Anne. In the upper scene Anne’s husband Joachim attempts to make an offering of a lamb at the temple but is turned away before he reaches the altar by two bearded priests. According to the Golden Legend, a thirteent...
The Latin inscription in the top right corner names the female artist: CATHARINA. FILIA /IOHANNIS DE HEMES/SEN PINGEBAT. 1552. (‘Catharina, daughter of Johannes de Hemessen was painting [it]. 1552.’).We don't know the sitter’s identity but he was clearly a wealthy man. His belt has gold ornaments...
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This chaotic and animated scene shows the followers of Phineus bursting in on the wedding feast of Perseus and Andromeda. In Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Phineus has previously been engaged to Andromeda and intends to murder Perseus, but Perseus is fighting back. Standing in the centre wearing a red cap...
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Mrs Hollond (1822–1884), born Ellen Julia Teed, was the wife of the pioneering balloonist and MP Robert Hollond. She was a writer and philanthropist who lived for part of each year in Paris, where she held a salon that attracted intellectuals of a progressive cast of mind. Ary Scheffer was a pain...
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This work depicts one of the most popular mythological themes for paintings from the late Renaissance onward: the love story between Bacchus, the god of wine, and Ariadne, daughter of King Minos of Crete. Bacchus discovered Ariadne on the island of Naxos, where she had been abandoned by the Greek...
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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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Alexandrine-Emilie Brongniart (1780–1847) was most likely eight years old when this engaging portrait of her was painted by the celebrated artist Elisabeth Louise Vigée Le Brun. Wearing an informal knotted scarf on her head, matching white dress and a translucent shawl around her shoulders, Emili...
Phaeton, son of the sun god Phoebus, persuaded his father to let him steer his chariot, which was led by fire-breathing horses, across the sky. Phaeton’s reckless driving caused rivers to dry up and lands to become desert. Jupiter, ruler of the gods, intervened to prevent further chaos, striking...
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Goya adds a satirical twist to this supposedly innocent scene. It seems that a romantic outing has gone terribly wrong. The remains of a picnic lie on the tablecloth: pieces of bread, two almost-empty plates and bottles of wine. To the right, a man appears to be unwell, probably from drinking too...
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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This gloriously cluttered picture seems to suggest the aftermath of a rich banquet that’s gone a little too far. Objects sit on the table at a perilous angle or materialise from nowhere, but the one that takes centre stage is secure. It’s called a nautilus cup and is meant to impress. It’s made f...
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This small picture is painted on a copper plate. This was particularly popular as a support with the German artist Adam Elsheimer, whose love of dynamic draperies and bright colours clearly had an impact on the painter of this work.The infant Christ is lowered gently to rest against a regal orb b...
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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...
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A young woman with brown hair and plucked eyebrows gazes modestly downward. Her hairstyle is Italianate: her plaits are wound around the top of her head and are entwined with a semi-transparent scarf that falls across her right shoulder. She wears a semi-transparent ruched chemise and a blue over...
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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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A dog sniffs at a heap of dead birds on the floor, but the focus of this quiet scene seems to be on the young woman cradling her baby. She looks down at the creatures, her expression shuttered. The picture was originally quite different: beneath the birds, which were added during the nineteenth c...
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The mood in this painting is sombre, even sinister. It’s twilight, with the sky cloudy but – unusual in Jacob van Ruisdael’s landscapes – unmoving. The white walls of the ruins on the steep bank on the right almost give the impression that light is shining from them. The distant sand dunes look l...
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A few rays of sunlight break through the canopy of this tranquil forest, reflecting off the surface of a small pool and the nearby trees. A hind is visible at the water’s edge, head bent down to drink, while a stag rests on the grass in the foreground.Although he was regarded as an accomplished l...
On display elsewhere
Fortuny painted this picture of a victorious bullfighter saluting the crowd while he and his family were living in Granada in southern Spain from 1870 to 1872. Aside from the visual spectacle of bullfights, he was attracted to traditions that survived in contemporary Spain.It is not possible to s...
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A muscular sea god, with dragon-like wings sprouting from his hips, is carrying off a naked woman. They are surrounded by winged infants known as putti and a host of marine divinities, some of whom ride on dolphins. Cupid aims an arrow at the couple in the centre. This is a working drawing, or ca...
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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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Aeneas, prince of Troy, dressed here in an orange cloak, left his native city and arrived with his father, son, and companions on the island of Delos, home of the sun god Apollo. Anius, the King of Delos, dressed in white, gestures to an olive and palm in the centre of the painting, two trees sac...
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This large altarpiece is crammed with peasants, animals, angels and richly dressed kings and courtiers, come to worship the infant Christ, who sits on his mother’s lap in a palatial but ruined building.Jean Gossart has signed the painting on the hat of Balthasar, the king on the left, and on the...
Venus, the goddess of love, leans against a leafy tree while her son Cupid, the god of desire, tries to get her attention. Clutching a stolen honeycomb, he complains as bees swarm and sting him – but Venus is uninterested in her son. Instead, her attention is directed towards us.The Latin inscrip...
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This portrait shows Captain Robert Orme (1725–90) at the age of 31, during the war against the French for supremacy in the North American colonies. Reynolds painted it on speculation in the hope of selling it or displaying it to gain more work.Orme was aide-de-camp to General Edward Braddock, com...
There is something rather mysterious about this rare – and tiny – landscape by Jan van der Heyden, who specialised in painting urban scenes in a highly precise and realistic way. In this picture he has, instead, thrown a sort of veil over the buildings, a screen of trees which obscures our view.T...
Not on display
Despite the title, the boy is not drawing but studying a sketchbook – there’s no sign of drawing implements. In front of him is a cast of the Christ Child from Michelangelo’s statue of the Virgin and Child (Church of Our Lady, Bruges) and another book of sketches, but the drawing we see on the op...
Not on display
This altarpiece was probably made for the high altar of a Franciscan church dedicated to the celebrated preacher Saint Bernardino of Siena (1380–1444). He is shown in the centre holding the sign of the name of Jesus (IHS) and a related text from the Gospel of John.Moretto da Brescia painted sever...
Not on display
Two young women lie by a river. Traditionally, such a scene would be set in an idyllic landscape, with the women as impossibly perfect ideals of youth and beauty, often in the guise of classical nudes – goddesses of Greek mythology. But this pair caused a scandal when a larger version (now in the...
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This is the largest and most elaborate of the pictures by Willem van de Velde the Younger in the National Gallery’s collection. Painted with the artist’s usual accuracy and fine detail, the depiction of a marine occasion fairly common in a seafaring nation like seventeenth-century Holland becomes...
On display elsewhere
A young milkmaid with a brass pitcher on her head and a bucket in her hand leads her herd of cattle away for milking. The rising sun reflects in a pool and reaches through the trees to catch the sleek white hides of some of the cows. It’s an idyllic, rustic scene, yet there is energy: people are...
This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 1682–85. Ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery’s collection, and this one corresponds to the group in the centre of the ceiling of the...
Not on display
Delacroix depicts a moment from the Crucifixion, recounted in the Gospel of John (19: 25–30), when Christ speaks to his mother, the Virgin Mary, and one of his disciples, John, just before he dies. Christ’s mother, dressed in blue and yellow robes, collapses into the arms of Mary Cleophas and Joh...
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An old man seated in a train carriage is interrupted in his reverie by our arrival with its hope that the boredom of a long journey will be alleviated. The painting is a character study of a uniquely modern experience, train travel, for which the model was Mancini’s father, Paolo, formerly a tail...
On display elsewhere
Born in 1747, Thomas Coltman inherited Hagnaby Priory, near East Kirkby in Lincolnshire, in 1768. He and his wife Mary Barlow are portrayed here probably a year or so after their marriage in October 1789. The couple can also be seen in Wright’s great painting An Experiment on a Bird in the Air Pu...
The view is of Handeck, a hamlet in the Haslital valley in the Bernese Alps in Switzerland. We are looking south towards the Bernese Alps and its glaciers in the far distance. The Handeck Falls – for which the area is well known – can be seen in the narrow pass just below. The river in the valley...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated in a leafy grove, accompanied by an angel and the young Saint John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin. Saint John holds a cross wound with a scroll inscribed ‘ECCE AGNUS DEI’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God’), referring to Christ’s future sacrifice for humankind, an...
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The Building of the Trojan Horse illustrates an episode from one of the most famous stories in Greek mythology – that of the Trojan War and fall of Troy. Soldiers in armour prepare for battle while workmen build the giant wooden horse in which Greek soldiers will hide, allowing them to secretly e...
Frans van Mieris painted this tiny self portrait three days before he turned 39 in 1674. By this time, he was highly successful. His work was bought, sometimes for vast sums, by nobility from abroad, including the Medici, the ruling family of Florence. Perhaps for this reason, van Mieris chose to...
Not on display
This painting depicts a memorial to the painter Sir Joshua Reynolds, built by Sir George Beaumont in the grounds of his home at Coleorton Hall, Leicestershire, in 1812. Beaumont planned to redesign his gardens to include other memorials dedicated to his friends and the people he admired. The poet...
Christ is shown resurrected after dying at the Crucifixion, his triumph over death reinforced by the way he cradles the Cross on which he was crucified. His body is weak and pale – we can see his ribcage, and his cheekbones stick out of his gaunt face. The focus of the image is the wound in Chris...
These two scenes are part of a group of four by Previtali, painted on two panels, probably some time around 1510. They illustrate the key episodes of the Second Eclogue by Antonio Tebaldeo (1456–1538), and were probably intended to decorate a piece of furniture, possibly the case of a musical ins...
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Isack van Ostade’s little village seems to be a hard place to live. Although there’s no snow, the grey clouds threaten and there is a feeling of bone-chilling cold. The old cottage on top of the bank is ramshackle and touched with frost, its roof hardly robust enough to keep out the weather. And...
Not on display
This figure has been mistaken for the Old Testament prophet Isaiah, because the prophet’s words are inscribed in Latin on the scroll he carries: ‘Behold the Virgin shall conceive.’ But a camel-hair tunic peeks out from underneath the red robes, identifying him as Saint John the Baptist: this is w...
An old man in an exotic costume is reading a young lady’s palm. She is accompanied by a young man in a turban who rests his hand on her shoulder. The objects that surround the old man tell us that he is a magician: an alembic (a still to make alcohol), an incense burner, several reference books a...
Not on display
This triptych (a picture in three parts) is made up of three different paintings: the middle panel with its original engaged frame has been inserted into an outer frame, and the two side panels added to it.The central panel shows the Virgin Mary holding the Christ Child, and its quality suggests...
Not on display
Hobbema has created a remarkable effect in this unusual painting, using the trees of the avenue to funnel our view directly into the heart of the picture and as strong verticals to take the eye upwards. Our gaze is also drawn sideways into the landscape, through both the track which turns off to...
Christ rises in triumph from his open tomb, his burial shroud billowing around him like an aureole of holy light against the pale blue sky. In his right hand he holds a fluttering white pennant marked with the sign of the Cross, symbolising his victory over death. He looks down at us and points...
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The Greek sun god Apollo tumbles from the sky to shoot his unfaithful lover, Coronis. This is one of ten frescoes which originally adorned the walls of a room in a garden pavilion in the grounds of the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati, near Rome. Many of the stories, including this one, were take...
Not on display
This painting is a companion piece to A River Scene, with a Hut on an Island (also in the National Gallery’s collection), which is exactly the same size and depicts a similar horizon and arrangement of boats, but, as the title suggests, includes an island in the middle ground.The two are similar,...
Not on display
Aurora, goddess of dawn, is in love with the mortal Cephalus and tries to seduce him. Cephalus, dressed here in blue, turns away from Aurora, rejecting her advances. He gazes towards a portrait of his wife, Procris, held by a winged cupid. Later, when Cephalus and Procris are reunited, they each...
Not on display
In Roman mythology, the princess Europa was abducted from the coast of Tyre by the god Jupiter, who had transformed himself into a bull. We see her mounting the beast in the foreground and being carried away towards the sea at the lower left. Baby cupids throw fruit from the trees while the amoro...
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The dead Christ, wearing the crown of thorns and displaying his wounds from the Crucifixion, is supported by two angels. One of them gazes at him while the other looks at us for our response. The figures fill the entire image, focusing our whole attention on the body of Christ, his wounds and his...
Not on display
A maid pounds garlic in a mortar, and other ingredients lie scattered on the table: fish, eggs, a shrivelled red pepper and an earthenware jug probably containing olive oil. An older woman points towards her, as if giving her instructions or telling her off for working too hard, or she may be dra...
This painting and Portrait of a Man aged about 45, also in the National Gallery, were designed to hang together as portraits of a husband and wife. They are said to have been given by the painter Sir William Boxall RA, director of the National Gallery from 1865 to 1874, to his friend, the archite...
Not on display
This painting shows an episode from Ovid’s Art of Love (Book III: 83). The Roman goddess Diana would visit the shepherd Endymion every night while he slept. According to Cicero, Diana herself induced Endymion’s sleep so that she could enjoy him undisturbed. The subject was a popular one and had b...
The central figure in this work is George Gage, a notable art dealer and political agent in the 1620s, acting for King James I and then Charles I. Both he and Van Dyck were in Rome in 1622 and 1623, and it is highly likely that the painting was made then.Van Dyck has depicted Gage as an elegant f...
A man with blue eyes and a brown beard – slightly reddish below his mouth – looks out at us from this small picture. We don't know who he is but his black hat, known as a biretta, and his clothing indicate that he is a priest or a lawyer. He may well have been an important person: Corneille de Ly...
Not on display
The man in this portrait looks out at us with a quizzical glance. He wears a long wig, a furred robe and a prominent belt with 12 silver clasps, which tell us that he is a Venetian nobleman in winter dress. The inscription on the pilaster in the left background identifies the sitter as Antonio Co...
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This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–5. Ten of the modelli are in the National Gallery's collection, and this one represents one of the four Cardinal Virtues. Fi...
Not on display
Leonardo da Vinci is one of the most emulated and copied painters in history, and many artists have tried to reproduce his painting style. Most of them, like the artist who made this painting, did not come anywhere close to matching his skill. Paintings like this fulfilled a demand for pictures...
Not on display
In this exuberant picture, Rubens seems to suggest that apotheosis – a person being elevated to divine status – is not a wholly majestic and dignified affair, as it is presented in many other contemporary paintings. Here, it seems that any great man taken to heaven and granted immortality by the...
Life seems to amble along in this painting: there’s time for the horseman to pause, for the man beside him to communicate with his dogs and for two people to chat. The countryside setting appears almost timeless, though Isack van Ostade has explored the effects of time. Light flickers up the wall...
Not on display
The saints arranged neatly in rows look towards the central panel – which shows Christ crowning the Virgin Mary – of the four-tiered altarpiece that this picture comes from. A panel on the other side of the central image mirrors the scene here. Together, these three panels formed the main level o...
Not on display
The Virgin and Christ Child stand between two saints, one from the first century, one from the thirteenth. They don't have haloes, but we can tell who they are from their appearances and traditional attributes.On the left is the first-century Saint Paul, holding a book and the sword with which he...
Not on display
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...
Irises were among Monet’s favourite flowers, and he cultivated many different species, planting them in both his flower garden and his water garden. This is one of approximately 20 views or irises surrounding the banks of the lily pond that Monet painted around 1914–17. It is as though we are sta...
On display elsewhere
These three angels are painted in fresco, the technique of painting directly onto wet plaster. The haloes are gilded and the plaster has been indented using a decoratively shaped tool to create patterns in the gold.We do not know which church or monastery these angels once adorned, and from such...
Not on display
The poet Virgil is depicted reading the closing lines of Book VI of his epic poem the Aeneid to the Emperor Augustus and his sister Octavia. The words of the text are legible on his scroll. He describes Aeneas’ journey into the underworld, where the Trojan hero meets great Romans from the future....
Not on display
This is one of two panels in the National Gallery’s collection that probably once decorated the outer faces of the shutters of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. Here, the Virgin Mary kneels between Christ to the left and God the Father, who place a crown...
Not on display
This is one of a pair of seascapes, originally commissioned on behalf of the King of Poland, that the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India) bought from Vernet in 1773.Originally known as ‘Tempête’ (Storm), it depicts a rocky shoreline buffeted by a v...
This view of the interior of a Gothic church is painted from a relatively low viewpoint, making it feel like we are stood in the main aisle – a boy nearby has even noticed us. The artist has created the illusion that we are looking into a vast space: the receding parallel lines of the floor and a...
Not on display
A warm light cast from the left illuminates a dark red curtain raised behind the sitter. This light seems to soften the man’s stern expression and the stark white of his stiff collar and cuffs.The old man in Nicolaes Maes’s portrait hasn’t been identified, even though he appears to be a man of so...
Not on display
A hare’s carcass hangs from a fixing on a wall, a wound bloodying its soft, furry stomach. Its untethered leg flops lifelessly toward an overflowing basket of fruit, below which three dead birds – a brace of partridges and a jay – are displayed top-to-tail. A precious blue and white porcelain bow...
Not on display
This painting of Saint Roch is one of the flanking panels of a three-panel altarpiece for S. Maria della Scala, Verona. The central panel of the Virgin and Child with Saint Anne by Gerolamo dai Libri is also in the National Gallery’s collection, but the other flanking panel, of Saint Sebastian by...
Not on display
We know little about Montagna’s training but it is possible that he spent some time in Giovanni Bellini’s workshop in Venice. This composition, in which the holy figures are shown in half-length often set against a landscape background and usually behind a marble ledge, was pioneered by the Venet...
Not on display
This panel once formed the left shutter of an altarpiece in the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in north-west Germany. The right-hand shutter, which shows Saints Gregory, Maurice and Augustine, is also in the National Gallery’s collection.Saints Ambrose, Exuperius and Jerome are shown here beneath...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary kneels on a grassy patch in the foreground, seemingly undisturbed by our intrusive gaze. Her hands are clasped in prayer as she faces her infant son, who is lying before her. His legs crossed, his right elbow resting on a pillow, he is focusing on something outside the picture.A r...
Not on display
Within a walled garden, a man wearing a striking blue costume and ornate necklace catches the gaze of a woman holding a jar. A young boy stands just behind her, carrying a spear. Beyond the wall we glimpse treetops and birds flying across a bright sky.This picture is part of a series of four pain...
This large and well-stocked kitchen is a hive of industry. Four female servants prepare and cook food while a young man perches on a stool before the fire, swigging from an earthenware jug. Pots and pans litter the brick floor and every available surface seems stacked with produce.This is one of...
On display elsewhere
A young man stands leaning to one side, his arm resting on a stone plinth. His gaze is soft and he has a slight smile on his face. The artist has concentrated on the long curled hair, the elaborate and expensive lace, and his long fingers.The plinth shows a relief carving of Eros, the god of love...
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Christ sits enthroned in the Temple of Jerusalem. He blesses the woman in the lower right, who is extending her arms and kneeling in repentance. This is Mary Magdalene, whose conversion is not specifically mentioned in the Gospels, but which was often represented in art. Her sister Martha stands...
Not on display
Christen Købke probably painted this portrait of Wilhelm Bendz (1804–1832) around 1830. Both men were pupils of Christoffer Wilhelm Eckersberg at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Copenhagen.The style and technique are typical of Købke’s early maturity, when he was beginning to move away from the...
Not on display
This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.In this painting, which we think may represent April, a cooper makes a wooden barrel. He raises his mallet ready to strike the tool in his other...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary is seated with her cousin Saint Elizabeth and their sons in a rocky landscape. The infant Christ reclines on his mother’s lap, resting against her arm and laughing mischievously. This is a reduced version of the ‘Tallard Madonna’ (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg) signed by A...
A barefoot saint, dressed in a camel-hair shirt and holding a cross, stands on a marble base. His hair and beard are arranged in extravagant ringlets, and a long banner curls around the cross; we can see part of a Latin inscription on it.This striking figure is Saint John the Baptist, the biblica...
Not on display
This view almost certainly dates from Charles Rémond’s 1822–5 period in Italy. A landscape unfolds under a clear bright sky; a valley runs between overlapping hills, pale blue hills form a backdrop. Despite the luminous sky the colours are muted, the passage from foreground to misty distance care...
In this tiny portrait, an affable young man turns towards us, settling his elbow over the back of his chair. His pipe is paused and he meets our gaze with an easy, relaxed look. Perhaps he has just taken a puff; the tobacco is glowing and smoke twists upwards from the bowl. Other minute details –...
Not on display
This portrait was long known as ‘Il Cavaliere dal Piede Ferito’ (‘The knight with the wounded foot’). But the brace supporting the man’s left foot suggests he was suffering from foot-drop, a fairly common disorder caused by the failure of the ankle muscles. The way in which his plate armour has b...
Crespi is best known today for his paintings of everyday life. This scene, in which a man lifts a heavy basket of bread rolls from the side of his donkey, draws on the Bolognese tradition of depicting street vendors at their work. A bearded figure on the right raises his hand to purchase three of...
Not on display
Mrs Siddons (1755–1831) was the greatest tragic actress of her time, remaining at the top of her profession for 30 years. Gainsborough painted her in the winter of 1784–5, during her third London season.Most of Mrs Siddons’s earlier portraits depict her in character, but Gainsborough portrayed he...
This is one of perhaps only three surviving panel paintings by the great Florentine artist Michelangelo. It shows Christ’s body being carried to his tomb. It was probably made for a funerary chapel in the church of S. Agostino, Rome – commissioned in 1500 and left unfinished when Michelangelo ret...
The sense of activity on the boats and the jetty give a greater sense of movement than in many of Jan van de Cappelle’s paintings. But, as is usual, the sea is flat and calm, giving subtle reflections of the vessels, the clouds and two porpoises swimming calmly on the left.The pilings by the jett...
Not on display
The Continence of Scipio is one of a series of paintings that show scenes from ancient Roman history. They were probably intended to be inserted into wall panelling. Three other pictures in the series are in the National Gallery’s collection: The Attack on Cartagena, The Rape of the Sabines and T...
Not on display
Women combing their hair, or having it combed, often appear in Degas’s work, and this painting is one of his boldest treatments of the subject. A maid, wearing her servant’s uniform, combs the hair of her seated mistress, who is not yet fully dressed. Pulled back by the force of the strokes, the...
These three men are probably the painter brothers Antoine, Louis and Mathieu Le Nain. Their noses and chins suggest a family resemblance, and the way that the central man stares out at us recalls the traditions of self portraiture. The costumes, with their broad collars, suggest a date of the lat...
Johannes Spruyt has placed his handsome water birds against a stormy sky. Wind disturbs the grass and stunted trees behind them – perhaps to emphasise that, although these are farm animals, they are healthy specimens, hardy and resilient against the weather.The white goose beats its wings and his...
Not on display
An older man sits, legs crossed and head bowed, absorbed in his reading. This is Cezanne’s father, Louis-Auguste. He was probably in his early sixties when his son painted this portrait directly onto an alcove wall in the salon of Jas de Bouffan, the country residence outside Aix-en-Provence that...
When this small painting on wood was bequeathed to the National Gallery it had the title Vespers, although it had previously been titled Young Girl with Flowers. The composition is very similar to a picture titled Sunday Afternoon, which Jacob Maris had painted a few years earlier in 1863. That p...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary sits on her mother’s lap, her attention focused on the wriggling Christ Child. Her mother, Saint Anne, looks intently at her through deep-set eyes and points upwards to the heavens, indicating the child’s divinity. Christ’s cousin, Saint John the Baptist, leans against Anne’s lap...
Although peaceful and still, this painting seems to hold many sounds: the rustle of leaves in a sudden breeze, the jingle of a harness and the splash of hooves in the water, quiet voices and dogs snuffling at the ground. We catch a glimpse of the patience needed to make such a journey. The women...
Not on display
Elena Carafa was Degas’s first cousin. Her mother, Stefanina, the Duchessa Montejasi-Cicerale, was the youngest sister of Degas’s father. Like many members of Degas’s family they lived in Naples, which Degas himself returned to in the winter of 1873–4, when he accompanied his dying father there....
Pieter Neeffs painted this nocturnal church interior, but it was another Antwerp artist, Bonaventura Peeters, who did the many figures. Only Neeffs signed the picture, however, followed by the year it was painted (1649). The painting, which depicts a chapel during Mass, is a more elaborate versio...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary sits in the corner of a simple room, the Christ Child on her lap. She holds him gently with both hands as he presses his cheek to hers and reaches for her breast. The gauzy shirt he wears contrasts with the layers of veils and garments covering his mother.Light streaming through t...
Not on display
Andrea Gritti (1455–1538) was elected doge (head of the Venetian state) in 1523, and this painting was probably made soon afterwards. He wears his robes of office and on his left hand is a gold ring with a device representing the doge kneeling before Saint Mark, patron saint of Venice.Catena’s po...
This portrait of an unknown husband and wife is unusually intimate. The costumes have been dated to the mid-1540s. It was rare at the time for a man to be depicted with his hand resting on his wife’s shoulder. It was also slightly unusual for a woman to be shown on her husband’s right-hand side,...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary stands or sits by an open window through which we can see a distant landscape. The Christ Child is cradled in her arms – he has the fingers of one hand in his mouth and clutches at his mother’s veil, which wraps around him, with the other. Two angels peer over the Virgin’s shoulde...
Not on display
Saint George, a Christian knight, saved a city which was being terrorised by a dragon. Here he charges the beast, who crouches on a grisly collection of bloody bones. The princess, who was to be its next meal, makes a hasty escape on the left.Although ostensibly a history painting, it is the land...
This is a view of the south-east front of the Huis ten Bosch (‘House in the Wood’), which was built just outside The Hague as a summer palace for the wife of the head of state of the Netherlands. The building is shown in its original state, a decade or so after it was finished. Today it is used b...
Not on display
In a guardroom that looks more like a Flemish tavern than a prison, a crown of thorns is being placed on Christ’s head. This humiliating moment, recounted in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and John, was one of a number of such episodes in the lead-up to Christ’s crucifixion. Here, the henchmen wear...
This angel comes from a pala (an altarpiece with a single, unified surface) which was sawn into pieces in the eighteenth century but reassembled by the National Gallery in the 1930s. It was made for a confraternity of priests, and shows the Trinity (God the Father, Christ and the Holy Ghost as a...
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...
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...
According to the Gospel of Luke (5: 1–11), Christ one day approached two fishing boats on the Sea of Galilee. After boarding one and preaching from it, he told the fishermen to cast their nets. Although they had worked all night and caught nothing, the fisherman agreed; when they hauled the nets...
This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.It is the most puzzling picture of the series. A young man holds two rods, with one crossing the other at the top. It looks as though he might be...
Not on display
Venus, the goddess of love, reclines languidly on her bed, the curve of her body echoed in the sweep of sumptuous satin fabric. The pearly tones of her smooth skin contrast with the rich colours and lively brushstrokes of the curtain and sheets.Venus‘ face is reflected in the mirror held up by he...
This monumental painting shows a large crowd awaiting the results of a lottery draw, which is taking place on the balcony of the Palazzo di Montecitorio in Rome. A man has released the winning ticket into the air – you can just make out a small piece of paper fluttering towards the excited group...
This work is almost a portrait of a building: the imposing facade of the Palazzo Grimani fills nearly the entire composition. Boatmen emerge from the left and right just in front of us, adding a sense of movement, while figures composed of dots and daubs of paint stand on the palace’s steps.Palaz...
Not on display
This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each of these paintings Gonzales Coques has used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense.Here, pip...
Not on display
Louis-Gustave Ricard (1823–1873) worked primarily as a portraitist, producing almost 150 portraits, including many of his fellow artists. He also made copies of old masters, particularly in the Louvre, several of which were particularly admired. He travelled from 1844, making trips to Italy, Belg...
Not on display
Apollo in a red cloak shoots his arrows at two one-eyed men, one of whom lies prostrate on the ground as the other flees. These are the Cyclops, a mythical race of giants, each with a single eye in the middle of his forehead. This scene is one of ten frescoes which originally adorned the walls o...
A wicker basket is piled high with fresh lemons, seemingly just picked from a tree, their leaves still attached. Sprigs of flowers – lemon blossom, red carnations, blue delphiniums, white roses, day lilies and a tulip – are scattered throughout the composition.A goldfinch perches on the edge of a...
Scenes set in brothels (called bordeeltjes in Dutch) were a popular genre in seventeenth-century painting. In this picture, two young women sit on the laps of their clients; the much older woman in the centre runs the business. Although the men are the paying customers, it is the women who are cl...
Not on display
These two scenes continue the stories on the previous panel, Helsinus saved from a Shipwreck and (below) A French Canon drowned by Devils. They come from a twelfth-century text written by English monk Eadmer, an early supporter of the idea that the Virgin was conceived without sin.The top portion...
This painting combines the intense use of gilded decorative pattern favoured by the artists of Fungai’s hometown, Siena, with a more freely painted landscape background inspired by his Umbrian contemporaries, like Perugino.The Virgin Mary embraces the infant Christ. The dazzling gold and white cl...
This oil sketch shows the design for an altarpiece that Giovanni Battista Tiepolo made for the church of San Salvatore in Venice in 1737. The scene unites saints from different periods and places. Seated on the throne and holding a flaming heart to symbolise his love for God is Saint Augustine (3...
In this intimate painting the Virgin Mary holds a branch of lilies entwined with carnations in her left hand and supports the Christ Child with her right. He raises one hand in blessing, and holds a rose in the other. The rose and lily are commonly associated with the Virgin’s purity. More flower...
Two female saints stand at the ends of this predella (the part of an altarpiece below the main level), one holding pincers, the other with two snakes. These are Saint Agatha, or possibly Apollonia, and Saint Verdiana. In between them are three scenes from the life of Saint John the Evangelist.The...
Not on display
A friar stands on a marble plinth, holding a lily and a book. This is a thirteenth-century saint, Antony of Padua. He wears the grey habit of the Observants, a strict, reformed branch of the Franciscans, an order of friars founded by Saint Francis of Assisi.The book symbolises Saint Anthony’s le...
Not on display
The god Jupiter wished to immortalise his infant son Hercules, whose mother was the mortal Alcmene, so he held him to the breast of his sleeping wife, the goddess Juno, to drink her milk. However, Juno woke. The milk which spurted upwards formed the Milky Way, while that which fell downwards gave...
Saint Cecilia, patron saint of musicians, sits serenely at a table, holding a palm – the symbol of her martyrdom – in one hand and a sheet of music in the other. On the left is a portable organ; on the right an angel leans on a harp. In the top right corner we can glimpse the upper parts of a cl...
This is an oil sketch Rubens made in preparation for an altarpiece for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent; it shows the scene that appeared on the left panel. The two women wearing gold crowns are Saints Gertrude and Begga, the sisters of Saint Bavo (who appears in the central panel). Saint Bavo was a Ro...
Not on display
Ceres, goddess of the earth and fertility, harvests corn with a group of winged infants, known as putti. During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Ceres was commonly shown crowned with a garland of corn. She was often depicted as one of the Four Elements (Earth) or one of the Four Seasons...
Not on display
This is one of dozens of self portraits by Rembrandt. We see the artist in confident pose – self-assured, dressed in expensive-looking fur and velvet, his hat laced with jewels. But, though he is a Dutchman living in the 1640s, Rembrandt is wearing the clothes of a gentleman of the 1520s and his...
Charlotte Cuhrt was 15 years old when Max Pechstein painted this striking full-length portrait. The daughter of Max Cuhrt, a successful solicitor and patron of the avant-garde, she sits confidently in an armchair, her big black eyes looking directly at the viewer. She’s dressed in red, with a lar...
Snow scenes were a particular favourite among the Impressionists, and Monet painted several canvases that explore the way sunlight plays upon the snow, reflecting tones of red, pink, purple and blue at different times of day. He produced this scene of Lavacourt, a tiny hamlet on a bend in the Sei...
On display elsewhere
Two boys stand in front of a large picture displayed on a wooden easel. The snub-nosed child on the right leans over to study the drawing more closely, while the other turns, frowning slightly, to look at something out of view. The central figure is quite possibly a self portrait by the artist. H...
Not on display
The Pharisees (chief priests) ask Christ whether it is right to pay tax to the Romans, who rule Palestine. Christ, sensing a trap, asks whose likeness and name are on the coinage: ‘They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then he saith unto them, render therefore unto Caesar the things that are Caesar’s; and...
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...
Not on display
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...
Hobbema specialised in landscapes which present a positive, even idealised, evocation of carefree country life, where the trees are always heavy with summer leaf, the tracks are dry and there is only a gentle breeze in the air.This didn’t necessarily reflect day-to-day realities. Woodland of this...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
The unknown sitter has been described as a Florentine nobleman, but his deep red gown with the wide, plain falling collar and wide lace cuffs suggest that he may have had a position in the government of Genoa, where Sustermans was working in 1649. His gaze is firm and serious, his moustache impre...
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Antonio Visentini engraved 38 paintings by Canaletto in his celebrated Urbis Venetiarum Prospectus, published in 1742 – this popular view was one of them. The collection of prints increased the artist’s fame and spread his work across Europe. This composition was widely reproduced in Canaletto’s...
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This is a scene from a story in the Old Testament. The naked woman is Bathsheba. She has just finished bathing, unaware that she has been spotted by King David, who is standing on the roof of his palace at the top right of the picture. According to the Bible, David was so besotted with Bathsheba’...
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In the early 1660s, when this portrait was made, this fancy outfit, bedecked with ruffles, ribbons and lace, was the height of sophisticated dressing, inspired by the latest fashions in Paris and employing the most expensive fabrics and tailoring.We don’t know who the sitter is, though it seems a...
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Costly blooms like roses and tulips are tumbled together with humbler flowers like morning glory and marigolds, forming an exuberant, almost wild, bouquet. Tiny insects burrow through the petals while a cabbage white butterfly balances precariously on top.The painting isn’t as spontaneous as it a...
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Under a stormy sky, cattle are herded across a frail-looking bridge, the fast water threatening to destroy the trestles that hold it up. The river swings round to the left and tumbles away in a mist of foam down the hill between jagged rocks. Norwegian pine trees pierce the clouds and the branche...
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The Virgin Mary, regal and refined, is seated on an inlaid stone throne with the Christ Child on her knee. Two musical angels with multi-coloured wings balance on the back of the throne, and there is a Latin inscription on the front of the marble parapet beneath it: REGINA CELI LETTARE ALLELVIA (...
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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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Saint John the Baptist stands in a kind of loggia (an open-sided gallery or room) with a tiled floor, wearing a hair shirt and holding his emblem, the lamb. This is the left wing of The Donne Triptych, painted by Hans Memling for the Welsh nobleman and diplomat Sir John Donne, probably in the lat...
John the Baptist’s head is presented to King Herod on a golden platter. He recoils in disgust, while his guests cover their eyes, unable to look. The girl in a pink dress is Salome, whose dancing had delighted Herod so much that he offered her whatever she wished for. Her mother, Herod’s wife, as...
Saint John the Baptist, dressed in a hair shirt and a purple mantle, holds his attribute of a lamb. This refined painting was originally the left wing of a small triptych (an image made up of three parts). The central panel, which shows the Virgin and Child, is now in the Uffizi, Florence while t...
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This design for a silver basin depicts a number of episodes from classical myth. Venus, the goddess of love, steps out of the giant shell from which, according to Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns, she was born. The birth of Venus from the sea is a playful subject for a basin design: as the...
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Although the vast majority of the picture is taken up by the landscape, our perception of it hinges on the two figures standing in the gateway. The angle created by the dead tree and stumps in the left foreground guides our gaze to them, as does the red dress of the milkmaid, which stands out str...
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The Virgin Mary prays before the newborn Christ, who radiates heavenly light. Saint Joseph holds back the infant Saint John the Baptist, who holds a cross, a symbol of Christ’s destiny. It is unusual to find the infant John the Baptist included in an image of the Nativity.Two shepherds arrive on...
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This oil sketch is a study for a large painting of 1873 which now hangs in the entrance hall of the Musée d’Orsay in Paris. Like this work, the painting is also known as The Harvest, but it is not intended to be viewed as an image of rural life, rather it is an evocation of a golden age.There are...
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This is the third in a series of four panels illustrating the different times of day that Corot painted for his friend, fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. It is evening and colours are at their richest. Nearest to us, a mysterious figure is wearing what appears to be a dark brown monk’s hab...
This kneeling angel holding a lily is part of an Annunciation scene – this was the moment the Archangel Gabriel appeared to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she would conceive the Son of God. The lily is symbolic of the Virgin’s chastity.He comes from the top of the left panel of a large polyptyc...
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Although titled Grandfather’s Birthday, an inscription on the wooden support on the reverse of this small oak panel reads Le Nouveau Né (The Newborn), which may be a more appropriate title. We are looking at an intergenerational family group ranging from a young infant to an elderly man. The mix...
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Henri-Joseph Harpignies saw himself as a painter of real life. From the outset, he dissociated himself from his older contemporaries – from the smooth, meticulous style of neo-classical artists and from the flamboyance of the Romantics. Yet in this tiny picture, made very early in his career, the...
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The Virgin bends over the sleeping Christ Child, the diagonal slope of her body paralleled by that of her son’s. Her lips are parted – perhaps she’s singing her child to sleep. Christ is balanced rather precariously on a red cushion on a parapet. His head rests in his mother’s hand and one arm ha...
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In this miniaturised altarpiece, the Virgin Mary sits with an enormous Christ Child on a gilded throne. They are flanked by four saints, and in the foreground six men and six women kneel in prayer, the men on the Virgin’s right-hand – and more honourable – side. They are stylishly dressed in the...
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Christ carries the Cross on which he will be crucified to Golgotha, the site of his execution (John 19: 17). He is surrounded by soldiers and guards who goad him on his way as he struggles under the weight of the Cross. His body is doubled over and large teardrops fall down his face. The thorns...
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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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Au unidentified young man wearing plate armour stands before an open window that looks out onto the Piazza della Signoria in Florence. The Palazzo della Signoria, known as the Palazzo Vecchio, seat of the Florentine government, as well as the Loggia dei Lanzi, are depicted behind him. He appears...
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This painting served as the high altarpiece of the Franciscan church of S. Guglielmo in Ferrara. It was commissioned by the sisters of the convent, who were followers of Saint Clare of Assisi. Known as Poor Clares, they were the female branch of the Franciscan Order.The infant Christ sits on his...
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This painting shows a romanticised view of peasant life in Oudewater, a small town on the River Ijssel situated between Gouda and Utrecht. Clothes have been hung out to dry in the sunshine, chickens peck at the cobbled street and a man dangles a makeshift fishing rod into the river in the hope of...
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This is the first of Lancret’s series of paintings depicting The Four Ages of Man.Ten wealthy children, a baby, a nurse and a governess are outside in a tiled neoclassical loggia. Two of the children are being taught to read by the governess, while the others are playing boisterous games. A boy a...
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We might feel small and insignificant when looking at this wild and unruly landscape. The large sand-coloured rock formations framed by trees, shrubs and trailing vines are animated by small animals and birds. It’s only at second glance that we notice the small group in the left foreground standi...
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After a female friend boasted of the jewels she owned, Cornelia Africana, a widowed Roman matron and mother of Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus (known as the Gracchi), declared her sons to be her jewels. Cornelia educated the boys after their father’s death and they went on to serve as tribunes (power...
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Van Gogh painted this patch of meadow when he was a patient at the psychiatric hospital at Saint-Paul de Mausole, near the village of St-Rémy in the south of France. While at the hospital he made a number of sketches and paintings that look down at small areas of meadow or undergrowth.Although th...
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The unknown young man in the portrait looks out gravely but with the hint of a smile about his mouth. He wears garments fashionable in 1657, the year the painting was made: a flat lace collar, the two ends of the stock that ties it peeping out below, and multiple buttons down the coat, left undon...
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This painting can be read in two ways. One interpretation suggests that the woman has tempted the man into a game of cards – a metaphor for vice – and the moment shown is when she trumps his trick and reaches out for her winnings. He is the dupe, and the smile on the face of the man in the centre...
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This picture of a female sparrowhawk is one of two known paintings of birds by the Venetian artist Jacopo de' Barbari, who worked in the noble courts of Germany and the Netherlands. It is a probably a fragment of a larger painting made quite late in Jacopo’s life, perhaps when he was working in t...
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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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Christ turns to look at us as he carries the Cross on which he will be crucified. This type of painting, in which the viewer is put in the position of the holy women on whom Christ looked on the route to Calvary, was especially popular in North Italy in the sixteenth century. Christ’s eyes appeal...
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The figure in this painting is copied from one of the elders in the foreground of Guercino’s Susannah and the Elders (Museo del Prado, Madrid), which illustrates a story in the Old Testament Apocrypha. While she is bathing, Susannah is spied upon by two old men who threaten to accuse her of adult...
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This is a copy of Titian’s large canvas known as ‘La Gloria’ (The Glory) or The Trinity. Titian’s painting was commissioned by Emperor Charles V of Spain in 1551, and is now in the Prado, Madrid.The Emperor and Empress with their son Prince Philip and his sisters kneel in their burial shrouds bef...
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Johannes Bosboom is best known for his paintings of the interiors of churches, cloisters and synagogues, in which the figures often wear seventeenth-century costume. He made a number of sketches and paintings of this church, the Bakenesserkerk in Haarlem. This painting shows the south aisle and f...
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A small dog on its hind legs performs before a middle-aged man, who lies on the grass. The man’s long white coat with a salmon-pink lining and his white gaiters have the appearance of a theatrical costume rather than everyday clothes. His raised hand and attentive gaze suggest he is teaching the...
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An unidentified Franciscan friar kneels in veneration before the Virgin and Child. The Virgin looks down at him and touches the top of his head. Christ, sitting on her knee, holds a flower and raises his right hand in blessing.Saint Catherine, holding the wheel on which she was tortured and the p...
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This is a copy of a signed work by Salvator Rosa of about 1645 (now in the Pitti Palace, Florence). It depicts an episode from the life of Diogenes, the ancient Greek philosopher who wanted to be free of all earthly attachments. Upon seeing a boy using his hands to drink from a stream, Diogenes t...
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Two figures stand and sit in the shadows at the edge of a wood and contemplate an ancient church almost shrouded in trees. Light filters down a pathway between them, giving an eerie feeling to the image. The picture has lost some of its colour and vibrancy, but even so it brings the imagination i...
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An ageing man looks affably out at us, a hint of a smile on his lips. The cassock, collar and skull cap he wears indicate that he is a priest, though his identity is unknown. He is shown standing, in three-quarter length, his head and left hand starkly lit against a plain background. The portrait...
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Melchior d‘Hondecoeter specialised in large decorative paintings of birds, often mixing domestic and ornamental fowl with wild ones, as he does in this picture. A wild pigeon perches on a wooden yoke that leans against an overturned wicker basket, while a finch wings its way towards it.The exotic...
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In this enormous painting, Philips Koninck shows us a panorama of the Dutch countryside under a vast sky. What seems an almost deserted stretch of land is actually peopled with many figures: the women washing clothes in the stream, a man fishing and a small figure brandishing a stick as he rides...
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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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William Seguier (1772–1843) was a picture dealer and picture cleaner. He was Superintendent of the British Institution from its foundation in 1805, Surveyor, Cleaner and Repairer of the King’s Pictures from 1820 and Keeper of the National Gallery from its foundation in 1824. He continued in all t...
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Jesus sits at the head of the table, surrounded by his disciples, holding up a piece of bread, which he blesses: this is the Last Supper. Ercole’s skill at painting detail on a small scale is clear: each disciple has a different facial expression, and the transparent glasses, the carafes and the...
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Christ kneels before his mother to ask for her blessing as he prepares to leave and follow his destiny. He is robed in white against the blueish landscape, his pose conveying a sense of delicacy and stillness. The Virgin Mary swoons, her face and hands drained of colour – she knows that her son i...
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Eleven finely dressed men inspect and discuss the contents of a large room packed with works of art, astronomical instruments and antiques. Their distinctive features suggest that these might be portraits of known artists, connoisseurs, collectors and art dealers – the ‘cognoscenti’ of the painti...
This small panel records a bright but cloudy day as a group of well-dressed visitors gather around a flagpole on the sandy beach at Trouville on the Normandy coast. While we cannot see their faces, their poses and gestures suggest animated conversation. Boudin’s free and spontaneous handling of t...
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A man has been crushed by a snake and lies dead beside a pond: his body is limp and his skin a greenish-grey. We see a man and woman whose gestures and movement show their fear and surprise. The way the landscape is constructed reveals the drama in stages: the running man sees the dead man and th...
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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Sienese painting of the second half of the fifteenth century blended the artistic ideals of its own time with a continued reverence for the language of earlier Sienese art. Nowhere is this more true than in this altarpiece, painted in 1479 by Benvenuto di Giovanni, possibly for a church in Orvie...
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Emanuel de Witte is best known for his pictures of church interiors, but he had begun his career as a figure painter and later in life started painting portraits. This is one of them. We know from contemporary documents that this is a portrait of one of his patrons, Adriana van Heusden, and her d...
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The young girl in this portrait seems a little shy and tentative. Her eyes are wide and enquiring, her eyebrows slightly raised. She holds out the fan a little awkwardly as if uncertain what to do with it. Her hand placed on her stomach almost appears to steady her.The girl’s identity is unknown,...
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Adriaen van de Velde’s pastoral scenes are, like this one, almost always tranquil and serene. They were designed to be easy to live with, and to give city dwellers a sense of being in touch with the countryside and traditional life. But although the paintings are tranquil there’s a sense of energ...
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Pierre-Charles Poussin’s painting of 1851 shows a crowd of pilgrims who have gathered for the Pardon day at Guingamp in Brittany. Pardons were a Breton tradition in which the faithful would gain absolution for their sins in return for joining a procession to worship at selected shrines.Brittany,...
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This panel is the second in a series of scenes of the life of Christ, part of a multi-panelled altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, Florence. This sequence ran above the altarpiece’s main tier, which showed the coronation of the Virgin surrounded by adoring saints.We see three kin...
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This view is one of a number painted by Corot during his stay in north-east France in the spring and summer of 1871. In May he stayed with his friend and fellow artist Alfred Robaut at Douai. Robaut later wrote that this work, painted in just a few hours, was a copy after one of his own sketches,...
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A young girl stands by a column and a balustrade, her hair tied back in a chignon, with tendrils hanging down on either side of her face. The girl’s dress dates the picture to the late 1640s. Isaack Luttichuys often painted his sitters against architectural backdrops and at first glance the paint...
Segna di Bonaventura, from Siena, was the nephew of Duccio di Buoninsegna, that city’s leading artist. They shared a love of flowing lines, harmonious colour combinations and graceful expression of emotion.Painted Crucifixes of this kind were common features of Italian churches in the thirteenth...
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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This canvas is the second of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.In this scene, colossal full-length statues of Roman gods are transported on a richly ornamented cart, while a smaller one is lifted by a member of the entourage. An inscribed tablet praising...
This picture is a fragment of a larger painting for the spandrel of an arch (the triangular area beside the arch). There would have been another figure in a complementary pose on the other side of the arch. The painting consists of five separate pieces of canvas, which were probably originally gl...
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A native of Berne, Switzerland, Ferdinand Hodler spent much of 1902 in the Oberland painting mountainous landscapes. This work shows the Kien Valley looking towards the Bluemlisalp, a massif at the far end of the valley. During his artistic retreats in the Alps – not so different, in spirit, from...
Saint Paul is depicted with reed pen poised, gazing at the crucified Christ for inspiration. The Greek text he is writing is from his first Epistle to the Corinthians (13: 4): ‘Charity suffereth long, and is kind; charity envieth not; charity vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up’. His attribute,...
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This picture is either a copy of a mid-seventeenth-century Dutch painting, which is now lost, or an imitation or pastiche. As the paint contains a pigment that was not available to artists until the 1840s, it was most likely painted in the second half of the nineteenth century.The picture has pre...
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A finely dressed young woman gazes assuredly out at the viewer. The distinct shape of her nose, the turn of her mouth and her faintly dimpled chin reveal that this is a portrait, though the sitter’s identity is unknown. She is shown in the guise of Saint Agnes, with the saint’s attributes of a la...
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The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated on a marble throne, which is elevated by two plinths decorated with biblical scenes. Below them stand two saints, Saint John the Baptist and probably Saint George in armour.A number of changes suggest that the altarpiece was painted in more than one sta...
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The Virgin Mary gently supports the Christ Child as he plays with her hair. He casts a curious glance at his cousin, Saint John the Baptist, who is recognisable by the fine wooden cross tucked under his arm, a symbol of Christ’s crucifixion. The Virgin’s fair complexion and golden hair were consi...
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A young man looks out at the viewer with a piercing gaze and provocative expression. With an elegant hand gesture he points towards his chest, alluding to the fact this image is in fact a self portrait. His lips are parted, as if he is about to introduce himself – this is the Flemish painter Anth...
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A man wearing the cap and gown of a scholar sits at a desk in a dark and cavernous room, a glazed expression on his face. He clasps a pair of reading glasses, implying that he was until a moment ago studying the book propped up in front of him. A large diagram of the palm of a hand is visible on...
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The unknown man in this half-length portrait proudly displays an eight-pointed silver cross suspended from a black cord round his neck, which identifies him as a Knight of the Order of Saint John. His left hand clasps a sword. The pose points to the twin aims of the Order: religious and military...
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This scene shows Saints Clement and Justus coming to the aid of the citizens of Volterra – the town was under siege by the Vandals, a Germanic tribe. The people were starving until, in answer to the saints‘ prayers, the granaries were miraculously filled and it was finally possible to bake some b...
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This is one of two paintings originally commissioned as a pair by Stanislas Augustus, King of Poland, in June or July 1772. However, concerned that the King was slow to pay, Vernet instead sold the pictures to the British officer and East India Company official Lord Clive (known as Clive of India...
In the Dutch Republic at this time, paintings were a means of entertainment – scenes of outdoor life were meant to hold moments of interest that had to be teased out. Although it’s not immediately evident, this picture does exactly that.The huge expanse of sky is grey; the pub roof is almost fall...
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According to Roman mythology, an earthquake in 362 BC caused a deep pit to open up in the Roman Forum. The citizens of Rome tried in vain to fill it and were advised by the oracle that the gods demanded Rome’s most precious possession. A young soldier named Marcus Curtius knew that this was youth...
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A group of figures sits in a classical landscape. In the middle stands a king who seems to have grown large ears. This is the Judgement of Midas, taken from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. On the right is the sun god Apollo, wearing a red cloak and a laurel crown and holding his lyre; on the...
An imaginary ruined castle or fortress, bathed in gentle sunlight, stands on a piece of land that juts into the water. A fishing boat is moored in a sheltered cove, and two figures – perhaps off fishing, as one holds a rod – walk past it along the water’s edge. A gentle breeze coming off the wate...
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This panel of Saint Louis of Toulouse and one of Saint Bonaventure, also in the National Gallery’s collection, are part of a series of nine paintings by Pordenone from a ceiling in the Scuola di S. Francesco ai Frari at Venice. The original arrangement showed the Four Evangelists on square panels...
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In this small arched painting, the Virgin Mary is seated on a grey stone bench surrounded by a wooden frame. She wears a red mantle and uses both hands to gently restrain the naked Christ Child as he leaps forward with his arms outstretched.Once thought to be by a follower or even a late copy aft...
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The Virgin Mary sits high on a throne of rough-hewn rock while two angels hover with the crown of heaven above her head. The infant Christ stands naked on her lap, dangling a pair of cherries, symbolic of the fruit of Paradise, from a thread.Saint George is shown as a young knight on horseback....
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Angry to find that the Temple of Jerusalem was like a market because of the money-changers and dove-sellers trading, Christ drove them out using a whip. Here he is poised in the centre, right arm raised above his head, about to strike a money-changer who has fallen on one knee. His table has tipp...
Although Roelant Roghman made many topographical drawings, A Mountainous Landscape is almost certainly an imaginary view, conjured from sketches and drawings by himself or other artists who had travelled abroad. The rounded hills, craggy distant mountain and the strange little trees on the edge o...
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A sandy road leads from the immediate foreground to a cluster of sunlit buildings in the centre background. A further, much hazier group, lies just to the right of the prominent tree. The first group depicts the village of Saintry, south-east of Paris. The square tower with its pointed roof is a...
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We do not know the identity of the man in this very damaged portrait. His clothes are typical of Venice and suggest a date in the early sixteenth century. He is shown three-quarter length, facing the left, his hand holding the stola (cloth sash) draped over his shoulder. His sleeve is lined with...
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A group of six men and nine women stand at the foot of a hill at the bottom of a steep rocky path. Some of them clasp their hands in prayer and look towards the summit of the hill, while others face in other directions. They have traditionally been identified as the Giusti family of Verona, altho...
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We do not know the identity of the jovial-looking man in this half-length portrait, but Tocqué captures both his appearance and his psychology. He rests one hand on the back of a chair and the other on his hip as he turns to observe us with a smile.The elaborate gold brocade waistcoat is a visual...
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On the third day after the Crucifixion two of Jesus’s disciples were walking to Emmaus when they met the resurrected Christ. They failed to recognise him, but that evening at supper he ‘... took bread, and blessed it, and brake and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him; and...
A lady seated in an alcove points out a passage in a book to a young man kneeling before her. This is Rhetoric, or argument, an allegorical figure who represented one of the seven liberal arts which made up the medieval curriculum. She is one of a series of paintings made in the late 1470s by Jus...
Neither the soft, hazy light of this picture nor its mountain path leading up through birch trees is typical of a seventeenth-century Dutch landscape painting. Such a picture would show wide, flat countryside, lit with a cool northern light. This is an imaginary view based on a Dutch artist’s exp...
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This panel formed the centre of an altarpiece commissioned by a member of the Quaratesi family for the high altar of San Niccoló Oltrarno, Florence. It was flanked by Saints Mary Magdalene, Nicholas of Bari, John the Baptist and George; the predella showed scenes from the Life of Saint Nicholas.T...
This large, gilded polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) is one of the few almost complete early Renaissance altarpieces in the National Gallery’s collection. It was made for the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany, probably in the 1420s.Altarpieces on the high altar had...
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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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This tiny painting – almost postcard sized – shows an endearing fireside scene: Christ’s bath time. The Virgin sits on a cushion on the floor, surrounded by domestic paraphernalia. There is a brass bowl in front of the fire, and a basket of white cloths – presumably nappies or swaddling bands – o...
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This stern and commanding figure is Saint Peter, the first pope and one of the founders of the Catholic Church. He comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. His hooded eyes...
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Time, the winged figure holding an hourglass, orders his companion Old Age to disfigure the face of a young woman, the personification of Beauty. This interaction encourages us to consider the brevity of youth and the inevitable passing of time.Batoni often drew from a live model when preparing h...
Naked Venus, the goddess of love, throws her arms around handsome young Adonis to stop him from going out to hunt. The story is told in Book 10 of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Venus falls in love with the youth Adonis when Cupid accidentally wounds her with one of his arrows. She goes hunting with Adoni...
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This painting on canvas, together with another Group of Heads, is a copy of part of Correggio’s destroyed fresco, The Coronation of the Virgin, which was painted in the apse of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. A number of fragments of Correggio’s original fresco are also in the National Gallery’...
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This priest – whose hair has been shaved, or tonsured – once stood on the right side of a small altarpiece which Crivelli painted for the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno, in the Italian Marche. He is Saint Peter Martyr, the second saint of the Dominican Order, and their first martyr.The...
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This altarpiece is considered Ortolano’s masterpiece. In it he achieves effects of startling realism through his deep understanding of anatomy, optics and perspective. It was made for the church of S. Maria in Bondeno, a small town to the north-west of Ferrara.Saints Sebastian (centre) and Roch (...
Christ kneels in prayer. He gazes up at an angel, who presents him with a chalice containing the instruments of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion). To the right, in a walled garden, three of the apostles sleep while a group of soldiers, led by Judas, peer furtively through an arched g...
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The glorious colours in this portrait are equalled by the delicacy and sensitivity with which Van Dyck has captured an intimate moment between us and an unknown woman and her little boy. She wears the formal clothing of an affluent bourgeois wife: a black silk dress with an elaborate gold stomach...
A life-size figure stands before us, holding a skull in one hand and gesticulating with the other. Although he faces us frontally he looks to his left, and it is the gesture of his right hand that focuses us: his fingers seem to project out from the canvas into our space.This is one of Hals’s mos...
This picture is unusual among Moroni’s secular paintings: the others that survive are all portraits. It is the only single-figure allegorical painting known by him and is likely to date from about 1560. The woman may be intended as a personification of Chastity but she also represents the Roman p...
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Painted in an assured and sensitive way, this is a particularly lyrical example of Alvise Vivarini’s achievements as a painter of devotional images. He painted the Virgin and Child many times, always placing them in a sparse interior behind a parapet, against a green curtain pulled back from a wi...
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Two sailing boats – a flat-bottomed kaag and smaller, more open weyschuit, which had a similar rig – are shown in the foreground. They appear to be at the mouth of a harbour or estuary. One sails towards and the other away from a black buoy. This is a similar composition to another van de Velde p...
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The Virgin, face partly obscured by her vast blue cloak, places a hand on her son’s bloody wound. He is shown upright, after his crucifixion. The image of Christ displaying his wounds after death was popular in the late Middle Ages as a focus for meditation upon his suffering. The spear used to p...
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...
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The young woman at the keyboard holds our eye with a direct gaze. The empty chair suggests she is expecting someone and the large painting of a naked Cupid, the god of erotic love, on the wall behind her may be a signal that she is waiting for her lover. Scenes of music making were a popular genr...
This picture was once part of a multi-panelled altarpiece with four tiers, made for the Florentine church of Santa Croce. It would have appeared in the third tier, above an image of the apostle Paul (now in the Gemäldegalerie, Berlin) and beneath an image of David.The inscriptions that identify t...
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The sitter looms out of this painting in a rather imposing way, filling much more of the picture space than do the figures in most of Hals’s portraits. However, since it was first made, the picture seems to have been cut down at the sides and the bottom, amplifying the sense of the sitter’s size...
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A white cow, once a mortal woman named Io, emerges from the shadows at the edge of this picture. Io had caught the eye of the god Jupiter, and he had transformed her in order to protect her from the wrath of his wife Juno. The plan backfired when Juno decided to claim the animal for herself, sett...
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Donck, whose signature is below the stump in the foreground, left almost no trace in the historical records. We don‘t even know his first name, only that he signed several small genre and portrait paintings between 1627 and 1640 and that he may have worked in Amsterdam.The sitters here were named...
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This panel comes from an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn in the west of Germany, and was probably originally placed to the left of the main scene showing the Crucifixion. It shows the Archangel Gabriel appearing to the Virgin Mary to tell her that she will...
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The story of a peasant woman called Griselda was told in The Decameron, a book written in the mid-fourteenth century. She was put through a series of tests by her rich husband, the Marquis Gualtieri di Saluzzo – we see three of them in this painting.In the background on the left, two tiny babies...
The Adoration of the Shepherds is a late altarpiece by Guido Reni. Nearly five metres high without its frame, it is one of the largest paintings in the National Gallery’s collection.In a stable in Bethlehem, a group of shepherds gather around the newborn Christ. Reni has staged a night-time scene...
This is one of four paintings of saints and angels made to decorate a pair of shutters. It was common at the time for altarpieces to have shutters to embellish and protect them. The central image these shutters would once have flanked is now missing.The Latin inscription on the plinth beneath the...
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This and Saint Peter Martyr and a Bishop Saint are panels from the upper tier of the Dal Ponte Altarpiece. The altarpiece was dedicated to Saint Andrew, who featured in the central panel, and it was made for the church of San Francesco in Casale Monferrato. The other panels are in the Albertina,...
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In seventeenth-century Holland, artists and viewers alike were fascinated by the Dutch landscape. Pictures of it take many forms – from the down-to-earth farmstead to the softly glowing views inspired by the Italian landscape – but because of the flat terrain, many convey the sense of vast space...
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Saint Augustine (about 354–430) was an early Christian theologian whose writings, which included De Trinitate (About the Trinity), profoundly influenced Western Christianity and philosophy. This painting represents his vision in which he saw a child trying to empty the sea into a hole dug in the...
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This back view of a standing male nude is an académie, which is a study, usually a chalk drawing or an oil painting, made from a live male model. These life studies formed part of the classical training of (male) artists from the eighteenth to the mid-nineteenth century, particularly in France. T...
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Venus, goddess of love and beauty, twists to embrace her lover, Mars, god of war, who has thrown off his armour in his haste to reach her bed. Mars is only half on the bed with Venus above him as he meets her lips in the urgency of their desire.A pair of doves, an attribute of Venus, are beside 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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The Virgin Mary is seated directly in front of us. Together with swathes of drapery, she covers almost the entire picture plane, forming a triangular shape that is set off against the dark background. Light radiating from the front brings out the vibrant colours of her garments. These colours are...
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This painting of a simple chair set on a bare floor of terracotta tiles is one of Van Gogh’s most iconic images. It was painted in late 1888, soon after fellow artist Paul Gauguin had joined him in Arles in the south of France. The picture was a pair to another painting, Gauguin’s Chair (Van Gogh...
Antoine Paris (1668–1733) was the son of a village innkeeper. With his brother Claude he helped provision French troops, eventually controlling all land and water transport supplying soldiers from Burgundy and the Auvergne. Antoine was appointed Royal Treasurer to Louis XIV in 1722, and this port...
These joined portraits depict two future electors of Saxony, Johann the Steadfast and his son, Johann Friedrich the Magnanimous – Cranach worked as court painter to successive electors from 1505 until his death in 1553. The coats of arms on the back of the right panel help to confirm their identi...
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Dahl probably visited the waterfalls at Labro (Labrofoss) when on a sketching trip in Norway, his country of birth, in 1826. Around 80 kilometres west of Oslo, the Labrofoss are among Norway’s major falls. Dahl shows the lower part of the rapids, placing us on flat rocks directly facing the torre...
While resting in the shade of a bay tree, the young soldier Scipio has a vision of Virtue and her adversary Pleasure. Virtue promises Scipio honour, fame and glory through victory in war. Pleasure, with fragrant flowing hair, promises a life of ease and serenity.Raphael interpreted the theme not...
El Greco has used theatrical gestures and intense colours to express the chaos and disruption of the Purification of the Temple – the moment that Christ drove out traders selling animals for sacrifice, furious that the temple was being used for commerce. Christ’s anger is shown through his body,...
This painting is based on a story from the Roman poet Ovid’s Metamorphoses. When Hercules arrived at the River Euenus with his bride Dejanira, the centaur Nessus offered to carry her across the water while Hercules swam. Having reached the other side, Nessus attempted to run off with Dejanira, bu...
This highly finished oil sketch relates to an altarpiece that Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted for the chapel at the palace of Nymphenburg, outside Munich, in around 1735 (now in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich). Saint Clement kneels in the foreground, a vision of the Trinity above him. God the Fath...
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...
The fourth-century saint Margaret of Antioch was cast out by her father, a pagan priest, when she converted to Christianity. She was left to fend for herself tending sheep.She’s dressed as a wealthy shepherdess, with a lambskin jacket over her picturesque costume and a straw hat fashionably cocke...
The Virgin is seated on the ground in a rural landscape outside a sixteenth-century town, as the ‘Madonna of Humility’. The Christ Child lies across her lap, and gazes up at her while she looks down tenderly. Our viewpoint is very low, so we are also looking up at the Virgin, like Christ. The gro...
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This cool, elegant painting explores the quality of light on water – how it moves, how it reflects and, towards the base of the picture, how it glows. The clouds are hardly reflected in the water: it seems as if the light has slipped under them to illuminate the vast, still stretch of almost tide...
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Two naked children appear to be bathing in a pool beneath a dark tree set against a cloudy, moonlit sky. A third child, who is clothed, sits on the bank near a patch of red that may be a fire.It is likely that this picture was painted by a late nineteenth-century imitator of Theodore Rousseau and...
On display elsewhere
During the early 1750s, the Venetian artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo painted a series of frescoes (a type of wall painting made directly onto wet plaster) for the archbishop’s palace in Würzburg in Germany. This picture is a small oil sketch after one of those scenes, probably made by his son Do...
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Structurally and thematically, this picture is similar to one of Teniers’s best-known paintings, Kitchen Interior (Mauritshuis, The Hague), which shows a seated woman peeling apples in a cavernous kitchen with a still life of fruit, pots and a panoply of dead game to her right and a dog to her le...
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This picture is unsigned, but is attributed to Jan van Huchtenburgh – a specialist painter of battle scenes – on the basis of a stylistic comparison with other works signed by him.The way he has created a sense of depth is particularly interesting here. In the immediate foreground we are confront...
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Pale flowers glow in a soft light against the dark wall of an anonymous room. Pink hollyhocks flaunt dozens of tiny petals. Delicate white poppies face out towards us, the yellow pistil holding our gaze like a tiny eye. Above them a tall stem curves upwards, fat little buds clinging on to it, the...
On display elsewhere
This lavishly dressed sitter, wearing a coat lined with lynx or snow leopard fur, is the Brescian nobleman and humanist Fortunato Martinengo (1512–1552). Ancient gold and silver coins and a bronze oil lamp in the shape of a foot on the table allude to his scholarly interests, and perhaps also to...
Ferdinand Maximilian was enthroned as a puppet emperor of Mexico in 1864 with the support of Emperor Napoleon III of France. However, Napoleon III reneged on his military support. Captured in May 1867 by nationalist Mexican and Republican forces, Maximilian and two of his generals were executed b...
On display elsewhere
It is unusual to see these four images grouped together like this. This arrangement and the evidence of hinges at the panel’s right edge suggest that it was once part of a larger work made up two or more connected panels.Clockwise from top left, we see the coronation of the Virgin (when Christ cr...
For those living in Utrecht in the 1630s, this painting must have seemed like a window onto an exotic world. A crowd of naked women pose elegantly while they talk and bathe in a river. Behind them loom the overgrown tower and arches of a Roman ruin, while the bright morning sky glows behind the f...
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Golden hair, rosy lips and pale skin were the ideal of feminine beauty in fifteenth-century Florence. All feature in this lady’s portrait, which was probably made to celebrate her marriage.Around her long neck she wears a strand of orange beads with a pendant set with a large pearl. A cluster of...
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Honoré-Victorin Daumier (1808–1879) often used Miguel de Cervantes’s comic novel Don Quixote as a source for paintings and drawings. These always feature Don Quixote himself, who is usually accompanied by his faithful companion, Sancho Panza. This picture probably depicts the incident when Don Qu...
This portrait was excavated from a burial chamber and dates to the second century AD, when Egypt was part of the Roman Empire. A middle-aged man directly confronts the viewer through his large heavy-lidded, golden-brown eyes. His portraitist has taken care to paint every hair of his beard and mou...
On display elsewhere
This painting is an early copy of one of the most celebrated of Correggio’s small religious paintings. For a long time it was regarded as Correggio’s genuine version, even after the arrival in London of the original from the Spanish Royal Collection (now in Apsley House, London). The Apsley House...
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A young man kneels on a river bank, struggling to pull a large, wriggling fish out of the water. Behind him an angel points to the fish, and is clearly instructing him what to do with it. This is the story of Tobias and the Angel as told in the apocryphal Book of Tobit. Following the angel’s dire...
The Virgin’s cousin Saint Elizabeth kneels to present the infant Saint John the Baptist to the Christ Child, who is held by his mother. With its warm colours, golden light and sweet interaction between two infants, this intimate scene is very touching. Saint Joseph leans on what looks like a long...
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Huge clouds float across a wide sky, seeming to dwarf everything below – even the two frigates heading way out to sea, sails raised, tall and majestic. Frigates were light warships that protected the giant merchant vessels that were the lifeblood of the new Dutch Republic, reaching out across th...
Towering storm clouds threaten vessels fighting choppy waves on the Zuiderzee – once an inlet of the North Sea in the north coast of the Netherlands. The man-of-war (battleship) sailing away from us on the right flies the Dutch flag and has the arms of Amsterdam on its stern, as does the smaller...
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This painting carries many of the hallmarks of an Italianate picture: a soft Mediterranean light, the sun still warm although night is falling, distant hills not likely to be seen in a flat Dutch landscape, and idealised peasants with their garments loosened and walking at a leisurely pace. As fa...
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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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In this full-length portrait, Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1585–1642) wears the robe and skull cap of a cardinal. This position had been granted to him in 1622. His left hand lifts the robe to reveal a delicate layer of lace, also visible on his sleeves, beneath the great expanse of...
This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a series of ceilings.Cupid drags a man in military cost...
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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This picture illustrates an ancient Greek myth that was retold by later writers, including the English romantic poet, Lord Byron. Hero, a priestess of Aphrodite, lived in a tower on the Hellespont strait, which separates Europe from Asia. She was in love with Leander, a young man from the Asian s...
On display elsewhere
This unidentified woman wears a costume dating from the second half of the 1560s or early 1570s. Her feathered jewelled hat is influenced by fashion in Lombardy and Venice, and her costume resembles that in a portrait drawing of a similar date attributed to Sofonisba Anguissola (Staatliche Kunsts...
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Saint Genevieve, born in the fifth century, is the patron saint of Paris. She was a nun, and helped protect the city from attack from the Huns and the Franks. Here, she holds the candle that miraculously relit after the devil blew it out while she was praying alone one night.Saint Apollonia was a...
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In a remote landscape, the Virgin, who is dressed in modest robes, holds the infant Christ and offers him milk. The baby turns away from her breast and smiles at us.Images of the Virgin breastfeeding, known as ‘Virgo Lactans’, became popular during the Middle Ages as part of the increasing devoti...
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A fantastic procession winds its way through a Tuscan landscape dotted with hills and walled towns. Extravagantly dressed nobles ride prancing horses, while their hounds, a hunting cheetah and even a bear trot along beside them.Although it looks like medieval Italy, this actually shows a biblical...
Wtewael’s sumptuous picture, full of soft, subtle colour, shows the precursor to the mythological Trojan War. Jupiter, ruler of the gods, has sent Eris (the personification of strife) to provoke a quarrel about which goddess is the most beautiful: Minerva, goddess of war, with her helmet and spea...
Mary Magdalene, who according to medieval legend was a penitent prostitute, has risen from the dead on Judgement Day and is carried to heaven by angels, clothed only in her hair. This is one of the four lunettes (half moon-shaped) frescoes of the life of Mary Magdalene from the Massimi chapel in...
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David Teniers the Younger made his fortune painting bawdy scenes like this one. They were popular with wealthy collectors who were proud of their own good manners compared with those ascribed to peasants (they also found the pictures amusing).The unfortunate young woman on her knees has lost a sh...
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We seem to be sitting in a box at the theatre with two young women, though we can’t be sure what is going on. We can’t see the stage and one of the women is looking away from us, the back of her bonnet hiding most of the other’s face. This sense of mystery is enhanced by the nearer woman’s pose,...
There is no doubting who is the star of this group of musicians. The fair-haired woman in a bright pink dress with gold-trimmed sleeves and elaborate lace collars is clearly the centre of our attention. She is bathed in sunlight which also catches the curves and polished surface of her viola da g...
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The weeping Christ wears the crown of thorns; unusually, it still has some leaves on its stems. His hands are tied together with rope, but he holds a bundle of sticks in one and a long reed in the other. This picture is a simplified version of the figure of Christ crowned with thorns in the left...
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The Virgin and Child are surrounded by saints, each occupying a separate arched compartment bounded by spiral columns. The design is highly unusual and is not known in any other Italian paintings of the period. Its shape and layout have a very specific function: they map the Florentine Church of...
The Three Marys mourn Christ after his crucifixion. The Virgin Mary kneels at Christ’s feet, her outstretched arms framed by her dark mantle. Christ’s crown of thorns lies on the ground, and beside it are the dice thrown by the soldiers who gambled for his clothes. Mary Magdalene kneels by Christ...
A number of costumed figures on horseback and on foot, distributed in different groups in the foreground, are seen beside a fountain near a forest. On the left, four women wearing long dresses seem to be busy chatting and observing the two horsemen next to them. On the right-hand side of the pain...
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The Virgin Mary sits on a bank in a hilly landscape, holding the naked infant Christ on her knee. He looks at us and raises his right hand in blessing. With the other he holds his mother’s thumb. The three sets of three gold lines radiating from Christ’s head denote that he, with God and the Holy...
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Five drinkers gather in a tavern in Zarauz, the Basque coastal town where Joaquín Sorolla spent the summer of 1910. One stares at the artist through watery eyes while another pushes cider towards him, egging on the inebriate to further excess. A third glances menacingly at the painter. The canvas...
The subject of the Purification of the Temple is taken from the New Testament (Matthew 21: 12–13). Jesus drove the traders out of the Temple in Jerusalem, accusing them of turning a house of prayer into a den of thieves.Venusti painted numerous small-scale copies of drawings and frescoes by Miche...
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This is a view of the coast at Palavas-les-Flots, a fishing village south of Montpellier. The picture is similar to seascapes that Gustave Courbet painted there during his several visits to Montpellier in the 1850s. In particular, there are resemblances to his small painting The Seaside at Pala...
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The Roman soldiers who have been posted to guard Christ’s tomb from grave robbers have fallen asleep. Christ has risen from his grave and is shown above his tomb holding a white flag with a red cross, a symbol of the Resurrection. The lid of the tomb is still closed, emphasising the miracle of th...
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This small, portable altarpiece is one of a handful of English panel paintings to have survived from the Middle Ages. Made for Richard II, King of England from 1377 to 1399, in the last five years of his life, it combines religious and secular imagery to embody his personal conception of kingshi...
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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This melancholy image of an old man lost in thought is one of a group of studies made by Rembrandt in the 1650s. They were not portraits of individuals – the identity of the sitter wouldn‘t have been considered relevant, either to the artist or the person who bought the painting. They were known...
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This is the right-hand panel of the main tier of an altarpiece showing the baptism of Christ. Saint Paul is shown holding a large sword, which appears black because the silver leaf used for the blade has darkened over time.The saint has bare feet, expressing his simplicity and humility, but he st...
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It is low tide in the early morning and fishermen unload their catch from a boat beached high and dry on the shore. Some people enjoy a meal. Others prepare the catch for sale. This human activity contrasts with the stillness of the glassy sea which, like a mirror, reflects the hazy sunlight. The...
In one picture, Jan van Os manages to combine feelings of tranquillity and industry. The sea is calm but dotted with craft. Overhead, puffy clouds seem to hang motionless, but the sails of the small boat coming towards us in the centre are filled with wind.The passenger ship on the right flies tw...
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The Dutch patriot, Jacobus Blauw (1756–1829), played an important role in the foundation of the Batavian Republic in 1795. Although short-lived, it significantly contributed to the transformation of the Netherlands from a confederated structure into a democratic unitary state.Blauw and the artist...
This small painting beautifully evokes the lushness of the natural world. A young man rests against the base of a tree and turns his head towards us. He holds one hand to his mouth as if playing a flute just out of view, a pose derived from images of the classical hero Orpheus charming the animal...
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The serious young boy in this portrait turns away from us to gaze into the distance. The artist has signed the picture but he hasn’t named the sitter. Only his age, 11 years old, and the date, 1660, are given. The boy is pale, but the deep brown background, the warm shade and delicate texture of...
A young man seems to be reading a paper covered in elaborate writing. The document is almost certainly a letter, although the places where the name of the recipient would have appeared are concealed.A lost inscription named the figure as Saint Ivo, patron of lawyers and known as the advocate of t...
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Boudin was born and brought up on the Normandy coast, retaining a lifelong affection for the area, which he painted throughout his career. But he was also drawn to Brittany, and made regular visits there in the 1850s, 1860s and 1870s. He married a Breton woman, Marie-Anne Guėdès, in 1863.This pic...
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During the summer of 1876 Manet and fellow artist Carolus-Duran stayed at the Paris retail magnate, Impressionist art collector and patron Ernest Hoschedé’s country house in Montgeron, south of Paris. They each started to work on a portrait of the other but both paintings were left unfinished. He...
The Venetian Arsenal, a fortified shipyard and armoury, had been celebrated as a symbol of the Venetian Republic’s domination of the Mediterranean sea trade since the twelfth century. Its ornate gateway is decorated with statues of Greek and Roman gods; standing guard is the lion, a symbol of the...
A middle-aged man with a luxuriant beard gazes past us into the distance. He holds a scroll in one hand and lays the other across a pair of brown leather gloves which rest on a table. His black hat has lappets, turned up and fastened to the brim; in cold weather they could have been let down over...
Not on display
An unidentified male saint with an impressive beard points to his mouth with one hand and writes with the other. We are not sure exactly who he is, but he was probably meant to be one of the four Evangelists, the authors of the Gospels. This is one of three fragments in the National Gallery’s col...
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This is one of five versions of Sunflowers on display in museums and galleries across the world. Van Gogh made the paintings to decorate his house in Arles in readiness for a visit from his friend and fellow artist, Paul Gauguin.‘The sunflower is mine’, Van Gogh once declared, and it is clear tha...
Alexander the Great, the Macedonian emperor, visits the distraught family of King Darius III of Persia, who he has defeated in battle. Darius’s mother Sisigambis mistakes Alexander’s friend Hephaestion, who wears plate armour and an orange cloak, for the victor. Alexander comforts Sisigambis, who...
This painting and Saints Nicholas of Tolentino and John the Baptist are panels from the multi-part Dal Ponte Altarpiece, made for the church of San Francesco in Casale Monferrato. We know that these panels would have formed part of the upper tier because the vaulted ceiling is painted as though f...
Not on display
Christ is shown standing on the ledge of an oval structure, perhaps a well. He holds a crystal orb topped with jewels in his left hand and an olive branch in his right; he looks like a king or a Roman emperor. His very fine tunic clings to his body and we can see his little pot belly beneath it.C...
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This picture is a fine example of Watteau’s work on an intimate scale. The title The Scale of Love (La Gamme d’Amour) comes from a print of it made several years after his death. It may be a reference to the musical scale, to the various stages of flirting and seduction, or to the music which fac...
An old man playing a lute and wearing a bright blue and yellow minstrel’s outfit is the focus of this gloomy tavern scene by a follower of David Teniers the Younger. He hunches over in concentration as he tunes the strings; to the left, an old woman holds up sheet music, her mouth slightly open a...
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This is an affectionate portrayal of one of Murillo’s most devoted patrons, Don Justino de Neve. The inscribed tablet on the wall reveals that the portrait was made in 1665 and was a gift from the artist – a gesture of friendship.Murillo’s regard for his friend is obvious in the way he presents h...
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A naked woman reclines on a luxurious bed, a small pink snake wriggling through her fingers. This is Cleopatra, the last Ptolemaic queen of Egypt, encouraging an asp to bite and poison her – according to some accounts, the cause of her death. Famous for her beauty and her love affairs with the Ro...
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This is one of the first nudes that Renoir painted. He took a traditional artistic approach, depicting the woman in a natural setting, reclining by a stream as though she were a naiad (water nymph) from the world of Greek mythology. She appears to be lying on a grassy, flower-flecked bank beside...
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In the central panel of this triptych (a painting in three parts), the Virgin Mary, surrounded by the golden rays of the sun, embraces Christ, her infant son. He holds an orb topped with a cross, a sign of his universal power, while she is crowned as Queen of Heaven by two angels.The frame is ori...
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A life-size female nude with outspread wings alights upon a cloud, which is blown from a mask’s mouth. The mask is of Boreas, the Greek god of the north wind and of winter. In her outstretched right arm, she holds a long trumpet to her lips. In her left hand, she holds a shorter trumpet.This bron...
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The painting illustrates a passage from the Life of Lycurgus by the Roman historian Plutarch, which describes how Spartan girls were ordered to engage in exercise – including running, wrestling and throwing the discus and javelin – and to challenge boys. However, this may be a scene of courtship...
Although this picture has been given the title of Portrait of an Elderly Woman, the unknown artist has given the sitter few signs of age. She is unwrinkled, her small mouth is full and her eyes are clear. Her hair is dark, dressed in a plain but natural style, hanging either side of her face.Like...
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A bishop saint holds up a book in this rather damaged medallion; we are not sure exactly who he is. This is one of three fragments in the National Gallery’s collection which possibly came from the Palazzo del Podesta in Assisi, and were perhaps once part of the framing of some large composition.T...
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The Archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will give birth to the Son of God. The dove of the Holy Ghost hovers above her in a bright circle of light. The Virgin, with her eyes closed and arms outstretched, accepts her role as mother of Christ. Poussin’s treatment of this subject...
On display elsewhere
This work is based on an original by El Greco which now hangs in the Toledo Museum of Art, Ohio. It’s a scene of Christ in torment, moments before his arrest – we can see the soldiers coming for him to the right.According to the Gospels, Christ retreated to the garden of Gethsemane to pray, askin...
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The Château Noir was a rambling house situated in extensive grounds near Aix-en-Provence in the south of France. Surrounded by wild vegetation, the run-down, isolated chateau offered Cezanne many subjects, and it became one of his favourite locations. He rented a small room in the house from 1897...
The Virgin Mary is seated on a stone bench under a richly jewelled canopy, the infant Christ on her lap. He leans over to the left, his hand raised in a gesture of blessing, and faces a female saint. The jar she holds identifies her as Mary Magdalene: it contains the ointment with which she would...
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This is one of the largest paintings ever made by Rembrandt, and one of only two life-size equestrian portraits of ordinary citizens in the history of Dutch art. The rider has been identified as the prosperous businessman Frederik Rihel. His bright yellow jerkin, fancy gloves, shimmering sleeves...
Turner’s painting shows the final journey of the Temeraire, as the ship is towed from Sheerness in Kent along the river Thames to Rotherhithe in south-east London, where it was to be scrapped. The veteran warship had played a distinguished role in the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805, but by 1838 was...
An officer on a white horse is accompanied by three mounted soldiers to the left of this scene. A group of men sit nearby, awaiting orders; most carry muskets and swords. One of them holds a furled flag, suggesting that the battle has not yet begun. A reclining figure puffs on a long pipe and gaz...
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This large painting of the Virgin Mary surrounded by saints was part of an altarpiece. It was made for a chapel dedicated to Saint Christina of Bolsena in the church of San Francesco in Montone, in the Italian region of Umbria.A large stone hangs from a rope looped round Christina’s neck, as a r...
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In this unusual scene, Saint John the Baptist crouches in a dark rocky grotto beside a spring from which he collects water. His slender cross, faintly painted in gold, can just be seen in the shadows behind him.The painting is signed with a monogram: the letters MPP are surmounted by a T; a small...
Not on display
This balding, grey-bearded saint can be identified as Saint Peter by the keys which he rests on his thigh and supports with his right hand. These are the keys to the kingdom of heaven, which Christ gave Peter as a symbol of his spiritual power. The keys themselves are unusually slender and elonga...
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William Feilding, 1st Earl of Denbigh steps forward, gun in hand. He is shown life-size. We look up at him from below, which emphasises his commanding pose, but the elegance and urbanity usually present in Anthony van Dyck’s formal portraits seems to be missing. This is partly because of the Earl...
Andrea Tron belonged to one of the most important families in Venice. He served twice as a Venetian ambassador, to Paris and to Vienna. Here, the embroidered sash across his left shoulder shows that he is a Knight of the Golden Stole, a Venetian order of knighthood. This honour was usually bestow...
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The Virgin Mary sits on a carved throne beneath a red brocade canopy. A length of cloth of gold brocade suspended from ropes forms a cloth of honour behind her. The infant Christ sits on a white cloth held by his mother and looks in our direction. Two little angels playing musical instruments per...
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The sun glows on the rump of a grey horse galloping into battle, ridden by a young aristocrat. To the right, a riderless horse escapes the carnage, its tossing head standing out against the turmoil of figures, human and animal. Two tall trees that have so far survived the skirmish pierce the sky...
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In Greek and Roman mythology, the god Saturn was warned that one of his offspring would overthrow him, so he ate his children at birth. To protect their son, his wife Ops took the infant Jupiter to the island of Crete to be raised by the Corybantes, who used the rhythm of their dancing and the cl...
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Saint Jerome (about 342–420 AD) was a theologian, writer and hermit, famous for producing what is considered to be the first Latin translation of the Bible, known as the Vulgate. The saint is depicted here with a number of identifying attributes: a crucifix refers to his religious contemplation d...
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This full-length portrait is of Thomas Lister, who became the 4th (and last) Baron Ribblesdale in 1876, when he was just 22. He was a Liberal peer, a lord-in-waiting at court and a Trustee of both the National Portrait Gallery and the National Gallery.Plans to paint Lord Ribblesdale in formal hun...
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Christ stands in a river, the water up to his waist. John the Baptist pours a cup of water over his head, baptising him. As he does, God the Father appears in the sky, surrounded by angels, while a dove, the symbol of the Holy Ghost, descends towards Christ in golden rays.The scene reflects John’...
In July 1873 Courbet fled France for Switzerland and settled in the town of La Tour-de-Peilz on the north shore of Lac Léman (Lake Geneva), near the French border. A label on the back of this view of a lush Alpine valley gives the location as Vevey, on the north shore of the lake and close to La...
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Lemons and oranges teeter on the edge of a table or ledge in front of an earthenware jug, a huge melon, some round boxes used for storing cheese, a bottle – perhaps holding wine – and a coarsely woven basket. These everyday items, seemingly placed at random, are carefully arranged, increasing in...
The Virgin Mary is seated on a marble and porphyry throne within a church; an opening on the left leads to a landscape. The infant Christ squats on her lap, and two saints kneel on either side: Catherine of Alexandria on the left and Barbara on the right.The naked child, wrapped in a white cloth,...
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The Baths of Caracalla, Rome’s second largest public baths, was a popular site for oil-sketching. Here the foreground is broadly worked, the grass flatly painted in a bright lemon green. By contrast the architecture is more sharply and intricately painted, with details in the dark red brickwork p...
This triple portrait was intended as a model for a full-length statue of Armand-Jean du Plessis, duc de Richelieu (1585–1642), who became Cardinal in 1622 and the Chief Minister of France in 1624. He wears a Cardinal’s robe, skull cap and blue ribbon adorned with the Order of the Holy Spirit, sym...
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A boy sits in a dark room, but a glimmer of light through the window reveals his face and the dead mouse he holds in one hand. The other hand covers the mousetrap. This is not a portrait but an imaginary situation, intended as an entertainment and, possibly, a moral lesson.The boy lifts his chin...
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Christ, dressed in white, bears the Cross on his shoulder in this small devotional picture. The crown of thorns circles his head, its spikes pressing deep into his flesh. His eyes are reddened with weeping, the tears on his cheeks echoing the drops of blood on his forehead. This was undoubtedly a...
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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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According to the Gospel of Matthew, the Roman governor Pontius Pilate set a guard of soldiers at Christ’s tomb to prevent anyone from stealing his body; they did not expect Christ to rise from the dead. Here we see that the soldiers have fallen asleep, and are completely unaware of Christ’s resur...
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This is one of four paintings of angels and saints made to decorate a pair of shutters. It was common at the time they were painted for altarpieces to have shutters to embellish and protect them. The angels would have been on the inside of the shutters and the saints on the outside. The central i...
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This panel, which shows Christ’s body being taken down from the Cross, is the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts) made for a convent near Delft in around 1510. The other panels, which are also in the National Gallery’s collection, show Christ being led out after his trial and the...
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Anthony van Dyck was largely responsible for introducing the double or ‘friendship’ portrait to Britain. The informal composition of this painting as well as the quantities of shimmering silk on display perfectly illustrate the appeal of Van Dyck’s new style to aristocratic British patrons eager...
This small octagonal painting shows Christ being baptised in the river Jordan by Saint John the Baptist, his cousin. Delicate wavy white stripes around Christ’s knees show where his body has disturbed the water’s surface.The picture’s size suggests that it was part of the predella – the lowest pa...
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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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The Attack on Cartagena is one of a series of scenes from ancient Roman history that were probably intended to be inserted into wall panelling. Three further scenes from the series – The Continence of Scipio, The Rape of the Sabines and The Intervention of the Sabine Women – are also in the Natio...
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The sitter wears the red cross of the military order of S. Stefano, founded in Pisa in 1561 by the Grand Duke of Tuscany, Cosimo I de' Medici. Behind the man’s head is a niche containing a sculpture group of a woman and child. Several books of various sizes are propped up on the ledge of the pan...
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The Bible describes how a winged angel appeared to Elijah while he was in the wilderness. He had been banished from Israel for defending God against the worship of the pagan deity Baal.Here, the angel points towards Mount Horeb with one hand and towards Elijah with the other, encouraging him to v...
The saint depicted here is Mary Magdalene, identifiable by the ointment jar she holds and by her robes of bright scarlet, a colour traditionally associated with her.Saint Mary Magdalene was linked with the Mary of the Gospels, who Christ allowed to wash his feet when he was dining with his follow...
Three male heads at different stages of life are paired with the heads of three animals: a wolf, a lion and a dog. The Latin inscription divided to correspond to the three heads translates as: ‘Learning from Yesterday, Today acts prudently lest by his action he spoil Tomorrow.’ The meaning and pu...
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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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This altarpiece was commissioned for a burial chapel in San Salvatore in Lauro in Rome. However, the political turmoil following the Sack of Rome in 1527 meant that it was never installed there. According to the art biographer Vasari, Parmigianino was working on this picture when imperial troops...
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A dark-haired lady wears a white headdress and a dark grey dress with a black yoke and brown fur linings in the sleeves. She is evidently well off: the neckline of her chemise is decorated with golden cords and rosettes, and she wears a gold chain and rings.This is Anna van Spangen, identifiable...
On display elsewhere
A group of wealthy Venetians sits in the portico of a country house. Two of them play instruments while a young Black page holds their music book. They ignore the beggar who holds out his hand for alms, his sores licked by a dog. The painting is disfigured by ingrained dirt, making it difficult t...
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A man stands on the winding path beneath the dark, forbidding cliffs. He gazes out across the river, his white cap, coat and backpack lifting the bleakness of the cliffs behind him. High above him, the sun catches a strange construction on the cliff top and crosses the gap between the two halves...
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The sun god Apollo – identifiable by the golden rays around his head – pursues a young woman whose fingers are sprouting foliage. This is Daphne, a river nymph with whom the god has fallen in love. She rejects his advances and, rather than allowing him to catch her, is turned into a laurel tree....
Saint Mary Magdalene stands behind a stone ledge and holds her attribute – the pot of oil with which she anointed Christ’s feet. Behind her, a window opens onto a landscape; the cliffs and buildings on the left are a fairly accurate view of La Sainte-Baume, east of Marseille, where, according to...
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Willem van de Velde, usually so interested in the detailed depiction of individual vessels, seems to be more concerned in this painting with atmosphere and the emotion evoked by a view of the sea in the evening light. The warm glow of a low sun casts the vessels close to us into shadow, leaving t...
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Very little is known about Willem Buytewech the Younger and very few of his paintings survive. He was born in Rotterdam, where he was apparently active as a landscape and figure painter. In this picture – which strongly recalls the dune landscapes of Jan Wijnants – he combines both.A man in a gol...
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This portrait by Jean-Léon Gérôme is of his younger brother, Claude-Armand, who is dressed in the uniform of the École Polytechnique, a prestigious school of higher education in Paris. It is related to an almost full-length portrait that was exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1848 and which is now...
On display elsewhere
The infant Christ is shown greeting his cousin, John the Baptist, who comes bearing a goldfinch, an emblem of Christ’s suffering and death. Saint Joseph is seen behind the Virgin Mary to the right; Zacharias is behind his wife Saint Elizabeth to the left, where another saint, perhaps Francis, als...
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This painting was made for private worship, and the donor who commissioned it is shown kneeling in prayer towards the majestic figure of Saint Catherine. Catherine, shown wearing a crown, was a princess from Alexandria. Behind her is the spiked wheel that she was tied to in an attempt to kill her...
Dirck van den Bergen was a pupil of the landscape and animal painter Adriaen van de Velde. A young apprentice would usually work in the manner of their master for a while, though most artists eventually broke away from their teacher’s example or developed their individual version of it. Van den B...
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This bearded man was once thought to be the painter Anthonis Mor; a label on the back names him as ‘[Sr] Antony More’. The artist was believed to have been knighted during his visit to England in 1554–5 and was therefore called Sir Anthony More or Sir Antonio Moro. However, there is no resemblanc...
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This is the earliest of very few known portraits by Rosso. It was painted in Florence, while he was in the workshop of Andrea del Sarto. It reveals something of Rosso’s eccentricity, particularly in the strange spiky fingers, the curiously abstract style and the characteristically swift way of wo...
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 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...
On display elsewhere
This wooded hillside, called the Côte des Bœufs, was close to Pissarro’s home in the hamlet of L’Hermitage, near the market town of Pontoise, where he lived for most of the time between 1866 and 1883.Although Pissarro was a leading Impressionist, this painting signals his move away from the fleet...
A small group of people meet to make music and enjoy each other’s company. We look over the back of a chair to see a young woman playing the violin. A second man smiles at the young woman sitting at her ease on the right. Pieter de Hooch has picked out her jewels, but without ostentation: a pearl...
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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 Virgin sits in front of an Italianate landscape, the Christ Child standing on her lap. He twists his body to gaze lovingly at his mother, while her hand cups his left foot.This picture, with its brilliant blues and greens, is among Cima da Conegliano’s finest works. It is one of several versi...
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The Samian Sibyl was one of 12 pagan sibyls (or priestesses) who, like the Old Testament prophets, were said to have foretold the coming of Christ. The Samian Sibyl, named after the Greek island of Samos, was an oracle of Apollo and prophesied that Christ would be born to a virgin mother, as the...
Many – very probably most – seventeenth-century Dutch landscape paintings do not show a real view, but were composed to capture the spirit or impression of a place. Even where they do depict somewhere specific they would often be made more aesthetically pleasing by exaggeration or rearrangement.T...
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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 group of saints dressed in glowing colours cluster on an elaborately decorated floor. This large painting was part of a complex polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted for the Camaldolese monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Florence.They look at the coronation of the V...
Ter Brugghen focusses on a lute player lost in his art, drawing us close to the man by using strong, dramatic lighting to highlight the folds under his eyes, the long shadows of his fingers and his shiny red nose – so red that ter Brugghen may have been exaggerating for comic effect. Perhaps he w...
After being condemned to death, Christ was forcibly crowned with a wreath of thorns. This was the Roman soldiers‘ attempt to humiliate him as, amongst other things, Christ was accused of claiming to be ‘the king of the Jews’. Images like this confronted viewers with Christ’s suffering, encouragin...
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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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This striking oil portrait of a nude Black woman wearing a turban is most likely French from the nineteenth century. We do not know who painted it, although it has been attributed to Delacroix, Fromentin and to Marie-Guillemine Benoist, a student of David. The painting does share some similaritie...
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The S. Gerolamo Altarpiece, named after the saint prominently depicted at its centre and the church where it originally stood, is among the most important works of the Florentine painter Francesco Botticini. The artist was an exact contemporary of Sandro Botticelli, with whom he may have trained...
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This large painting shows the three divine beings of the Trinity: God the Father supports his son, Christ, who is shown crucified; he seems minute by comparison. The Holy Ghost is represented by a dove that hovers between the two. On either side, an angel kneels in adoration.The simple colour sch...
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The sunny, windswept beaches of Valencia became one of Sorolla’s best-loved and most popular subjects in the years around 1900, when he achieved international acclaim in Paris. This work, one of his earliest beach scenes, was painted several years before he began to take up the motif with regular...
An unidentified man wearing fine seventeenth-century Spanish costume stands in a roughly sketched interior. His wealth is emphasised by the silver embroidery on his jacket, the fanciful slashed sleeves and the broad-brimmed hat lined with white feathers. He rests his arm on a chair and looks out...
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A statuesque Mary Magdalene, one of Christ’s followers, rests her fingers on the shoulder of a kneeling donor. In the other hand, she nonchalantly lifts a large golden vessel. This is the pot containing the precious ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet (Luke 7:37). In sharp contrast to...
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This is one of five paintings intended to hang together, each of which denotes one of the five senses – a common theme for painting in the Low Countries in the seventeenth century. In each of these paintings Gonzales Coques used a traditional activity to represent the relevant sense.Here Taste is...
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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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Torrential rain in autumn 1896 caused extensive flooding near Monet’s home in Giverny. The river Epte, a tributary of the Seine, burst its banks and overflowed into the meadow next to Monet’s garden.Obliged to remain close to home, Monet painted the view of the waterlogged landscape that he saw i...
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This small painting shows how Antonello revolutionised Venetian portraiture in the late fifteenth century: the three-quarter pose, dark background and strong lighting are all innovations from Northern Europe which focus attention entirely on the man’s face.Antonello’s skill at painting in oil ena...
Jan van de Cappelle’s sea is flat calm and luminous – even the few boats that appear to be moving hardly disturb the still reflections. But there’s a sense of drama in the picture, unusual for the artist. Clouds threaten, and a fitful sun breaks through. The barge in the foreground on the right i...
There is a cold grey dawn, but a promise of winter sun as the wind sweeps away the clouds on a Dutch seashore. A young horseman leans down towards a woman kneeling in the shadow of his mount – she holds a large fish up towards him. A patch of light picks out the white apron of a red-cheeked woman...
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The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are enthroned beneath a canopy and before a cloth of honour of the kind displayed behind medieval kings and queens.The naked child is balanced on her knee and crumples the pages of an open book. The unidentified donor kneels on the right: he was presumably called...
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Justice sits between two lions and looks down at her golden scales. The lion of Saint Mark is a symbol of Venice, so she may represent Justice in that city. Her scales weigh right from wrong, and her sword punishes the guilty. Beside her, a golden shield is painted with the coat of arms of the Co...
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Lured by a bribe from the Philistines, Israel’s enemies, Delilah agreed to collaborate in the capture of Samson – the Israelite hero of the Old Testament, and her lover. She cut off the source of his legendary strength – his hair – while he slept (Judges 16: 18–21). Her treachery is underlined by...
This is one of Veronese’s earliest works, painted when he was about 18, probably for a noble patron in Verona. The lighting from the right suggests that it was made for a specific location, perhaps the side wall of a chapel.The painting’s subject has been the matter of much debate but it is now b...
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This painting stood above the altar in a chapel built to commemorate a local carpenter, Giovanni di Matteo di Giorgio Schiavone, in the church of Santa Maria dei Servi in Perugia. Giovanni left instructions in his will that the proceeds of the sale of his workshop should go towards the chapel, wh...
On display elsewhere
Louis-Gustave Ricard (1823–1873) worked primarily as a portraitist. He moved to England during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870–71, when he probably painted this portrait of a young Ellen Odette (1857–1933), the eldest daughter of Henri Louis Bischoffsheim, a wealthy Jewish banker. Ellen would hav...
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The saint in this painting carries a bishop’s crosier and wears the white habit of the Carthusian Order. The Carthusians were an enclosed Catholic religious order of monks and nuns founded by Bruno of Cologne in 1084. Bruno was called to Rome by Pope Urban II, and while there founded a new hermit...
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This is the main panel of an altarpiece painted for the chapel of the Visitation in the church of S. Andrea in Vineis, Faenza. A scroll inscribed ‘Ecce Agnus Dei’ (‘Behold the Lamb of God’) is attached to the reed cross that Saint John the Baptist holds. The inscription refers to Christ, who will...
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In a vaulted green hall, Pope Honorious III blesses Saint Francis of Assisi, watched by assembled cardinals and various others. This is the third of a series of eight panels depicting episodes from Saint Francis’s life. They were part of a sumptuous double-sided altarpiece Sassetta made for the...
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Gerrit van Honthorst had an international reputation for attracting high-status clients. After working in Rome, he was invited to England in 1628 by Charles I and painted several royal portraits before returning to live mainly in The Hague. In Holland he became a favourite of Charles’ sister Eliz...
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This painting was made as a preliminary study for an altarpiece for S. Spirito dei Napoletani in Rome, where resident and visiting Neapolitans worshipped. The altarpiece was intended for a chapel dedicated to Saint Januarius, patron saint of Naples, who was martyred along with some of his followe...
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In 1871 Monet settled in Argenteuil, a small suburban town on the Seine just nine kilometres and a fifteen-minute train journey from Paris. Already partially industrialised, Argenteuil was also famous as a centre for pleasure boating, and Monet was particularly attracted by its regattas and sail...
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Turbulent grey clouds roll across the sky. The lake beneath it is calm, but a storm threatens. It’s evening, and a tiny sailing boat in the distance is little more than a smudge on the horizon against the vivid orange and gold of the dying sun. Soft red reflections streak the surface of the water...
A young girl in three-quarters view looks up and out of the picture to the left. Her transparent shawl, known as a fichu, covers one shoulder but has fallen off the other. Her white muslin dress is only loosely held up over her chest, an effect enhanced by her bodice having come undone. There was...
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Saint Francis of Assisi kneels in a rocky landscape, hands raised in prayer, gazing up at a vision of Christ floating in the sky. Christ has the six wings of a seraphim and his arms are extended as if on the Cross. Rays from Christ’s stigmata – the wounds he received at the Crucifixion – impress...
These saints come from a large pala (an altarpiece with a single, unified surface) which was sawn into pieces in the eighteenth century and later reassembled in the National Gallery. Look closely and you can see lines where the fragments were put back together. The altarpiece was begun by Frances...
A young lad dips his finger into something delicious in the background of this raucous picture – probably something forbidden, since he hides what he’s doing. The actions and expressions of the men also imply the tasting of forbidden fruits denied them by the young woman. She shoves away the hand...
On display elsewhere
This is a fragment of a painting made in the fresco technique, which involves applying paint to wet plaster. Once dried, the painting becomes part of the wall. It shows a bearded saint – identifiable by his halo – shown in profile, and comes from the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Florence....
Not on display
Saint George, with the remains of the dragon he has slain beside him, and an unidentified female saint kneel with their hands on their hearts in reverence. This painting is a fragment of a larger work, probably a single-panel altarpiece of the Virgin and Child with saints. The Virgin and Child wo...
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This panel is one of four surviving fragments of a large altarpiece that showed the lives of various French saints, many with royal connections. Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, kneels beside an altar at which a priest is performing Mass. At the top an angel flies down from heaven with a divine p...
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Saint Anne, the mother of the Virgin Mary, sits in a large red bed. She seems to be handing her child to the midwife, while two women prepare to bath and swaddle the baby.Through one window we see Noah in the stern of his ark, holding the white dove which he released three times to find out if la...
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The Three Kings have arrived to worship the newborn Christ. The Virgin Mary presents the baby, who has a bright halo of light around his tiny head, to the kneeling king, who takes the child’s small foot in his hand in order to kiss it. Spranger has positioned the two other kings around the mother...
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The Virgin appears lost in thought as she firmly clutches her son to her. The infant Christ holds an apple in one hand, symbolising his role as the new Adam, born to redeem mankind from original sin after the Fall.The painting is a fragment of an altarpiece, and has been cut down. The foreshorten...
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In this tiny picture, Arent Arentsz. shows a fisherman in heavy boots, his rod – a canvas bag hanging from it – over his shoulder. He looks back at a young lad pouring a catch of tiny fish from a large pitcher into a bowl, while an older man stands waiting with a similar bowl in his hands.Arentsz...
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The heavy, black clouds that hang low over the castle seem to threaten snow and yet more snow. Although a fitful sun struggles through, the eerie light on the castle’s yellow walls and steely tipped towers seems to come more from the moon than the sun. The tiny people skating on the ice seem insi...
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This painting is part of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. It is situated to the right of the main panel of the Nativity and shows the theologian, priest and historian, Saint Jerome (347–420), who lived in Constantinople and Rome.Saint Jerome holds a crucifix and beats his...
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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...
Abbé Scaglia (1592–1641), cleric, diplomat, spy and one of Van Dyck’s most important patrons, commissioned this painting while suffering from ill health and in a reflective state of mind. It was meant for the church of the Recollect order of Augustinians in Antwerp; within a few years Scaglia wou...
Aert van der Neer was one of the most successful specialists in moonlit landscapes, and this is one of many he painted. The moon here has appeared only briefly, breaking through a tiny gap in a cloudy sky. The cool light creates a contrast between the deep darkness in the shadowy outlines of the...
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A weathered but picturesque watermill sits in a landscape that includes several idealised peasants engaged in tasks such as fishing, collecting water and washing clothes. Although this landscape has an air of decorative artificiality, even theatricality, Boucher includes sufficient detail to sugg...
This is one of four paintings made to decorate a pair of shutters. Each of the shutters had a saint on the outside and an angel on the inside. The central image they would once have flanked is now missing, but is likely to have represented the Virgin Mary crowned in the heavens.Saint Jerome is de...
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Stories of the misdeeds of the Greek and Roman gods were popular subjects for paintings in the seventeenth century. Pieter Lastman had been to Rome and seen the innovative paintings of Caravaggio and his followers. He takes on their use of chiaroscuro – the dramatic use of light and shadow – and...
Given the title Scorn in 1727, this is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of...
In the summer of 1867, the German artist Adolph Menzel visited Paris for nine weeks. While there, he almost certainly went to Manet’s temporary pavilion, which for a few days was situated near the Universal Exhibition. The pavilion displayed around 50 of Manet’s paintings, including Music in the...
Wybrand Hendriks has piled up his bouquet of fruit and flowers against a soft, green background of woodland trees, till it tips sideways and tumbles down the canvas on a steep diagonal, ending in the forms of the two dead birds. They are snipe, game birds to be eaten. An exotic pineapple sits at...
Not on display
The saints arranged here neatly in rows are looking towards the central panel of the complex, four-tiered altarpiece that this picture comes from, which shows Christ crowning the Virgin Mary. This scene is mirrored on a panel on the other side of the central image. Together, these three panels to...
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In 1916 Monet had a new studio built at his home in Giverny in order to work on huge canvases of his water-lily pond, each of them more than two metres high. These monumental paintings were intended to form an entire decorative scheme, and he donated 22 of them to the French state after the Firs...
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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This Virgin Mary’s marriage to Joseph is told in the Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century compilation of the lives of the saints. Mary’s suitors were invited to the temple, each armed with a wooden rod. The man whose rod bloomed would win her hand in marriage.Here, Joseph holds a rod that is lush...
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This warm, tranquil port scene is bathed in sunlight: the clock on the building to the left records the time as five o'clock. A coat of arms with three golden fleurs-de-lis (emblem of the French king) above the clock and on the ship’s flags to the right suggests this painting was intended for a F...
This sculpture is a copy of a bronze thought to be by Adriaen de Vries (now in the Herzog Anton Ulrich Museum, Braunschweig). De Vries was born in The Hague, trained in the workshop of Giambologna in Florence and worked in Italy, then Augsburg, Germany and Prague.The bronze dates to about 1600, b...
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Fernando de Valdés has an imposing stare. His black cloak – an expanse of plain, heavy fabric – makes him appear larger than he really is, and a matching bishop’s hat indicates his prestigious status within the Church. His clothing and the opulent red curtain trimmed with gold, like the chair on...
On display elsewhere
The merchant ships we see here are in some peril. The wind is so strong that they have been forced to take down their sails and are drifting at the mercy of the gale and the surging sea. Our attention is focused on the nearest ship, a man-of-war, as it ploughs into a breaking wave. A sudden shaft...
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The god Pan pursues the virginal nymph Syrinx, who flails her arms as she teeters on the edge of the river Ladon, a frog escaping out of her path. She is moments from being transformed by river nymphs into reeds, in answer to her prayers to escape her unwanted suitor. Pan would later use these re...
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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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A Wall in Naples is not much larger than a postcard. The shuttered windows, irregular pattern of scaffolding holes, patchy cement and water stain from chamber pots thrown out of the window are the freshly observed details of a particular wall, although Jones may have adjusted these slightly to en...
The Virgin holds the naked infant Christ who stands on a stone ledge and raises his hand in blessing. We do not know the identity of the saints behind them, but the older one may be Saint Jerome or Saint Anthony Abbot.The holy characters are portrayed in the Italian countryside, making them appea...
On the orders of the pope, Saint Lawrence, a deacon of the early Christian Church, distributed church property to the poor in Rome. When the Roman authorities discovered what he was doing, they ordered him to hand over the treasures to the city. He refused, and when pressed to give up his Christi...
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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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Aert van der Neer was a specialist in painting landscapes with distinctive lighting effects – often under moonlight, or at the beginning or end of the day. The title given to this painting (probably in the eighteenth or nineteenth century) suggests that it’s set in the evening, though the cold bl...
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This is one of two fragments in the National Gallery’s collection of a larger work that showed the Virgin Mary and Christ Child seated in a garden. It shows Saint Margaret, who was from the town of Antioch (in modern-day Turkey). She wears a headdress of pearls, as her name means ‘pearl’ in Greek...
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The small quayside of El Arenal is now in the centre of Bilbao, a city in the Basque region of northern Spain, but it was once used as a promenade and for unloading cargo from ships. The view is today dominated by buildings but Paret’s picturesque scene takes in the elegant walkway along the rive...
This scene is so unusual that it’s not entirely clear who the figures are intended to represent. Usually the Three Kings are shown kneeling in front of the Christ Child; here, instead, we can see two of them standing proudly before the Virgin and Child, presenting their gifts in large containers....
The Virgin is seated on the ground in the valley of a north Italian mountainous landscape. The naked infant Christ sits upright on her lap, holding two cherries, which symbolise the fruit of paradise. Two angels kneel before him, their arms crossed in adoration and hands clasped in prayer.Images...
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Lot, the nephew of Abraham, lived in Sodom until God destroyed the sinful city: ‘the Lord rained upon Sodom... brimstone and fire from ... out of heaven’ (Genesis 19: 24). Forewarned of this, Lot and his daughters fled to a cave in the mountains; his wife was turned to a pillar of salt for lookin...
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Fourteen smartly dressed ladies kneel in prayer. They are female members of a confraternity (a quasi-religious brotherhood), praying to their patron saint; its men are shown in another painting in the National Gallery’s collection.We are not sure who this picture is by, but it is thought to have...
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This painting is a strange fiction: roses and tulips, lilac and snake’s head lilies, aren't all in bloom at the same time, so the artist would have made drawings and sketches of them at different times of the year, later incorporating them into the picture. Scientific exploration and discovery fl...
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A group gathers around a manger to adore the newborn Christ. On the right, the Virgin Mary and Joseph gaze reverently at the infant, alongside two small angels. On the left are two young boys and an old, barefooted man: they are the shepherds mentioned in the Gospel of Luke (2: 8–20). This scene...
A patch of sunlight lights up the thatched roof of an old watermill and the white foam of the turbulent river passing. Allart van Everdingen has made little of the wheel that marks the cottage as a mill – he has concentrated on the mood created by the water and the colours of the surrounding land...
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There’s something magical about this enchanting picture, in its unearthly, misty colours, deep shadows and strange beasts. The musician fixing us with an enquiring eye is Orpheus. His story comes from one of the legends told by the Roman poet Ovid in his book Metamorphoses.Orpheus' skill was so g...
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This little portrait in watercolour on ivory was apparently produced in 1840, the year of Queen Victoria’s marriage to Prince Albert. From the Saxon duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Saalfeld, Albert was 20 when he married Victoria, his first cousin. This is one of several portraits of the Prince Consort pain...
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Pied-de-Boeuf (‘cow foot’) was originally a children’s game, in which the players counted as they put their hands one on top of another, and usually ended with the granting of a kiss to whoever reached ‘nine’. The gentleman has taken hold of the lady in grey’s wrist, presumably because he has rea...
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A boy sings from a partbook while his music master beats time with his finger and perhaps sings along. A woman leans her arm against the teacher’s shoulder, her head tilted with a faraway look as if she is listening to the music. A youth accompanies the boy on a viol da gamba, while a young man b...
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Two elegantly dressed couples have been making music on the banks of a small stream. The young man in the foreground pauses from playing his fiddle to watch the amorous couple on the other bank. The lady reclines beside her lover, and a lute and music lie abandoned on the grass. Music and playing...
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The Virgin is seated on a marble seat, intricately carved and decorated with multi-coloured inlay, outlined in gold. It resembles a Roman tomb, perhaps as a reminder of Christ’s future sacrifice at his Crucifixion. Here, Christ is shown as an infant, tenderly reaching to touch his mother’s face,...
This canvas is the sixth of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.The procession continues with men bearing the spoils of victory, some almost buckling under their heavy weight. A bare-footed bald man crouches down to rest his pole on the ground, his cheeks...
A crowd watches as state dignitaries and foreign ambassadors emerge from the church of San Rocco on the right of this painting. They have just attended a mass in honour of Saint Roch as part of the saint’s feast day, which was held in Venice every year on 16 August to celebrate his role in bringi...
This is the night before the Crucifixion. Jesus, knowing he will be betrayed and die on the Cross, has taken Peter, James and John to watch over him while he prays, but they have fallen asleep. According to the Gospel of Luke, Christ asked God to ‘remove this cup from me’, and an angel appeared t...
This panel comes from the altarpiece Ugolino made for the church of Santa Croce in Florence – it was in the predella (’step', the lowest part of an altarpiece). Three other panels from this predella are in the National Gallery’s collection.The dead Christ is being removed from the Cross. One man...
This painting of a man wearing a jaunty, feathered cap and holding up a glass of beer, a refill jug in his other hand, has historically been called ‘The Toper’. This was a popular term for a drinker or a drunkard, and a relatively common subject in Dutch and Flemish painting. However, it is possi...
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This is a picture of calm. The gleaming water is flat and the reflections are perfect. Even the billowing clouds seem to pause overhead to cast shadows on the river. No wind stirs the sails, no flags lift in a breeze and the men in the boat are crouched and still.The painting could be seen as pur...
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This must be one of the most arresting faces in the National Gallery’s Collection. An elderly woman with lively eyes set deep in their sockets, a snub nose, wide nostrils, pimply skin, a hairy mole, bulging forehead and a prominent square chin rests one hand on a marble parapet. Her neck is rumpl...
On display elsewhere
This is one of four panels that originally made up a pair of painted shutters to cover a central image, probably of the Virgin Mary crowned in the heavens. The outside of each shutter was decorated with a saint, the inside with an angel. When the shutters were closed, Saint Joseph would have been...
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In the Metamorphoses, a poem by the Roman writer Ovid, Callisto was one of the virginal companions of the goddess Diana. She was raped by Jupiter, ruler of the gods, and became pregnant. One day, while out hunting, Diana and her companions decided to bathe in a stream. Callisto was forced to undr...
This large, atmospheric painting most likely depicts a moment from Christ’s trial before the Sanhedrin (a Jewish judicial body). The composition is symmetrically balanced around the lit candle on the central table: the shimmering flame illuminates the faces of Christ and the man sat facing him, p...
Autumnal colours and a soft sky lend a certain melancholy to a vast landscape. The high cliff and spindly birch trees on one side and a dark cluster of undergrowth on the other narrow the view, almost hypnotic in its stillness. The figures in the foreground seem almost incidental but flashes of w...
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Christ’s body has just been brought down from the Cross and is being prepared for burial – the square door to his tomb is visible in the rock face on the right. His mother embraces him tenderly, while Mary Magdalene anoints his feet. Another woman washes his wounds with water from a brass basin w...
Moses stands on the left, his hand raised as he beckons people to gaze upon the bronze serpent coiled around the pole held by Eleazar, a priest. The scene is taken from the Old Testament: God had sent a plague of ‘fiery serpents’ to punish the Israelites for their sinfulness and lack of faith (Nu...
A woman wearing a long dark dress and yellow straw hat stands next to a cow on a path which draws the viewer into the landscape. Long shadows are cast by the bushes and tree on the left. In the background the lavender blue hills of the Jura descend from left to right. The view is near Dardagny,...
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Jacob sits next to a stream, holding his shepherd’s staff, surrounded by his flock. Resting beneath a tree, he looks up towards heaven as if seeking guidance or strength: according to the Old Testament story, Jacob agreed to tend Laban’s flock for seven years so that he could marry his daughter R...
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The scene shown here is taken from an episode in the sixteenth-century epic poem Orlando Furioso, by Ludovico Ariosto. The Christian knight Ruggiero has discovered the pagan princess Angelica, who has been abducted by barbarians. Stripped and chained to a rock, she has been left as a sacrifice to...
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This painting is more likely to be an imaginary scene than a view of a theatre that actually existed. It may have been inspired by stage designs by the Bibiena family from Bologna, who were known for their highly ornate sets produced for festivities at many European courts, especially the Hapsbur...
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The Virgin Mary is seated on the ground in a rocky landscape with the Christ Child on her knee. He reaches out for the flower that his mother has just picked.D‘Oggiono trained in Leonardo da Vinci’s workshop and both the style and composition of this painting seem to reflect models he had learned...
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Velázquez painted many portraits of Philip IV, King of Spain, throughout his reign. This is the last painted image of the King by the man who served as his court artist from 1623. He looks middle-aged, and tired: his sagging flesh and puffy eyes suggest the weight of responsibility resting on his...
A serene young mother balances a toddler on her lap, tenderly supporting him with one hand and holding an open book in the other. This is no ordinary mother – she sits on an elaborate throne and is serenaded by angelic musicians, and both mother and child have gilded haloes. This is the Virgin Ma...
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This painting on panel, which has been attributed to the workshop of Fra Angelico, was evidently the pinnacle of an altarpiece.It has been suggested that it was above the central panel of Fra Angelico’s polyptych painted for the church of San Domenico in Fiesole, Italy. The predella is in the Nat...
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Backgammon (triktrak in Dutch) was a highly popular board game in seventeenth-century Flanders, especially in taverns and drinking dens, where players would bet on the outcome. The white cube we see in the centre of the board is probably a doubling die, used to up the stakes. Gambling of this kin...
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This is Saint Peter, one of Christ’s apostles, who was entrusted with the keys to the kingdom of heaven (Matthew 16: 19). The panel was once part of the main tier of an altarpiece – there’s burn damage to the right of the book, probably caused by a candle placed on the altar below.Different techn...
In 1759 Gainsborough moved to the fashionable spa town of Bath, where he established a very successful portrait-painting practice and remained for 15 years. He painted this portrait of Dr Ralph Schomberg, aged about 56, in Bath around 1770.Gainsborough consulted various doctors during his years i...
On display elsewhere
This painting may be an idealised portrait of a woman in the guise of a saint, as she has a thin gold halo above her head. She looks directly at us and presses her right hand against her breast. Her oval face, strong regular features and plaited bound hairstyle give her the appearance of a woman...
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From the grassy outcrop in the left foreground there is a vertiginous drop into the valley, which in its sweep towards the menacing line of mountains in the distance fades from green to blue. The valley is criss-crossed with dark green tree lines, the trees conjured up out of small swirls of the...
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This moody and evocative landscape is more than just a simple pastoral scene. The presence of the angel and the youth in the foreground is a clear sign that it represents the story of Tobias, from the Book of Tobit.Tobit, who was blind, asked his son Tobias to go on a journey to collect a debt. H...
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Fécamp is a fishing town on a part of the Normandy coast known for its high limestone cliffs. Chintreuil visited the area in 1861 and painted a number of open air oil studies on paper, including this one, which was later stuck down on canvas. Pinpricks in each corner of the paper suggest it was p...
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Saint Bartholomew sits alone in the wilderness. Enveloped in the folds of his mantle, he turns towards us, unable to look at the knife clasped in his left hand. One of the twelve apostles, Bartholomew was said to have preached the gospel in India and Armenia. When he refused to make a sacrifice t...
Andrés del Peral sits proudly on a simple chair and looks out at us with a penetrating stare. Goya shows Peral as he really was, with a receding hairline and grey hair. He looks as if he’s sneering at us, but his facial droop suggests he may have suffered a stroke. He places his left hand on his...
Insects crawl on and around a spray of creeping thistle and borage flowers, all casually arranged to appear natural. But the creamy white surface is reminiscent of vellum, the prepared animal skin that was used for manuscripts and miniatures, highlighting the artificial nature of this composition...
Painted around 1800, this small oil sketch on canvas is a fine example of the type of study produced by artists working in Italy from about 1780 to 1850, who painted swiftly and directly from nature. Simon Denis’s oil studies are often of dramatic scenes from nature, particularly the spectacle of...
We do not know the identity of this elegant young lady. Her clothes are not especially extravagant and she was perhaps a gentlewoman rather than an aristocrat.The painting is a good example of Rogier van der Weyden’s style of portraiture. A similar, slightly smaller portrait in Washington (Nation...
Propped up on a pink cushion, this young, fair-haired woman – the ideal of beauty in Renaissance Florence – gazes directly at us. She seems oblivious to the three chubby little boys around her, clutching at handfuls of pink roses.This idealised beauty may represent fertility, with which the pome...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.A barefoot young man sits holding a sheaf of corn he has cut in one hand and his scythe in the other. The sleeves of his blue jacket are rolled u...
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The brutal fight between the Lapiths and the centaurs, as described by the first-century Roman poet Ovid in his Metamorphoses, is displayed on this panel. The story starts with the wedding feast of Pirithous, King of the Lapiths. During the celebrations, the centaur Eurytion, drunk and possessed...
The identity of the tonsured friar portrayed here is made clear by the scene painted on the reverse of the panel, which records the execution of Girolamo Savonarola and his two companions. This took place in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence on 23 May 1498.Savonarola (1452–1498) was a Dominic...
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The upper layers of paint in the draperies are faded so that you can see the underdrawing – or sinopia – beneath. Traces of paint reveal that the draperies were originally blue. The figure’s pose – she recoils in fear, drawing her hand to her breast – is similar to images of the Virgin receiving...
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The Virgin Mary, the Christ Child in her lap, is seated on a marble throne that is topped with an elaborately carved canopy. Below, an angel offers a rose to Christ, but he is distracted by the pear held out by a second angel. Smaller canopies cover the niches on either side, which house the Arch...
Formerly titled A Village Green in France, this is a view near Verberie, between Senlis and Compiègne, in the north-eastern department of Oise. We see a large flat field, in which cows are grazing, beneath a pale blue sky, which fills most of the picture. A row of trees with full foliage on the r...
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A man kneels at a prayer desk in a landscape. In the background Christ carries the Cross, helped by Simon of Cyrene; they are surrounded by soldiers and tormentors. We aren‘t sure who the patron is, but the coat of arms on the desk might be those of the Bollis family of Sint-Truiden. His clothes...
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Rubens has created the impression of a wide-open space by depicting a point of interest in the right foreground – the shepherd watching over his sheep – then using the strong diagonal lines of the river, the road, the edges of the clouds and the raking light to trick our eye. Like the shepherd, w...
An elegantly dressed young woman plays a harpsichord for a man leaning on the instrument. Music is often related to love in Dutch paintings, but in contrast to other genre scenes of this kind the couple don‘t appear to be flirting. The young woman is concentrating on her sheet of music.The Latin...
Nicolas-Toussaint Charlet is known chiefly for his lithographs – he produced around 2,000 of them – but he also worked in other media, including oil sketches such as this one. Children often appear in his pictures, their spontaneous behaviour gently mocking social customs and pretensions.In this...
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A shepherd sleeps on a bank on the edge of a wood, his dog curled up beside him and his crook laid carefully on the grass. The sun is bright but gives a cool light and seemingly little heat. The sky is cloudless – a crisp, clear blue – and the feathery new leaves of the trees are outlined sharply...
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The Virgin Mary and Saint Joseph kneel with the shepherds in adoration before the sleeping Christ Child. One shepherd carries a set of bagpipes, the other has a simple flask and bag tied at his waist. Their earthy facial features appear to be related to examples from northern European art. The di...
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The Virgin lifts the white cloth covering the manger to reveal the newborn Jesus. The shepherds fall to their knees in adoration. One respectfully takes off his hat while another holds down the trussed lamb he has brought. A goat, ox and ass also gaze in wonder, as the first glimmers of dawn appe...
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Philips Wouwerman was famous in his time for his skill at depicting horses in many different situations – at rest in the stable, being shod in the forge, out hunting or, as here, in the frenzy of battle. In what is a relatively small painting – not by Wouwerman himself but produced in his studio...
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This view, painted in May 1871, forms part of a group painted by Corot during his stay in north-east France during the spring and summer of 1871. On the horizon, just right of centre, stands a windmill, its sails visible against the sky. Windmills were an extremely common sight in the Pas de Cala...
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This small picture is based on an altarpiece Tiepolo made in about 1742 for a church in Padua. The altarpiece, which is still in situ, is dedicated to Saints Maximus and Oswald, though only the figure of Saint Maximus is the same in both.Saint Maximus, the second bishop of Padua, is shown here dr...
This tiny picture has grand themes: the rivalry of the gods and the power and danger of love. Its story comes from the Metamorphoses, by the Roman poet Ovid. Cupid, taking revenge on Apollo for his teasing, struck the god with a golden arrow of love, igniting a fierce desire for Daphne – but stru...
On display elsewhere
This serious-looking young man is Marco Barbarigo, known as ‘Marco the Rich’, Venetian consul in London in 1449 and Doge of Venice – the elected head of state – in 1485. This portrait was apparently painted while he was in London: he holds a letter addressed to ‘the eminent and distinguished lord...
On display elsewhere
Maulbertsch here portrays the Orient – the countries of the East – in the form of an allegory (when figures or objects are used to signify abstract concepts or a moral meaning). A turbaned woman holds a pole topped with a crescent moon and star, symbols of the powerful Ottoman Empire. She is acco...
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This small panel is painted in fine detail, resembling a precious painted miniature or illuminated manuscript. It formed the left side of a diptych (a work of two parts) joined with a central hinge; the other side showed The Dead Christ. Joseph, the Virgin Mary and a shepherd in torn clothes pray...
This idyllic view of elegant trees and a peaceful lake is one of a number of related scenes painted by Corot at this period. The lake is one of those at Ville-d'Avray near Paris, the location of Corot’s family home, and the trees are based on a drawing he had made at Civita Castellana during his...
On display elsewhere
This small painting of a girl in blue and a woman in a black coat standing on cliffs as they look out to sea was previously titled View over the Mediterranean. However, it has recently been proposed that this is a view of Trouville in Normandy, which was a popular destination for various artists...
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Christ’s body has just been taken down from the Cross, and his family and followers mourn over him – a moment known as The Lamentation. Rembrandt laboured over this small monochrome picture. He began by making an oil sketch on paper, then tore out a section and mounted the rest on canvas. He cont...
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This unusual design is an adaptation of a twelfth-century mosaic that shows Christ crucified and decorates the apse of San Clemente in Rome. Its Cross is, as here, adorned with 12 doves; they represent the Twelve Apostles, Christ’s followers who spread his message after his death.Looping tendrils...
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The painting shows the moment described in Ovid’s Metamorphoses when the mythical winged horse Pegasus stamped his hoof on Mount Helicon, causing a spring to gush forth. The spring became known as the Hippocrene, or Spring of the Horse. Here the artist shows several thin streams flowing down to f...
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Pictures of this size and shape – it has 12 sides – were known as deschi da parte (or birth trays), and were common in fifteenth-century Florence. Originally made to bring food to a woman during labour, they later became symbolic gifts to celebrate marriage or childbirth.They were, like this one,...
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This paintings shows the Virgin as Queen of Heaven: she sits on a gilded throne and two angels hover above her, about to place an extraordinarily delicate crown on her head. The throne is decorated with red and green enamel or glass, and rests on the dais of a small Gothic church. The infant Chri...
On display elsewhere
A young woman, her lips curving slightly, looks sideways. Her eyes are blue, and her hair – which has been overpainted greyish brown – seems to have originally been light brown. She wears a striking black and white outfit; her bodice is extremely tight and her large ruff has points. The small cap...
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After being condemned to death by Pontius Pilate, Christ was taken away by soldiers, crowned with thorns and called ‘King of the Jews’ (Matthew 27: 26–31). Although all the Gospels describe how Christ was led away to be crucified, only John tells us that he carried his own cross (John 19: 16–17)....
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Saint Francis of Assisi, eager to defend his faith through martyrdom, went to Syria to preach to its Muslim population around 1219, at the time of the Fifth Crusade (one of a series of invasions of Muslim countries by Christian armies attempting to recapture the Holy Land). He was captured and ta...
Age has not been kind to this lyrical evocation of the Roman Campagna (the countryside around the Italian city) and parts of it are now obscured. In the centre, a group of peasants – the picture’s focus – are at the turn of a path. One man pushes his laden mule up the slope towards us. A girl mou...
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A maid, her face partially hidden by her white bonnet, draws water from a large copper cistern in a scullery with a cobbled floor. As she bends forward, her straight back leads us to an open doorway on the right through which we can see another servant talking to a young child, who stands before...
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An elegant and fashionably dressed young lady is absorbed in writing a letter. She holds a quill pen. On the table next to her is a pen case, attached by brownish strings to a dark brown inkpot. We can‘t read what she is writing – the artist doesn’t seem to have intended it to be legible.We don't...
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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 painting looks as though it has been composed from two separate portraits. The figure in the red and white dress of a cardinal points to the signature on the parchment in front of him, ‘Hyppol[itus] me[dicis] Vice cancel[arius]’, which identifies him as Cardinal Ippolito de‘ Medici, vice-cha...
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This canvas is the fourth of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.This is the best-preserved of Mantegna’s Triumphs of Caesar. The scene continues the forward thrust established in the first three canvases (The Trumpeters, The Triumphal Carts and The Trophy...
According to the Old Testament Book of Numbers the Israelites, tired of walking through the desert in search of the Promised Land, criticised both Moses (their leader) and God. God punished them by sending a plague of venomous snakes to bite them, causing the death of many. When the Israelites re...
A woman seated in a landscape is startled by the sudden appearance of an angel, who points to heaven while gesturing towards a sleeping boy in the distance. This is the angel appearing to Hagar, the Egyptian maidservant to Sara, wife of Abraham, as told in the Old Testament. Hagar bore Abraham a...
This picture, painted in fresco (directly onto wet plaster) was part of the decoration of a room in the palace of the ruling Petrucci family of Siena. Two others survive in the National Gallery’s collection.Love – the naked youth with multi-coloured wings – is chased, captured and finally bound b...
This unknown lady stands beside a table covered with an expensive Ottoman carpet on which her small dog is lying. Her hands rest affectionately on the little dog’s back, while its paw lies on the inside of her arm. Dogs were often included in portraits to symbolise the sitter’s faithfulness, whic...
Not on display
Christ is shown as a prisoner, a rope around his neck. He wears a crown of thorns and a purple robe, props made by his Roman captors to mock him: one of the charges against him was that he was claiming to be the ‘King of the Jews’. Dressed like this, he was brought before the citizens of Jerusale...
This impassive face is almost certainly that of Jan van Eyck himself, and the painting a powerful statement of his artistic skill. His motto, Als Ich Can, is painted in Greek letters on the upper frame; the words are an abbreviation of a Flemish saying and a pun on Jan’s name: ‘as I[ich/Eyk] can...
Lot and his daughters are shown fleeing the sinful city of Sodom, forewarned by God of its destruction (Genesis 19). The family are in a moment of conversation, perhaps contemplating their next move. Conspicuously absent are details typically associated with the subject, such as Sodom burning in...
The Virgin, seated in a large landscape, is feeding the Christ Child; luggage is scattered around her. To the right, we see a grazing donkey and Saint Joseph with a pack and walking stick. The holy family here rest as they flee to Egypt, driven away by King Herod’s order to execute infants under...
Not on display
The Decameron, a fourteenth-century collection of stories, tells the tale of Griselda, a peasant woman who was put through a series of tests by her rich husband, the Marquis Gualtieri di Saluzzo. This is the final panel of a series of three; it shows the couple’s reunion after Griselda’s ordeal.A...
In this painting, probably made for private devotion, the infant Christ stands on the Virgin Mary’s lap and reaches up to embrace her. With his right hand he points up at her face. Saint Joseph looks on at the right, his hands crossed over his chest in reverence. In one hand he appears to hold a...
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The Three Kings have come to visit the infant Christ in the stable where he was born. They bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and have journeyed from the East (Matthew 2: 10–12). The stable at Bethlehem is attached to the ruins of a great classical building with a triumphal arch in the...
Anthony van Dyck spent much of his twenties in Italy and in particular Genoa, where a wealthy merchant aristocracy were eager patrons for his flattering and engaging style of portraiture. Many of these were painted full-length, images of graceful figures, clearly aware of their status. This is a...
A bearded and venerable Saint Benedict admits two disciples, Maurus and Placidus, to his newly founded religious order, while a group of monks look on. They were young Roman noblemen who were sent to Saint Benedict to be educated and became two of his earliest followers.Although members the Bened...
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Saint Mark, one of the four authors of the Gospels, stands on a tilted floor next to Saint Augustine, a fourth-century theologian. A winged lion, the traditional symbol of Saint Mark, can be seen resting at the feet of the saint. Saint Augustine’s richly decorated mitre, crosier and gloves identi...
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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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We don’t know who painted this portrait, or who the couple in the garden are. They seem to pause mid-conversation, their expressions enigmatic, leaving us wondering what the relationship was between them. She holds a glove in her hand – sometimes a symbol of betrothal but always a sign of wealth....
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The watermills depicted here still survive today – they are part of the former estate at Singraven, near Denekamp, one of the most easterly points of Holland. Hobbema seems to have been inspired to paint them because his teacher, Jacob van Ruisdael, had depicted the mills on several occasions.Whi...
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Three partially draped nudes, the Three Graces of Antiquity – Aglaia, Euphrosyne and Thalia – seem to be floating on clouds. They were daughters of Zeus and the Three Graces were often associated with pleasure, chastity and beauty.The composition repeats in reverse a 1638 painting of the same sub...
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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...
Not on display
These five paintings were once part of a large multi-panel altarpiece, or polyptych, made for the high altar of the Oratory of S. Pietro in Vincoli, Faenza. It was originally topped by a horizontal panel, now lost, showing the dead Christ supported by angels.Although the altarpiece has been disme...
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A bearded man in a hair robe is being violently threatened by a horde of demonic creatures. He has cast aside his book and is gazing up at the heavens for help, where Christ has appeared reclining on a cloud.This very small picture is one of a number of works on copper that Annibale Carracci pain...
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We do not know this man’s identity. He wears a black pleated silk doublet with pleated sleeves, and a soft black cap, possibly made of felted wool, with black knotted braids at the edges. His white chemise with ruffled collar and cuffs is tied at the neck with a black ribbon. The costume suggests...
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Surrounded by angels, a graceful and ethereal Virgin Mary crosses her hands over her breast and gazes heavenwards. She wears a white garment and a swirling blue cloak.The scene is bathed in a mellow light, and the Virgin is surrounded by a golden haze of clouds into which angels seem to dissolve....
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This long rectangular panel was made as a predella, the lowest tier of an altarpiece, and was commissioned by the Company of Saint Jerome for their church in Arezzo. The main panel, now in the Museo Civico, Arezzo, shows the Virgin Mary with symbols that refer to the doctrine of the Immaculate Co...
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Reminiscent of Titian’s style, this painting is typical of the kind of mythological scene made for learned, private patrons in Venice that he helped pioneer. Cupid, god of love, raises his arrow to pierce a woman embracing a youth who holds a golden apple.The central couple may be Hippomenes and...
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Three young ladies are making music in a landscape of meadows and lakes. They are dressed in expensive clothes made from voluminous quantities of sumptuous silk, damask, brocade and velvet. The costumes, with their particularly extravagant sleeves, and the ornamentally plaited hair of the lady on...
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We have a magnificent view of the Grand Canal in Venice during the annual regatta, which was held on 2 February and attracted large numbers of visitors each year. All eyes are on the one-oared gondolas racing up the middle of the canal. Just right of centre two craft swing around the bend, tilted...
When it entered the National Gallery’s collection in 1823, this painting was described as a portrait of the painter’s wife – but we now know Gerrit Dou never married. Perhaps it was something about the intimacy and sensitivity of this tiny image which led people to assume that there was a relatio...
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Grey clouds threaten the sailing boats in this picture. They gather from away to the left, moving swiftly in contrast to the seemingly motionless vessels below. An angry sun picks up the white sails and – in the far distance – the sails of a windmill, making them glow. There are reflections in th...
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This back view of a standing male nude is an académie, which is a study, usually a chalk drawing or an oil painting, made from a live male model in the studio. It is one of two académies in the National Gallery’s collection.Such life studies formed part of the classical training of (male) artist...
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This painting evokes a sense of the calm and simplicity of everyday routine and of the virtue of labour as the old woman absorbs herself in polishing the glowing brass of a large pan. But other objects on the sill give her scouring a different, darker significance and clearly identify the picture...
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In this small painting, the Virgin Mary and infant Christ are seated in an enclosed garden (known in Latin as a hortus conclusus, it traditionally symbolised Mary’s virginity). She holds out a flower to her son – a ‘pink’, also known as a dianthus (meaning ‘flower of God’ in Latin). It was often...
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The date 1514 is just visible on the letter carried by the sitter, although the words are illegible. The inscription in the parapet reads, in primitive French, ‘who loves well is slow to forget’. The sitter wears the Maltese Cross of the Order of Saint John. In 1514 Franciabigio was working for t...
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In 1681, Marco Gallo was made a cardinal by Pope Innocent X, having served as Bishop of Rimini, a city in northwestern Italy from 1659. In this portrait he wears a vivid red cardinal’s biretta on his head and a silk mozzetta (short cape), its beautiful iridescence and volume created by carefully...
This is one of three mythological scenes to decorate a cassone, or chest, illustrating the story of Callisto as told in Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Jupiter seducing Callisto, also in the National Gallery, decorated the other end.Arcas, son of Jupiter and Callisto, draws back his bow. A bear emerges fro...
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Goya shows us a scene based on a satirical play first performed in 1698: The Forcibly Bewitched. The priest, Don Camillo, is being frightened into marriage with Doña Leonora. He’s been made to believe that a slave, Lucia, has bewitched him, and that his life will last only as long as the lamp in...
On display elsewhere
This striking half-naked figure is Saint John the Baptist. He comes from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. Crivelli’s attention to detail is such that we can see t...
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Christ and his mother, Mary, are seated on a throne. He places a crown on her head, and she crosses her hands on her chest in a gesture of acceptance. This is the coronation of the Virgin, a popular subject in medieval Italy where Mary was especially revered. According to medieval Christian legen...
This picture was painted by a seventeenth-century Dutch imitator of Jacob van Ruisdael and is possibly an early work by the artist’s follower Johan van Kessel. It may be based on a lost work by van Ruisdael showing Bentheim Castle, which is on the border between Germany and the Netherlands, altho...
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At Pentecost, after Christ’s death, his disciples were imbued with the Holy Ghost, shown here as a dove. Tongues of fire appeared on their heads and they were able to speak multiple languages.The disciples are seated in a circle in the upper storey of a house, with the Virgin Mary and Saint Peter...
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In 1751, a rhinoceros known as Miss Clara was publicly exhibited at the Venice Carnival, creating a sensation across Europe. She was the subject of poems, paintings, tapestries, medals and sculptures; ladies even styled their hair in the shape of a horn. Pietro Longhi painted this picture around...
A gentleman and a lady sit in an open carriage. Their identities are unknown, and it is unclear if they are married. This type of high-built, four-wheel carriage was typically driven by its gentleman-driver owner, rather than by a coachman. It was known as a ‘phaeton’ after the son of the Greek g...
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Thomas Lawrence was only 20 when he painted this, one of the most brilliant of all royal portraits. Yet it failed to please either King George or Queen Charlotte and did not enter the Royal Collection. It remained on Lawrence’s hands and was in his studio sale after his death.Lawrence painted Que...
While carrying his cross, Christ stumbles and falls. One of Christ’s executioners raises a fist to strike him and another pulls him by a rope around his waist. In the distance is Calvary, the barren hill with two crosses where Christ will be crucified. The Virgin follows her son and wipes her tea...
This painting shows the inside of the famous rotunda (demolished in 1805) at Ranelagh Gardens in Chelsea. Ranelegh opened in 1742 as one of London’s most prestigious pleasure gardens, and its main attraction was this vast circular building in which fashionable society could attend balls and liste...
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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This is one of the earliest studies for A Sunday on La Grande Jatte of 1884–6 (Art Institute of Chicago), and was very likely painted on location. As this sketch was painted in the morning, the sunlight and shadows are the reverse of other studies and of the final painting itself, which shows the...
Mary and Joseph kneel before the baby Jesus, who sleeps wrapped in a woven basket of sticks and straw. Joseph, the elderly carpenter, touches his rough fingers together in prayer. He holds a stick like those from which the basket is made, and two knives in a sheath lie in his lap. Mary presses he...
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This panel was most likely painted in 1885 and relates to a medium-size canvas, The Seine at Courbevoie (now in a private collection in Paris). Seurat may have painted it before he decided to produce a finished picture of this particular view of the river, or it may be a preparatory study.The ver...
The building in this painting has been identified as the Norman church at Arbonne (now Arbonne-le-forêt), a village to the southwest of Barbizon. The village of Barbizon, around 40 miles south of Paris, and the neighbouring forest of Fontainebleau were popular locations for artists, including Jea...
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This is Lawrence’s own copy of a portrait he painted of John Julius Angerstein (1735–1823) aged 84. The original was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1816, and Lawrence considered it one of his best works. Angerstein was Lawrence’s friend and patron for over 30 years. Lawrence first painted him...
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The subject of this painting is obscure – a melancholy enthroned figure sits with books at his feet. A young man sitting on the step plays a lute as a boy approaches the throne and a kneeling man offers a bowl of flowers. All have respectfully removed their hats. A hermit appears in a cave in the...
Saint Nicholas lived in the fourth century and was a bishop of Myra, on the southern coast of modern Turkey. His relics were taken from Myra to Bari in Italy in 1087 and remain there today, which is why he is known as Saint Nicholas of Bari. He is the model of our ‘Santa Claus’ because of a lege...
Sir George Beaumont (1753–1827), the National Gallery’s first great benefactor, is portrayed here at the age of 50. He is dressed in black with a glimpse of white waistcoat showing above a white stock against a plain crimson background. The restricted colour palette adds to the portrait’s drama.B...
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This modello, or detailed oil study, is one of a group of 12 that Giordano made in preparation for the ceiling frescoes in the Palazzo Medici Riccardi in Florence in 1682–85. This scene corresponds to that painted on one of the two short walls, above the entrance to the grand Galleria.It shows Mi...
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This little scene was once hidden on the inside of a cupboard door – damage on the left hand border shows that there was once a door hinge there. Its reverse – the front of the door – is decorated with abstract patterns.The story tells how the Blessed Reginald, once the dean to the Bishop of Orle...
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The sky is moody but the scene is one of pastoral tranquillity. A golden light picks out the flanks of the animals which rest peacefully in the foreground and the figure of the woman who chats to the shepherd. This was a fashionable atmospheric effect, characteristic of Italianate landscape paint...
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This is the final scene of Hogarth’s series of six paintings, Marriage A-la-Mode. The wretched Countess, dogged by the scandal following Silvertongue’s arrest, trial and sentence to death for the murder of her husband the Earl, has returned to her father’s house in the City of London.On receiving...
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...
Although at first sight a calm pastoral scene, this picture is full of activity. A river winds through a rocky landscape, seemingly flowing from the background into the foreground. The serpentine shape in the water on the left is apparently a raft of logs being floated downstream from the forests...
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On a crisp autumn morning, the rising sun casts a cool light on the manor house. Shadows are long and there’s a suggestion of dew on the grass of the meadows. The windows of the manor house and the stream meandering past it twinkle, and the few feathery clouds are tinged with gold. We are high up...
In this sombre scene a peasant woman, a young girl and two children sit round a table in a dreary room. The older girl and woman look straight at us, their furrowed brows, pursed lips and tense gazes creating a feeling of melancholy or despair. The boy concentrates on cutting bread, smiling conte...
The unusual horn-shaped cap and sumptuous silk robes identify this man as a doge, the elected ruler of Venice. We can‘t be sure who he is, but he has been identified in the past as Doge Niccolò Marcello, who was in power briefly from 1473 to 1474. A medal (Bode Museum, Berlin) inscribed with Marc...
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A solitary man stands in a boat on a river in a rural landscape. The sun has just set, leaving a warm glow and a tranquil atmosphere. The small boats on the riverbank and the ship in the distance suggest the bustle of activity that had taken place on the river earlier in the day. A large ship was...
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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 panel shows the first part of the story of Alcyone and her husband Ceyx from the Metamorphoses, a poem by the Roman writer Ovid. It is continued in another panel, made as its pair (now in the Philadelphia Museum of Art).A boat waits to take Ceyx to the large wooden ship in the distance, upon...
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Fortune tellers were a popular attraction during the Venetian Carnival, celebrated during the 40 days of Lent. The one here is reading the palm of a fashionable lady; a fruit seller with a full basket stops to watch and a masked figure leans forward for a closer look. One woman, however, stares i...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.The labourer in this scene, which may represent August, is so exhausted that he has fallen asleep. He sits beside a tree, his head resting on his...
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The woman in this portrait wears gold, ball-shaped earrings, a golden braided chain and a necklace made up of rectangular emeralds with alternating gold details. Her rich red tunic has a black gold-edged stripe at her right side: this is a clavus, a sign of status in Rome. The artist records her...
On display elsewhere
The third scene in the series of six paintings by Hogarth titled Marriage A-la Mode is set in the consulting room of the French doctor M. de la Pillule. Viscount Squanderfield is accompanied by a sickly looking little girl and a woman who is probably the girl’s mother and madam.The child stands b...
The Virgin Mary has collapsed with grief after learning that Christ, her son, has accepted his inevitable death as the will of God and is making to leave for Jerusalem. The episode is not recorded in the Bible, but it appears in a fourteenth-century German devotional text as well as in Passion pl...
A young man is depicted full length in plate armour and chain mail. He does not wear a helmet but is armed with a sword and holds a lance or possibly the pole of a standard. Dramatic contrasts of light and dark create a mysterious, charged atmosphere. Reflections and glimmers of light and shade d...
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This long and fantastically detailed painting is a precious survivor of Renaissance interior decoration – and it gives us an idea of just how spectacular this could be. It is one of a pair telling the story of David, King of Israel, who started life as a shepherd boy but rose to fame and fortune...
The New Testament recounts how, after his crucifixion, Christ rose from the dead and appeared to his disciples. One of them, Thomas, was absent, and refused to believe in Christ’s resurrection without witnessing it himself. This painting shows their encounter, when Christ instructed Thomas to tou...
A sumptuously dressed young woman holds a drawing of the Roman heroine Lucretia. The story of Lucretia, who lived in the early sixth century BC, is told in Livy’s History of Rome. Prince Sextus Tarquinius crept to Lucretia’s room at night and raped her. She told her father and husband, who were u...
A bearded saint stands in a scalloped niche in this small painting. This is Saint Paul, the so-called Apostle to the Gentiles (non-Jews), holding his usual emblems of a book and a sword. Paul was a Jewish convert to Christianity. He was originally hostile to the new faith but experienced a dramat...
Not on display
There is mystery in this room. One of the figures has her back to us, so we can’t see the expression on her face. But since the man behind the table seems to be using two clay pipes as a pretend violin and bow, and his companion gestures as though conducting a duet, she may be singing.Scenes left...
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Followers of Bacchus – the Roman god of wine and fertility – feast, drink and make love in the countryside. The painting resembles the great bacchanal scenes that were commissioned from the leading painters of Venice by Alfonso I d‘Este, Duke of Ferrara, for the Camerino d’Alabastro (Alabaster Ro...
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Venus, the goddess of love, looks over at her lover Mars. She is alert and dignified, while he – the god of war – is utterly lost in sleep. He doesn‘t even notice the chubby satyr (half child, half goat) blowing a conch shell in his ear.This picture was probably ordered to celebrate a marriage, a...
Philip IV, King of Spain, was normally shown in fairly sombre clothing, so the unusual splendour of his costume here suggests that this work was made to celebrate something particular. In 1632, he wore a similar outfit for an important ceremony in which the Cortes of Castile pledged an oath of al...
The Virgin Mary sits under a tree in a simple gown of faded rose, her work basket with its iron shears and ball of grey wool at her side. She is trying a grey jacket she has just made on the Christ Child, which may be the seamless coat that legend claims grew with him and for which the soldiers c...
Oedipus stands before the Sphinx, who challenges him to solve a riddle before he can enter the city of Thebes, just visible in the distance. The skull and bones at the bottom of the picture show the fate of those who have previously failed the test. According to legend, Oedipus answers correctly...
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The Virgin is seated simply on the ground in the pose known as ‘the Madonna of Humility’, with the Christ Child on her lap and the infant Saint John the Baptist to her side, forming a broad-based pyramid. The motif of the two holy children embracing derives from a design by Leonardo.Saint John th...
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In this painting, we see two stories from the life of Saint Benedict happening at once. On the left Benedict tells Saint Maurus to rescue Saint Placidus, who has fallen in the lake while fetching water. Maurus walks out on to the lake as if it were land and pulls Placidus – still grasping his jug...
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Christ raises his hand in blessing as Salvator Mundi, or ‘Saviour of the World’. Such pictures were particularly popular in north-east Italy in the second half of the fifteenth and the early sixteenth century and were usually made for the home. The popularity of this type of painting in Venice ma...
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Monet was captivated by London’s fog during his first stay in the capital from 1870 to 1871. Later in life he told the art dealer Rene Gimpel: ‘Without the fog, London would not be a beautiful city. It’s the fog that gives it its magnificent breadth.’ This misty composition is anchored by carefu...
The painting represents an episode in Belisaire, a novel by Jean-François Marmontel, published in 1767. The novel is based on the legend of Belisarius, the Byzantine general (about 505–565) who according to this account was blinded and impoverished by the Roman emperor Justinian. Peyron depicts t...
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This is Richard Milles of Nackington, a Member of Parliament for Canterbury from 1761 to 1780, who sat for this portrait when he was in Rome on his Grand Tour. He points to a map inscribed with ‘Grisons’, the name of a Swiss Canton that he probably visited on his way to Italy.The classical column...
This characterful portrait is a pair to Head of a Man in Blue, also in our collection.A man looks out, his eyes sparkling and head slightly cocked. His mouth is open, as if he is speaking, and he has crooked and missing teeth. A cheerful demeanour animates his face, as do the wisps of hair poking...
Not on display
The Christ Child looks up at the Virgin Mary, raising the index finger of his right hand as though he is preaching, which refers to his divine authority. The Virgin’s cloak would have originally appeared more blue, but the pigment, azurite, has changed over time.The bold colours of the striped te...
There is a feeling of melancholy about this composition. The sky is dark and oppressive, and the background is dominated by shadowy cliffs. In the right foreground, the fallen birch tree – a common device to help give an impression of depth to a view – hints at the destructive power of nature. Th...
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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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The Virgin Mary holds her infant son on her knee, supporting him as he uses his finger to help him follow the words in an open book. The Child traces the line of text with one hand, while the other rests tenderly on his mother’s thumb. Saint Joseph gently supports the book in this charmingly inti...
This is one of three scenes from the predella of Raphael’s Colonna Altarpiece painted for the convent of S. Antonio da Padua in Perugia. The Procession to Calvary was the central scene of the predella, positioned below the main panel of the altarpiece.Christ looks to us as he carries the Cross, h...
The terrified boar is surrounded on all sides by riders on horseback and men on foot with spears. This moment has been chosen for dramatic effect: the boar is trapped and about to be killed. The rearing horses and snarling dogs add to the intensity of the action. Forced into a narrow space, anima...
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A young man, naked but for a red cloak and an animal skin, is seated on a rock in the foreground, playing a pipe. This is Apollo, Greek god of the sun and of music and art, dressed as a shepherd. As a punishment for killing the Cyclops, Jupiter sent him to be herdsman to Admetus, king of Pherae i...
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The Virgin Mary sits in the countryside outside a distant town, holding the naked, wriggling Christ Child on her lap. Archangel Michael is identified by his name inscribed on the neckline of his robes. Saint Veronica holds the veil on which the image of Christ’s face was miraculously imprinted wh...
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This was painted seven years after the ending of the Thirty Years‘ War, one of the most destructive conflicts in European history and caused in part by a power struggle between Catholic and Protestant countries. We don’t know who the woman is, or if the painting was intended as a portrait or is a...
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A cross-channel ferry (a packet), fully laden with passengers and flying a British flag, is approaching the port of Calais. Around it, small French fishing boats (‘poissards’) head out to sea. The water is rough and dark storm clouds gather, although a shaft of sunlight breaks through to illumina...
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...
Not on display
This is a copy of Raphael’s Virgin and Child known as ‘The Bridgewater Madonna’. The original is on loan to the Scottish National Gallery in Edinburgh from the Duke of Sutherland’s collection.The copy is similar in size and in most colours and follows Raphael’s style closely, making it difficult...
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This is part of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the high altar of the church of Santa Croce, Florence. It is a pinnacle panel (from the uppermost section of the altarpiece). There are two other pinnacle panels in our collection, as well as panels from other tiers.The crowned figure in...
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This altarpiece was commissioned by the family of Hermann Rinck, who was burgomaster (or mayor) of Cologne three times in the 1480s, after his death in around 1496. It stood on the altar of their family chapel in the church of Saint Columba in the city.The altarpiece is in the form of a triptych...
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This oil sketch has long been associated with a finished painting known as the Allegory of Louis XIV, King of France (State Hermitage Museum, St Petersburg). Both feature Minerva, goddess of wisdom and warfare; here, she is seated on the back of a lion and points with a commanding gesture to a sh...
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A rutted cart track leads straight into the middle of the picture. A group of figures are caught in a patch of sunlight while a cottage merges into the shadows. A frieze of trees stands out against a sunny glade and a cloudy sky beyond. Many of Hobbema’s landscapes were composed around these spec...
On display elsewhere
This is the outer face of the right-hand shutter of an altarpiece made for the Benedictine abbey at Werden. The outer face of the left-hand shutter, which is in the National Gallery’s collection, also shows four standing saints.Saint Jerome, dressed in red cardinal’s robes, pets the lion that was...
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This roundel (round panel) comes from the frame of the central panel of a multi-panelled altarpiece with an image of the baptism of Christ at the centre. It shows an angel, fingertips touched together gently in prayer.This is the only surviving frame decoration from the altarpiece but there may h...
Not on display
This is one of three preparatory oil sketches for one of Polidoro’s most important works: the altarpiece for the oratory of SS. Annunziata in Messina, Sicily (now in the Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte, Naples). It shows Christ collapsing under the weight of the Cross as he carries it to Calvary w...
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The monumental figure in this painting is Elijah, an Old Testament prophet who lived in Israel in the ninth century BC. Having predicted that a terrible drought would ravage the land, Elijah was instructed by God to hide by the stream Cherith. Here, ravens delivered bread and meat to him every mo...
Saint Mary Magdalene is identifiable here by her halo and her emblem – the pot of ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet. The pot seems to show scenes from classical mythology. On the lid, one woman carries another through water – perhaps the goddess Diana helping her mother across the st...
Not on display
A crowd clusters around an altar in a church filled with mosaics. On the right, a bearded priest wields a knife; on the left the Virgin Mary holds the Christ Child. Behind her is her husband Saint Joseph, holding a pair of doves. This is the circumcision of Christ, as described in the Gospel of L...
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This canvas is the fifth of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.In this part of the procession, Mantegna depicted four magnificent African elephants and their riders, skilfully using linear perspective to create a convincing impression of receding space. T...
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...
Not on display
A group of four cows drink at a pool set in a flat grassy plain. A few trees are dotted on the horizon. The cows form a focal point in the composition, their warm brown and ochre tones creating a contrast with the surrounding landscape. The sky is overcast yet the plain itself is painted in fresh...
Not on display
For its lavish interiors, the objets d’art in the background, and the swaggering self-confidence of the sitter, this portrait has become an icon of the late 19th century’s Aesthetic movement. Painted by Jacques Joseph (James) Tissot, a French émigré who settled in London in 1871, it depicts the a...
On display elsewhere
This is one of Bronzino’s most complex and enigmatic paintings. It contains a tangle of moral messages, presented in a sexually explicit image. Venus, goddess of love, steals an arrow from her son Cupid’s quiver as she kisses him on the lips. Cupid fondles Venus‘ breast, his bare buttocks provoca...
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...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
This panoramic view of the medieval city of Avignon in the south of France most likely dates from a visit Corot made in July 1836. We are looking at Avignon from the small town of Villeneuve-lès-Avignon, on the opposite side of the Rhône.The luminosity of this oil study is similar to outdoor oil...
On display elsewhere
This serious-looking woman is Hermanna van der Cruis. She was married to Abraham van Suchtelen, who held many posts in national and local government in the Netherlands. The portrait was probably made in the second half of the 1660s, when Hermanna was about 50, a wealthy widow and respected in the...
Not on display
The Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated outdoors with a simple cloth of honour hanging behind them to resemble a throne. Saint Paul, identified by the book and sword he holds, stands in the position of greatest honour on the Virgin and Christ’s right-hand side. A female saint stands on their...
Not on display
Jan Wijnants was from Haarlem, which lies in the narrow corridor of land between Amsterdam and the sea. He specialised in depicting the landscapes around the town, which were formed largely of sand blown inland from the North Sea beaches and into a series of sometimes spectacularly high dunes. So...
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This was the latest and most advanced of a series of panels that were made to decorate the bedchamber of the Florentine banker Pierfrancesco Borgherini on the occasion of his marriage in 1515. The paintings, commissioned by Pierfrancesco’s father, tell the Old Testament story of Joseph. Five othe...
This painting appeared on the outside of the right wing of an altarpiece possibly made for a member of the Bollis family of Sint-Truiden. It is painted in grisaille (in shades of black, white and grey) and would have been visible when the altarpiece was closed.The Virgin Mary rises and turns to g...
Not on display
The Battle of Valmy was the French army’s first major victory during the wars that followed the French Revolution of 1789. It was both a strategic and a psychological victory for the new French government and helped ensure the survival of the Revolution, which was to transform Europe. The battle...
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These three saints stand on the left side of a large multi-panelled altarpiece painted for the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista in Pratovecchio near Florence. Several of its panels are in the National Gallery’s collection.A label above him tells us that the saint in red is Cos...
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Christ arrives at the temple to find it full of money-changers and traders. Christ says, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them’ (Matthew 21: 12–15).Jacopo Bassano has depicted bo...
Not on display
This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings.A naked woman with he...
This is a fresco fragment from Correggio’s Coronation of the Virgin, which he painted in the apse of the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma, Italy. The fresco depicted Christ crowning the Virgin in heaven surrounded by the evangelists, doctors of the church and infant angels. Christ and...
Not on display
Cornelius Johnson spent much of his career working in London, but this portrait of an unknown lady was painted in Holland in 1655, 12 years after he left England.The black costume was fashionable at the time, but the gown must have belonged to the artist rather than the lady as it appears in at l...
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In this picturesque landscape the bright blue sky and leafy trees reflect the warm climate. The path and river lead our eye towards the town in the distance. In the foreground, a seated man washes his feet in a fountain. On the right, a woman beside a shepherd points towards a large column, which...
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The man in this portrait has not yet been identified, but he is probably from the Yorkshire gentry. With his body positioned at a slight angle to us, in a three-quarter view, he leans against a stone column with his right hand tucked into his waistcoat – a pose that was often adopted by English s...
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A young woman in armour, her horse tied to a tree behind her, has wandered into a kind of rustic concert. A shepherd and his family are sitting outside their cottage; the elderly father weaves baskets out of reeds and his sons hold musical instruments.This pastoral idyll is a scene from an epic p...
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In order to meet the huge demand for his paintings, Giovanni Bellini had a large workshop of assistants who produced works in his style, under his supervision – like this one, which shows the Three Kings worshipping the infant Christ. According to the Gospel of Matthew they followed a star – we c...
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The Virgin Mary, who is being crowned with a wreath of roses by two angels, stands holding the infant Christ in her arms. A man wearing the black habit, or uniform, of a Benedictine monk kneels on the tiled floor at the Virgin’s feet, and holds a scroll inscribed in Latin with a prayer to her. He...
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The apocryphal Book of Tobit describes how Tobit, a blind old man, sent his son Tobias to the distant city of Media to collect a debt. The boy was accompanied by the Archangel Raphael, protector of travellers. In this painting, Tobias struggles with a fish that had tried to devour him, as Raphael...
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While many of Teniers’ paintings show an invented landscape, this view perhaps shows a castle in the distance that may one day be identified. Judging by the new shoots on the trees between the cottage and the river, this is a spring scene. But Teniers was never content with showing a pleasant vie...
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Dark groups of figures stand out against the light of the pale blue and silver sky. A huddled procession comes over the windswept dunes: two fishermen are carrying the body of dead man. Ahead of everyone else walks a woman, presumably the widow, her two children clinging to her.The composition wa...
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Michiel Jansz. van Miereveld was one of the most successful portrait painters of the early decades of the seventeenth century. He was a favourite at the Dutch court, and his profile was such that Charles I tried – unsuccessfully – to tempt him to come to London.This portrait, which is (now very f...
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Two horses run wild across a flat, earthy plain against a cloudy sunset. These are Xanthus and Balius, the immortal horses of the Greek hero Achilles. They were the offspring of Zephyrus, the god of the west wind, who may be personified by the winged head which is about to expel a mouthful of air...
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In this exquisite small painting on copper, three women are looking after two infants in a grand neoclassical setting. One woman breastfeeds an infant, while another holds up a second baby for a kiss. A woman to the left is busy arranging bedding in a wooden cradle. The open loggia and warm light...
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Van den Eeckhout’s painting tells an Old Testament story of kindness, hospitality and trust towards travellers. In 1991, it was presented to the National Gallery by Mr Herman Shickman in gratitude to the British people who showed hospitality to his mother, a refugee from Germany in the Second Wor...
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This striking portrait of a woman forms a pair with Campin’s portrait A Man: the sitters were clearly married. We don't know who they were, but their clothes suggest they were prosperous townsfolk, perhaps from Tournai where Campin lived and worked.Campin has conveyed their personalities and rela...
The boy regarding us stands in a relaxed confident manner, with one hand on his hip and the other holding the hilt of his sword. The vertical glossy gold stripes of the curtain effectively frame his elegant pose. The costume suggests a date in the mid-1540s and is plainly that of a wealthy family...
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‘The Archers’ is one of a small number of outstanding portraits from the early part of Raeburn’s career and was probably painted in about 1789 or 1790, when the subjects were in their late teens. Robert and Ronald Ferguson became members of the Royal Company of Archers in 1792 and 1801 respective...
On display elsewhere
Two peasants converse on a track that runs past two cottages. Behind them a chestnut horse pulls a wagon laden with hay, which suggests that this scene is set at the end of summer, when the meadows are cut and the hay brought in to feed the livestock over the coming winter.The cottage in the righ...
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An elderly man, his face weathered by age and his clothes ragged and patched, leans on a crutch. He looks down towards a globe or sphere, on which a scene of a country inn at dusk is painted. In his right hand he holds an earthenware pilgrim-bottle or flask – such a bottle could be attached to th...
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Salvator Rosa’s dramatic late landscapes presented nature as wild and dangerous, and were filled with striking effects of broken light, jagged trees and remote signs of civilisation. This picture is thought to be by an imitator working in Rosa’s style during the late seventeenth century: it lacks...
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Elegant and full of self-confidence, the young Prince Rupert stands every inch a member of the royal Stuart dynasty. Known as Rupert of the Rhine, he bears a striking resemblance to his cousin the Prince of Wales, later Charles II. The portrait is designed to place us at his feet, and yet he look...
An unknown woman with a piercing gaze leans on a table, holding a closed fan in her left hand. The sitter’s elegant costume alludes to her wealth and status, as does the ornate silver ewer behind her. She is outdoors, under a cloudy sky.The portrait had traditionally been attributed to the celebr...
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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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The Virgin, crowned and richly dressed as Queen of Heaven, sits on a marble throne. She comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. A pink watered silk – a cloth of ho...
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This little girl, who has not been identified, has been posed by the artist, and the kitten by the girl. A cat is sometimes included in portraits of children as a symbol of the wildness of nature intruding upon the innocence of childhood.The picture is probably a portrait, albeit an idealised one...
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The infant Christ wriggles in the embrace of his mother, the Virgin Mary – just like an ordinary baby would. Behind her are two saints, Jerome on the right and Paul on the left. Saint Jerome is wearing the red robes of a cardinal, reflecting his status as a ‘father’ of the Catholic Church. Both...
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This is one of two fragments in the National Gallery’s collection of a larger work which showed the Virgin and Christ Child seated in a garden. It depicts Saint Dorothy, who lived in Caesarea (Kayseri in modern-day Turkey) in the fourth century.Saint Dorothy is usually shown, as here, carrying a...
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This painting sets out to tease us: we are clearly invited to wonder about the nature of the relationship between the two figures. They sit close and seem deeply comfortable in each other’s presence; there is a hint of embarrassment in the young woman’s reaction to our gaze. She looks up slightly...
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This small painting of a huntsman is probably by Bonifazio or his studio. It is painted on canvas and was probably made to decorate a piece of domestic furniture. It may derive from a series representing the Labours of the Months, similar to the later series by a Venetian artist in the National G...
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This is the central panel of a triptych (a painting in three parts) that was made for the church of St Columba, Cologne. Its two side panels – or shutters – are in the collection of the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool.A small group mourns the crucified Christ: the Virgin Mary, his mother, stands at...
On display elsewhere
This is one of a series of four paintings by Veronese that concern the trials and rewards of love, although their precise meanings remain unclear. The compositions are designed to be seen from below, so we know the pictures were intended for a ceiling or a series of ceilings.A couple are united a...
A man kneels before the Virgin Mary and infant Christ, and kisses the child’s hand – this is the Adoration of the Kings, taking place in the ruins of a palace. Saint Joseph, his luggage on a stick over his shoulder, pushes his hat back on his forehead.It was once a triptych (a painting made up of...
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Saint Sebastian stands naked, covered only by a translucent loincloth. His youthful body is lean and muscly, and its strength, along with his upright pose and calm gaze, is at odds with the 12 arrows that pierce his flesh.According to the Golden Legend, a thirteenth-century compilation of the liv...
This portrait may depict Ghirardo Averoldi, a nobleman from Brescia in northern Italy. He regards us with a frown, and the solid triangular form of his body, swathed in his black silk and velvet costume, makes him appear stern and powerful. The large collar of the coat and the shape of the sleev...
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Leonardo Loredan knows that he is being looked at, but he does not return our gaze. He is the doge, the ruler of the Venetian Republic; elected in 1501, he ruled until his death in 1521.He wears white silk damask robes woven with gold and silver metal thread, clothing reserved for the most splend...
During the 1470s and 1480s Bellini produced a series of small-scale images of the Virgin and Child, destined for the homes of his Venetian patrons who used them as aids to private prayer.The naked Christ lies on a marble parapet, probably intended to recall his dead body in the tomb – a reminder...
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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...
David Teniers the Younger was one of the most successful Flemish painters of the seventeenth century. His work was prized by important collectors, and he amassed great wealth and attained high status himself: he was awarded a patent of nobility in 1680. At this time there was a fashion for pictur...
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This painting, which shows Saints Christina and Ottilia, was part of a multi-panelled altarpiece made by Cranach in 1506, shortly after he was appointed court painter to the Elector of Saxony, Friedrich the Wise.Saint Christina of Bolsena was a third-century virgin martyr. When she renounced her...
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Christ kneels in prayer and looks up at an angel who holds a chalice. This is the beginning of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion), when Christ prayed in the garden at Gethsemane: knowing that he is to die, Christ asks God to ‘take this cup away from my lips’.It was painted by Lo Spagn...
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This bronze statue shows the Roman god and hero Hercules fighting the giant Antaeus in one of his ‘Twelve Labours'. Antaeus could not be killed while he remained in contact with his mother, the Earth. Hercules, who was famous for his strength, was able to lift the giant and crush him to death.The...
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High, light clouds drift across the wide sky. All seems quiet at the end of the day. A man with a fishing basket strapped to his back squelches across the wet sand left by the ebbing tide, and the sun is still warm enough for a group of men and boys to skinny-dip in the shallow water. Clothes are...
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Lady Jane Grey reigned for just nine days as Queen of England following the death of Edward VI in 1553: she was deposed by the faction supporting Edward’s half-sister and heir, Mary Tudor. Tried for treason, the 17-year-old Lady Jane was beheaded at Tower Hill on 12 February 1554.Delaroche shows...
By the mid nineteenth century, the Normandy coastal town Trouville had developed into smart seaside resort, attracting well-to-do holidaymakers from Paris and further afield. Boudin found a ready market for his small scenes that chronicled the summer activity along the beach. Here, well-dressed...
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The Book of Tobit, an apocryphal book of the Old Testament, tells the story of Anna and Tobit, the married couple depicted in this painting. Their faith was tested by God: they were reduced to poverty and Tobit was blinded. With the help of the Archangel Raphael, their son Tobias eventually resto...
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A youthful Saint John the Evangelist supports a grey-faced and anguished Virgin Mary. This is one of two shutters from a triptych (a painting made up of three sections), which presumably flanked an image of the suffering Christ.The back is painted too, and shows a bishop holding an open book, sta...
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The view is of the millpond at Flatford on the River Stour. Flatford Mill was a watermill for grinding corn, operated by the Constable family for nearly a hundred years. It still survives and is about a mile from Constable’s birthplace at East Bergholt, Suffolk. The house on the left also survive...
This portrait was bequeathed to the National Gallery in 1837. Time hasn‘t been kind to it. Painted in oil on an oak panel, the background in particular seems to have suffered damage or been painted over at some point.We don’t know who the sitter is or who painted the picture, but is thought perha...
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The lady in Bartholomeus van der Helst’s portrait may be unknown now, but she appears to have been a woman of some status. Standing out against a severe, plain black background, her clothes announce her wealth and status – and little else. Although she appears modest and unassuming her gaze is di...
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A crowd of people relax on a grass bank, enjoying the spectacle of a flamboyant procession celebrating the return of a great general and his army. The columns and alcoves of classical Roman buildings tower over them. Below, trumpeters and pipers blow their instruments and animals are led to the s...
This picture was commissioned to celebrate the marriage of Pierfrancesco Borgherini to Margherita Accaiuoli in 1515. It formed part of a series that decorated their bedroom in the Borgherini palace in Florence. Several paintings by Pontormo and Bacchiacca from the series are now in the National G...
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This is the third in Lancret’s series of paintings The Four Times of Day. A gentleman and three ladies are gathered around a tric-trac table in a woodland glade. Tric-trac was a game similar to backgammon. The gentleman and a lady are playing at the table – she has just thrown the dice from her h...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.A man sits beneath a tree through which a vine has been trained. A large bunch of red grapes hangs from a leafy stem. He uses both hands to squee...
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The Virgin sits in front of a dilapidated stable with the naked Christ Child on her knee. Three men offer golden gifts – this is the Adoration of the Kings, a biblical episode imagined as a contemporary event. It’s a chilly winter day: Mary’s dress has fur-lined sleeves and Joseph has a thick-bel...
Seven saints – all patron saints of members of Florence’s ruling family, the Medici – talk and interact as though Lippi was painting an animated portrait of a group of historical figures.On the far left is Saint Francis. His meditation on the suffering of Christ was so profound that he developed...
This painting was once thought to be by Gonzales Coques, one of the most successful portrait artists in Antwerp between the 1650s and 1680s. It is unsigned and undated, but the costume and hairstyle suggest that it was painted in about 1650, and the pose and spirited look in the sitter’s eyes are...
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The traditional Italian title of this portrait, ‘Il Gentile Cavaliere’, means ‘the well-born gentleman’. The prominent sword, a symbol of gentility, and the books suggest that he is a man of action as well as learning. He holds a letter addressed ‘al...Sig’ (To Lord), but the name is now illegibl...
This is a small, grisaille (painted in shades of black, white and grey) copy done by an unknown artist after a portrait by the Flemish painter Anthony van Dyck. It shows Robert Rich, 2nd Earl of Warwick (1587–1658), a courtier of King Charles I who opposed many of the King’s political and religio...
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This is a fresco fragment from Correggio’s Coronation of the Virgin, which he painted in the apse of the church of S. Giovanni Evangelista in Parma. The fresco depicted Christ crowning the Virgin Mary in heaven, surrounded by the evangelists, doctors of the church and infant angels. Christ and th...
Not on display
This small double-sided painting was most probably made for private worship. The front shows Saint Jerome kneeling in front of a crucifix wedged into the stump of a tree. He beats his chest with a rock in empathy with Christ’s Passion (his torture and death at the Crucifixion). The lion resting b...
Three men, one with a crown, stand in a landscape. They hold between them a large piece of paper, while two are pointing to a classical city in the background. The gods Apollo and Neptune have disguised themselves as mortals to advise King Laomedon on the building of Troy.This is one of ten fresc...
This painting shows the traditional Christmas story: the infant Christ, lying in the manger, is watched over by Mary, Joseph and adoring angels, while an ox and donkey peer out of the darkness behind. Through the crumbling back wall we see shepherds and their sheep up on the hills huddled around...
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Saint Jerome sits in the wilderness, carefully removing a thorn from the paw of a very endearing lion – it went on to be his companion. This was a popular subject in medieval art, although Jerome is usually just shown with the lion as a pet, rather than actually treating it.This is one of five sc...
Bathed in an atmospheric light that is characteristic of de Witte, even the dog in the foreground seems to be listening to the preacher on the pulpit. The city of Amsterdam employed people to keep dogs out of churches, but judging from how common they are in seventeenth-century paintings of churc...
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A group of smartly dressed men and women, accompanied by two dogs, talk among themselves. On the other side of the gently flowing river, peasants experience a very different life: they wash clothes and attend to cattle beside a rustic farmhouse. As a backdrop, this painting uses a rural village f...
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In the Netherlands in the seventeenth century a vedette was a mounted sentry usually placed near an outpost – here, two of them are on watch by a stream. Wouwerman captures their watchfulness by turning their backs to us, making them look in opposite directions and leaning them forward as if they...
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Isabella Clara Eugenia, Archduchess of Austria, was the daughter of King Philip II of Spain. She is shown sumptuously dressed in black and gold, with a spectacularly large ruff and spiky lace cuffs. She looks out at us with a hint of a smile in her eyes and around her mouth.In 1599 Isabella marri...
A man carries a pink, or carnation, in his right hand. It was the custom for a bride to hide a pink in her clothes on her wedding day. Its presence here, along with the large blue and gold ring on the man’s left thumb, suggests that the portrait commemorates his marriage.Solario was from Milan t...
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This scene makes up the central panel of an altarpiece Rubens made for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent; this painting is a preliminary sketch for the work. Saints Amand and Floribert receive Saint Bavo, a former Roman soldier, on the steps of St Peter’s Church, also in Ghent.A cleric holds the black h...
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This small painting on wood was painted in the same year as A Girl Seated outside a House, also in the National Gallery’s collection. The two paintings have several common features. These include a young girl (probably the same model) wearing jewellery, seen in profile on the right of the picture...
On display elsewhere
This is the central panel of Romanino’s high altarpiece for S. Alessandro in Brescia. The high altar was the responsibility of the Confraternity of Corpus Christi – a lay brotherhood which venerated the body of Christ – so this depiction of Christ was of central importance. It would have been pla...
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On the Sunday morning after the Crucifixion Mary Magdalene visited Christ’s tomb but found it empty. The story is told in the New Testament (John 20). Mary Magdalene is here identified by the pot of ointment with which she anointed Christ’s feet and by the glimpse of her traditional red dress ben...
An avalanche of outsize vegetables tumbles towards us on the left of this painting. On the right, glistening fruits are piled in baskets and bowls balanced rather precariously on a wheelbarrow.The two women at the front, often called stallholders, appear to be buying rather than selling. Their ro...
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This portrait is one of Carel Fabritius’s final works, made in the last year of his short life. He was apprenticed to Rembrandt between 1641 and 1643 and is generally considered one of his most talented pupils.Although it is impossible to be sure – no documented likeness of Fabritius exists – thi...
This painting is the only surviving scene from the predella (base) of Raphael’s altarpiece for the Ansidei chapel in S. Fiorenzo, Perugia. The main panel of the altarpiece, ‘The Ansidei Madonna’, is also in the National Gallery’s collection. This predella panel would have been placed beneath the...
A woman shown in three-quarter length turns her head slightly, meeting our gaze with a stern expression. She is wearing a black peaked cap, a black dress and flat white collar that extends below her shoulders. Her restrained clothes and the dark background give this portrait a formal and rather...
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This panel once decorated the inner face of the right-hand shutter of an altarpiece made for the Benedictine abbey in Werden, near Cologne. An earlier episode of the saint’s life – the moment of his conversion to Christianity – appeared on the left-hand shutter.After his conversion, Hubert devote...
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Saint Peter clutches a Bible with a soft leather cover to his chest. In the same hand he holds two unwieldy keys – those to the kingdom of heaven, promised to him by Christ. Saint Dorothy holds only a tiny delicate flower to her breast, presumably plucked from the basket of blooms in her left han...
A deer cowers in the protective arms of an elderly man; an arrow sticks out of his hand, which rests on the deer’s back. A richly dressed man and a cleric kneel before him; a group of hunters crowd behind them. The wounded man is Saint Giles, a popular French saint who was mistakenly shot when hu...
Here Jan Jansz. Treck has risen to the challenge of evoking the lustre of and distorted reflections in silver, pewter, glass, porcelain and eggshells as well as the complex shadows in a crumpled linen cloth. It was a highly valued skill in Dutch still-life painting and this rather beautiful examp...
Cows often feature in pastoral landscapes, but it is rare for them to be given quite such heroic status as the four monumental brown beasts which dominate the foreground of this large canvas. They relegate the shepherd to the hill and the milkmaid, who funnels the results of her labour into a bra...
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A man with a characterful face looks out at us engagingly. His features are carefully described – small eyes with pointed stare, a bulging nose, heart-shaped lips, a double chin and receding hairline. The identity of the sitter is unknown but his dress, with elegant fur trim across the front of t...
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Several episodes of the story of the Passion (Christ’s torture and crucifixion) are packed into this busy painting. The narrative begins in the background on the left, where Christ is scourged. In the next scene he has been crowned with thorns and dressed in a purple (now blue) robe; he holds a r...
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This half-length figure of a saint comes from the upper tier of a polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of the church of San Domenico, in Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. He is the theologian and Dominican friar Saint Thomas Aquinas (d. 1274)....
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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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A dramatic landscape unfolds in this small picture. Although the painting has a biblical subject, it is the mountains and sky that demand our attention. Towering clouds open up to reveal a radiant sun, and pine trees grow on the steep cliffs, framing an expanse of water and sky. The people depict...
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Shortly after the founding of their city, the ancient Romans were faced with a serious problem: they had no wives, and therefore no children and no future. Their leader Romulus came up with an inventive and unscrupulous solution: they hosted celebratory games and invited their neighbours, the Sab...
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This large picture was Seurat’s first major composition, painted when he had not yet turned 25. He intended it to be a grand statement with which he would make his mark at the official Salon in the spring of 1884, but it was rejected.Several men and boys relax on the banks of the Seine at Asnière...
This scene shows the Dogana da Mar (Customs House), which was built in about 1677, and the entrance to the Grand Canal. Over the gateway to the canal is a golden globe with a weather vane in the shape of Fortune, personified as the mistress of the sea. With almost no land, Venice depended on mari...
We look across a vast landscape. In the middle of the scene, a washerwoman walks along a dirt track, her clothing bright in the sun. Beyond her, further up the mountain, a shepherd drives his flock onward; in the foreground, two pairs of figures chat.This large-scale picture was probably painted...
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Saint James kneels in prayer; behind him a vigorous executioner raises his sword. James the Great was the first of Christ’s apostles to die for his faith, being put to death by King Herod Agrippa in Jerusalem in AD 44.This is one of five scenes from the predella, the bottom tier, of the Pistoia S...
Holding a book that seems to thrust forward out of the picture plane is Saint Anthony Abbot, identified by the tau- (T-) shaped walking stick he used in later life. He also wears a black habit, which his followers, the Antonine monks, later adopted. Next to him, slightly set back, is Saint Franci...
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This is one of only two small-scale works by Cimabue, rediscovered in 2000. Soon after this, a link was made between it and a panel in the Frick Collection, New York which depicts the Flagellation. They were both probably part of a much larger panel painted with small images showing the events le...
The shape and subject matter of this picture suggest that it was possibly painted as part of the predella (or lower part) of an altarpiece, although predellas were already rare in Venetian art during Giorgione’s lifetime.The Virgin, Child and Saint Joseph are sitting on the steps of the stable wh...
In the fields beside a broad winding river labourers scythe grass to make hay, while a shepherd takes advantage of the shade of a large tree to shear a sheep. A woman with a large tray of fruit on her head is perhaps on her way to the town opposite to sell her produce at market. Meanwhile, aristo...
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In this small panel, the Virgin Mary sits under a tree and offers her breast to the Christ Child, who grasps it with both hands but turns away to look out towards the viewer. Although this is not a specific image of the Rest on the Flight into Egypt – it lacks Joseph, the donkey and the luggage –...
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This is one of the best examples of Gerrit Dou’s brilliance at depicting different surfaces and textures, like the fraying cloth crumpled underneath a bucket, the smooth stone of the sill, the feathers in the duck’s wing and the pocked skin of its breast and neck.Dou was one of the most successfu...
This type of image, in which Christ is shown after his death, propped up or sometimes standing in his tomb and revealing the wounds of the Crucifixion, was sometimes known as the ‘Imago Pietatis’ (‘image of pity’), or pietà.Standing behind him are Saint Jerome, on the right, who cradles Christ’s...
An unknown sitter leans slightly backwards. It’s an unconventional pose, but one which gives a strong impression of immediacy and informality: he seems to have pushed back his chair and turned towards us. The sense of spontaneity is enhanced by the way Hals has manipulated our gaze. His concern w...
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Four women dressed in colourful Renaissance-style costumes are shown standing below what may be a vine. On the reverse of the panel is another image of a standing woman. The exact subject of this picture has not been identified. This is not surprising, since in Monticelli’s late career his techni...
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Laurits Andersen Ring often painted the small village of Baldersbrønde on Zealand, Denmark’s largest island, where he lived for a number of years. This painting is a fine example of his unsentimental approach to the realities of rural life. He uses an almost monochrome colour scheme to create a b...
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This is a portrait of the powerful Cardinal André-Hercule de Fleury (1653–1743) who became, in effect, Prime Minister of France during the reign of King Louis XV.Fleury is shown seated and facing us, directly meeting our gaze with a slight smile. He wears crimson fur-lined cardinal’s robes – a gl...
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A small saint, hands clasped and gazing at the ground, stands against a dark background, his face contorted in pain and distress. This is Saint John the Evangelist, and he comes from a polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece) painted by Jacopo di Antonio in Florence in around 1450. It was made for...
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The Archangel Gabriel has just landed – his gilded peacock-like wings still raised – interrupting the Virgin Mary from her reading. She stares at her visitor in terror and gathers her cloak around her in fear. This is the Annunciation, the moment Gabriel told the Virgin that she would conceive th...
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This panel shows a twelfth-century monk, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, having a vision of the Virgin Mary. It is shaped like an ‘overdoor’ – a picture designed to hang above a doorway – and was probably made to decorate the Palazzo Vecchio (the town hall) in Florence; Saint Bernard was patron saint...
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A crown of thorns was placed on Christ’s head in the lead up to his crucifixion, while Roman soldiers mockingly declared him ‘King of the Jews’ (Matthew 27: 29). This detailed portrayal of Christ’s face convincingly conveys his anguish in the aftermath of this torment. Guido Reni and his studio p...
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This informal and striking portrait of the politician Peniston Lamb (1770–1805) shows off the precocious powers of Sir Thomas Lawrence at the start of his career.The 'gentle-hearted and engaging’ Peniston Lamb was the Member of Parliament for Newport from 1793 to 1796 and the Member for Hertfords...
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A steam engine comes towards us as it crosses the Maidenhead Railway Bridge in the rain. Designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel, the bridge was completed in 1838. We are looking east towards London as the train heads to the west. The exaggeratedly abrupt foreshortening of the viaduct, which our eye...
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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Gian Lorenzo Bernini was one of the most successful sculptors and architects of seventeenth-century Rome. This image of Saints Andrew and Thomas is an early work and one of the few paintings he made. Saint Andrew, a fisherman, is identified by the fish and the book (probably a reference to the Ac...
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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 panel shows the dead Christ, wrapped in his shroud, held upright in a marble tomb by two grieving angels. It formed part of the upper tier of a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece). It was painted between about 1456 and 1461 by Giorgio Schiavone for the funerary chapel of the wealthy...
We don‘t know the identity of the young man who gazes directly at us. His elegant costume, fastened so as to almost entirely conceal his white undershirt, and the cloak laid over his left shoulder suggest that he came from a wealthy background. The National Gallery acquired this portrait from the...
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This graceful golden-haired princess comes from a predella, a row of scenes along the base of an altarpiece, or from the frame of an altarpiece. She is Saint Catherine, shown with her traditional attributes of a spiked wheel and a cactus-like martyr’s palm.To show off his skill with foreshortenin...
This lively portrait was once wrongly attributed to Jacques-Louis David, but it may be by his assistant Georges Rouget or by one of David’s followers, Baron Gros. The boy’s clothing dates the portrait to around the first 15 years of the nineteenth century. However, his hairstyle allows us to date...
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Beyond Venice’s Grand Canal, on the peaceful island of Guidecca in the easternmost part of the city, is the domed church of Santa Maria della Presentazione. Better known as the Zitelle, the church was built in the sixteenth century and attached to a foundling hospital for young girls (zitella is...
A young peasant – beardless and red-cheeked, with curly hair and a dreamy look in his eye – represents Summer in the second of Teniers' allegorical paintings of the seasons. Behind him the trees are in full leaf and the distance is hazy with heat; above, the clouds are light and puffy.The youth s...
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The man in this portrait is mistakenly identified on the reverse as Ulrich I Cirksena, Count of East Friesland, who died in 1466. However, he looks more like Ulrich’s son, Edzard I, known as ‘the Great’, who became count in 1492. His sword is inscribed with a Latin motto: ‘Victor est qvi in / nom...
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This picture, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Castanets (also in the National Gallery’s collection), was made to decorate the dining room of the Paris apartment of one of Renoir’s most important clients, Maurice Gangnat. Of the two dancers, this figure has the more static pose...
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The Virgin Mary sits on a high marble throne with a curved back, the naked Christ Child asleep in her lap. An eagle crowns the throne. It – like the winged lion, bull and reading man – symbolises one of the authors of the Gospels. The Old Testament is evoked by the stone tablets to either side of...
Unusually, Dosso has set the Adoration of the Kings at night, which provided opportunities for the flickering brushwork for which he is noted. The huge harvest moon with a pink aureole, traversed by storm clouds, casts a mysterious golden light that picks out features of the fortified town in the...
This painting is a spectacular example of the later style of Abraham Bloemaert, one of the most influential Dutch artists of the seventeenth century. It depicts a moment from the Old Testament story of Lot and his daughters which recounts how Lot and his family fled the destruction of the immoral...
This early work by Garofalo probably dates from about 1499–1502 when he was in Ferrara. Saint Dominic, the founder of the Dominican Order, is identified by the lily and the miraculous star on his chest. Saint Catherine of Siena is also a Dominican saint; her hands, feet and side are marked with C...
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We don't know who this man is, though similar collars and beards appear in portraits of the 1560s and 1570s. The painting is on paper, mounted on a walnut panel, and is unfinished. It might have been a study, perhaps for one sitter in a group, or possibly a pattern which the artist kept in his wo...
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Willem van der Vliet has placed his sitter, Suitbertus Purmerent, in a heavy chair against a plain dark background, with heavy books on the table; one is held slightly open by the weight of a large crucifix. There’s the suggestion of a smile in Purmerent’s eyes and around his mouth (almost hidden...
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A man with a distinctive beard and moustache sits in a chair looking out. He wears a black ecclesiastical robe and holds a geometric compass in his left hand. On the table to the left is an armillary sphere and a sheet of paper with a horoscope, on which rests a book inscribed along the edge of i...
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This predella (literally ‘platform’ or ’step‘, the bottom tier of an altarpiece) comes from a large altarpiece that Crivelli painted for the Ottoni family chapel in the Franciscan church at Matelica, in the Italian Marches.The scenes reflect the patrons’ different interests – one was a churchman,...
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This panel was the central scene of the predella (the lowest part of the altarpiece below the main level) that Ugolino made for the church of Santa Croce in Florence. It shows Christ carrying the Cross to the site of his crucifixion as described in the Gospel of John (John 19: 17). His deep pink...
A company of richly dressed saints, their gilded haloes stamped with elaborate patterns, gaze at something on their right, or turn to talk to each other. This painting is part of a large multi-panelled altarpiece made for the Camaldolite monastery of San Benedetto fuori della Porta Pinti in Flore...
A severed head lies on a gilded platter resting on a blue tasselled cushion. This is the head of Saint John the Baptist, who was executed on the orders of King Herod (Mark 6: 17–29). Child and adult angels gather around it in grief.The cult of the Baptist was very popular in medieval and renaissa...
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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...
After supper with his disciples, Christ rose and began to wash their feet (John 13:2–17). When Peter refused to allow this, Christ replied that if Peter would not allow him to wash his feet then he had no place with him. Peter then asked Christ to wash his hands and head as well, but Christ said...
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Van Brussel’s painting is a celebration of nature, and also a clever piece of deception: in one vase he shows flowers that are in bloom at different times of the year. To achieve this, he would have used sketches made when the flowers were available.His precise drawing and fluid brushwork enable...
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The sitter’s doublet is inscribed on the neckline: ALBERTVS. PIVS CARP [...] + MDXII (‘Alberto Pio from Carpi 1512’). Alberto Pio was recognised as the legitimate ruler of Carpi, near the Italian town of Modena, in 1512 – but by then he was 37, older than he appears here. The knotted decorations...
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With one hand on his helmet, the other on his rapier, this unidentified man looks directly at us. He stands in a partially ruined architectural setting, beside a large broken column on which his helmet rests. A column is an attribute of Fortitude and can also suggest the endurance of ancient valu...
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Catherine of Alexandria, a fourth-century princess, was converted to Christianity and in a vision underwent a mystic marriage with Christ. When she would not give up her faith, Emperor Maxentius ordered that she be bound to a spiked wheel and tortured to death. However, a thunderbolt destroyed th...
Winter threatens in Wouwerman’s little picture. Clouds tower up. An old man crouches in the undergrowth, gathering faggots (twigs bound up to make a fire). Behind him, a woman sits with her back to him, facing the weather and nursing a baby bundled up against the cold. A gnarled tree sheds its fe...
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Weier, who trained in Holland, specialised in battle scenes. This one is typical of the pictures he made in imitation of the Dutch painter Philips Wouwerman. Compare it for example with Wouwerman’s frenetic battle scene, Cavalry making a Sortie from a Fort on a Hill, which is also in the National...
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Saint Francis of Assisi died on 4 October 1226, surrounded by his friars at the chapel of the Portiuncula, outside Assisi. Rather than in a tiny chapel, here the saint lies on a bier in front of the altar of a large pink and blue church, surrounded by friars, church officials and other witnesses....
Dawn is breaking over the town of Rhenen, but already the cows are alert, drinking in the river, and boats are moving upstream. The sweep of the clouds, the outward curve of the sails and the ripples on the water suggest a slight breeze. The Dutch flag lifts slightly on the boat closest to us. Sa...
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Against the setting sun, three hunting dogs rest beside an overflowing basket of dead birds and game. The two on the right are chained up; one sniffs the ground or laps water from an unseen bowl while the other stares, distracted, out of the picture frame. The unchained dog looks quizzically at a...
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This preparatory sketch for a ceiling shows a sky with classical figures arranged on clouds. At the top is Jupiter – the chief deity – holding a crown and accompanied by an eagle clutching a thunderbolt (his attributes). Beside him is Juno, his wife. Below them to the left are Venus and Cupid, an...
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These four small pictures were probably painted for a piece of furniture, perhaps the case of a musical instrument. They illustrate the key episodes of the Second Eclogue by Antonio Tebaldeo (1456–1538), a poet from Ferrara.In the first scene the shepherd Damon broods over his unrequited love for...
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Two men, one old, one young, hands raised and fingers pointing, seem to be arguing. We are being presented with a key moment in a story, but since the picture has no surviving title we have to make an educated guess as to what it is.The most likely candidate is the account in the Old Testament of...
Although it is set in a Renaissance town square, this small but busy painting shows the Dormition (literally the ‘falling asleep’, from the Latin dormire) and Assumption of the Virgin Mary. There is nothing in the Bible about the Virgin’s death, but in the medieval Catholic Church it was generall...
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As Saint Nicholas of Tolentino (1245–1305) contemplates the Christ Child, rays of golden light impress a sun with the face of a cherub upon his breast. Christ eats the cherries offered by Saint Joseph, symbolising the fruit of paradise. Angels watch and play music; God the Father, together with t...
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The Virgin Mary sits in the shelter of a rocky grotto, with the infants Christ and John the Baptist beside her. This is an early work by the Milanese painter Luini, He was deeply influenced by Leonardo, who was working in Milan from about 1482 to 1499. The figure of the Virgin and the infant Bapt...
This picture is small, but it contains a lot of action. Franciscan friars (members of the religious order founded by Saint Francis) in brown robes hand out bread to the poor, an activity that was typical for them. The figure with the subtle halo most prominent among the friars is likely Saint Ant...
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At the steps of a church, hungry people are being fed. At the centre stands a beggar making direct eye contact with the viewer. Painted in Rome, the work belongs to a series depicting the Seven Works of Mercy, the guiding principle for compassionate deeds inspired by the teachings of Christ, as o...
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...
This is a portrait of Louis-Joseph-Xavier, Dauphin of France (1729–1765), the son and heir of King Louis XV of France. He is dressed in the uniform of a colonel of the Dauphin-Dragons, and wearing the blue sash of the Order of the Saint-Esprit and the red sash of the Order of the Golden Fleece. O...
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While resting in a leafy grove, the nymph Callisto believed she heard the goddess Diana greet her. But it was Jupiter disguised as Diana. Here Callisto seems to realise her mistake. As Jupiter caresses Callisto’s cheek, she places her right hand protectively on her thigh. Her knees bend in a curt...
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Saint Hippolytus gazes up at the Virgin and Child in the clouds and gestures to a distant group of buildings, probably Onzato, where this painting was originally displayed, or nearby Flero.Saints Catherine and Hippolytus were both martyred by having their limbs broken as they refused to convert t...
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Christ prays before a group of cherubs who hold up the instruments of his torture and death. His disciple Judas, who has betrayed him, leads a large band of soldiers down from Jerusalem to arrest him. Meanwhile his other disciples sleep.This painting reflects many of the artistic issues that woul...
In this early work by Mazzolino, the Virgin Mary kneels in adoration of the newborn Christ, who reclines on a white cloth over a pillow of straw. The stable behind the Virgin is improvised from an ancient Roman building, represented only by a pier decorated with elegant carved ornament and by a p...
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A legend about Saint Mark tells how the servant of a knight of Provence disobeyed his master’s command that he was not to venerate the relics of Saint Mark, and was ordered to be stretched on the rack and have his legs broken. He lies naked on the ground surrounded by his torturers and a crowd of...
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Perseus and Andromeda’s wedding feast has been violently interrupted by Phineas, to whom Andromeda was formerly betrothed. Giordano has illustrated the dramatic moment when Phineas and his followers attack Perseus. Heavily outnumbered, Perseus has unveiled the severed head of the gorgon Medusa, w...
Pierre-Joseph-Victor de Besenval was an eminent military man and art collector. His association with the circle around Queen Marie Antoinette prompted his flight to his native Switzerland in 1789, during the French Revolution, but he was arrested while fleeing. He avoided the guillotine and was r...
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In this tranquil scene, two men and a dog sit at the roadside and glance towards another figure whose animated gesture is ambiguous. He could be one of their group or someone running to them with news, being playful or argumentative. Various types of plant and tree are painted in intricate detail...
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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,...
The Virgin and Christ Child are painted in fresco, a technique that involved painting directly onto fresh plaster. The Virgin’s mantle would originally have been a much more vivid shade of blue.This once belonged to Austen Henry Layard, archaeologist and explorer. He was a founder of the Arundel...
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This is the third of a series of seven illustrations of the story of Jason made as sketches for cartoons for the Gobelins tapestry works in Paris. The Gallery also owns the first sketch from the series: Jason swearing Eternal Affection to Medea.Jason has set out to capture the Golden Fleece, and...
Saint John the Evangelist is seated on the island of Patmos writing the Book of Revelation. He seems to have reached the twelfth of his 22 chapters, given the appearance in heaven of the ‘woman clothed with the sun’, and the red dragon with seven heads. They are floating in the sky at the top rig...
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In 1 Corinthians 13, Saint Paul discusses three traits that would become known as the theological virtues: faith, hope and charity. He believed that charity, an expression of the love of God and of one’s neighbour, was the most important. Here, the inscription ‘CHARITAS’ at the top of the picture...
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The unusual choice of scenes on this small panel and their uneven arrangement makes this work unique in early Italian painting. The upper scene on the left shows the ascension of Saint John the Evangelist to heaven – an image practically unknown in Western art.Mourners bow in respect towards Sain...
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A young girl, her clothes sewn with hundreds of pearls, gazes out at us. She seems to be playing with a golden object made of concentric rings. This is an armillary sphere, a celestial globe showing the movement of heavenly bodies. Its interlocking circles are echoed in the decoration of her clot...
On display elsewhere
A well-dressed young woman gazes out from this portrait. Her chemise seems to be embroidered in black and gold at the neck and cuffs. The golden beads among other whitish ones that hang from her girdle are probably a rosary, a devotional aid often used for prayer.We don‘t know who the woman is or...
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Jacob Maris was a highly successful painter of Dutch landscapes, but he also painted interiors with people and genre subjects. This small intimate picture was painted in Paris, where he lived from 1865 until 1871.The woman is almost certainly Maris’s wife. Their first child, Guillaume, was born i...
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This is the second in the series The Four Times of Day that Corot painted for his friend, fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. In this panel, the light is brighter than in the previous panel, Morning, and fills the picture. There is an overall lightening of tone and a wider range of colours....
A family take a break while on a journey, resting beneath a tree as their cattle and goats wade into a shallow pool. The two young children watch the animals attentively, one raising a long stick in an attempt to herd them. Beyond, a winding dirt track leads us into the painting and towards a hil...
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Born in Devon, Joseph Greenway made his fortune captaining Danish cargo ships and became a Danish citizen in 1786. On his return to Britain, his wealth enabled him to rise in English society. He was Sheriff of Exeter from 1802 to 1803 and Mayor of the city from 1804 to 1805.In this highly sympath...
The Virgin Mary sits on the ground under a tree, breastfeeding the Christ Child. Behind her we see horsemen riding along a road and, on the right, Saint John the Baptist accompanied by a lamb. The composition is an echo of Robert Campin’s Virgin in the Apse.The Virgin’s head and hands are stylise...
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A man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by thieves who stole his clothes and left him for dead. A priest and a Levite saw the injured man but both passed him by. A Samaritan bound the man’s wounds, put him on his own mule, and carried him to an inn, where he left money for the man...
This striking portrait of a man in a red hat forms a pair with Campin’s A Woman – the sitters were clearly husband and wife. We do not know who they were, but their clothes suggest they were prosperous townsfolk, perhaps from Tournai where Campin lived and worked.Campin has arranged the older hus...
This is probably the earliest of Michelangelo’s surviving paintings. It is unfinished – the black modelling of the Virgin Mary’s cloak has not had its final coats of blue, and the angels to the left have barely been begun. We don't know why the picture was never completed.The Virgin sits on a roc...
The Virgin Mary – the figure in blue – has gone to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who had become pregnant miraculously. The picture illustrates their meeting as described in the Gospel of Luke, which tells how Mary went from Nazareth to Juda, where Elizabeth lived.The woods and hills behind are cris...
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When her hometown of Bethulia was besieged by Assyrian forces, Judith infiltrated the enemy camp. She gained entry to the tent of the Assyrian general Holofernes, and when he was drunk after a banquet she seized his sword and cut off his head.Here she places Holofernes‘ head into a sack held open...
Ribera captures the moment when Christ’s lifeless body is laid out after it has been brought down from the Cross. A solemn Saint John the Evangelist, dressed in red and green, gently supports Christ’s elegant corpse. Christ’s pallor is striking – his lips and skin are turning grey-blue – and his...
This painting is based on the main panel of an altarpiece that Gozzoli made for the Confraternity of the Purification of the Virgin and of Saint Zenobius in Florence, which is also in the National Gallery’s collection. It was probably produced shortly afterwards by a member of the artist’s worksh...
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This painting is a damaged fragment of a larger composition by the Florentine painter Filippino Lippi. The original appearance of the complete picture may be echoed in a copy that survives in a private collection, which shows the Virgin Mary and infant Christ flanked by two angels.Our fragment co...
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On their way home from the Passover celebration, the Virgin Mary and Joseph could not find 12-year-old Jesus and anxiously searched for him. They found him sitting under the portico of the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem, discussing theology with the Temple elders. Mazzolino shows Christ seated on...
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This canvas is the third of a series of nine painted by Andrea Mantegna depicting The Triumphs of Caesar.A young man in colourful attire and carrying a halberd walks before a cart heavily laden with booty – composed of a towering assembly of captured weapons and armour. His gaze looks out toward...
An abundant display of fruit, vegetables, flowers and game birds is arranged across two levels, bridged by the partridge hanging from the barrel of a gun. Van Os has depicted all the different surface textures with exceptional skill, while the multilevel arrangement creates a dynamic flow within...
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This panel shows Saint Romanus, who devised an ingenious system – shown here – to deliver food to Saint Benedict, who lived as a hermit. Saint Benedict stands waiting for the basket at the mouth of his isolated cave-dwelling. Both saints are painted with the same colours as the rocks – grey with...
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The young girl, whose name is not known, is shown turned towards the viewer in a three-quarter pose. The view offers a more direct engagement with the sitter than was possible in more traditional profile view portraits.Though probably idealised as was common in portraits at this time – particular...
On display elsewhere
This painting shows Lake Keitele in central Finland. The zigzag pattern on the water’s surface is a natural occurrence caused by the interaction of the wind with the lake’s currents, but it is also intended to evoke the wake created by Väinämöinen, the poet-hero of the Finnish saga Kalevala, as h...
This is a fragment of an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn. It comes from the central scene, which depicted the Crucifixion; a fragment showing Christ’s head is also in the National Gallery’s collection. It was common for Crucifixion scenes to include the Vir...
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This Italian coastal scene bathed in soft sunlight is influenced by the port scenes of Claude, though much of the effect in Vernet’s painting depends upon its picturesque human detail. Two fashionably dressed ladies have been brought down to the shore by a Hungarian hussar, who is drawing their a...
An old man leans against the wall of a church, tilting his head towards the light shining down on the scene. A little girl leans towards him, her hand outstretched as if begging. The pair are shabby but spotlessly clean. Their skin glows in the light; the man’s beard, painted strand by strand wit...
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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...
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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 painting is so crowded it takes a while to understand everything that is happening, but the nuns for whom it was probably made must have had plenty of time to examine the details. It is the central panel of a triptych (a painting made up of three parts) painted around 1510, probably for the...
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Two strikingly ugly men in extraordinary clothing are seated at a table in a panelled interior. One writes in a ledger, the other – his features contorted into a sneer – grasps at a pile of coins. Documents, some of them legible, are piled on a cupboard behind the pair.Marinus van Reymerswale and...
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Samuel Rogers (1763–1855) was a minor poet and an important collector of art. Although not everyone rated Rogers' poetic talents highly, his verses were popular and he commissioned J.M.W. Turner to illustrate two of his poetry collections.A National Gallery Trustee from 1834, Rogers bequeathed th...
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A brown-haired man, dressed in black robes trimmed with brown fur, prays over a book that rests on a raised flower bed. There are no indications of his identity, but with his turned-up nose and strongly cleft chin he looks very like Quinten Massys‘ portrait of Peter Gillis (Collection of the Earl...
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Saint Francis is shown meditating in a landscape, holding a skull in his hand. His hood is pulled back and the light catches one side of his face, marking out his strong nose and pronounced cheekbone, while the other side remains in deep shadow. He wears the fraying and patched robe of the Franci...
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A wine glass, a flask-shaped carafe, a knife and a plate of fruit are shown on a table, set against a flat dark background. The table is covered by a cloth decorated with flowers and blue stripes that help create a sense of recession into depth.Most of Monticelli’s still life paintings were made...
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A well-dressed woman, hands folded in prayer, kneels in what was once the right wing of a triptych (a painting in three parts). Behind her is Saint Paul. The other wing, also in the National Gallery’s collection, shows her husband kneeling with Saint Peter. The central panel is missing, but it wa...
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Two men, wearing robes and headdresses of luxurious fabrics, stand huddled together. Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s lively outlines and visible brushstrokes emphasise the long, showy sleeves and folds of their clothing. Hints of primary colours appear against more sombre tones, while the brilliant s...
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These four saints come from a large polyptych (multi-panelled altarpiece) made for the high altar of the church of San Giovanni Evangelista, in Pratovecchio, Tuscany. Their costumes and attributes – objects they were particularly associated with, often connected with their martyrdom – tell us who...
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Gondolas glide across the water, passing fishing boats which direct our gaze towards the mouth of the Cannaregio Canal, Venice’s largest waterway after the Grand Canal.The Ponte delle Guglie (‘bridge of the obelisks’) spans the water. We can just make out the tiny silhouettes of people crossing i...
On display elsewhere
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...
This portrait is one of the earliest and largest known examples of a painting on tinned copper, and the only portrait. The subject is commonly identified as Cardinal Giacomo Savelli (1522–1587), who was made a cardinal at 16 and became Vicar General of Rome in 1560. There is a smaller version of...
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The Christ Child sits on his mother’s lap holding her hand and smiling at us. His cousin, the young Saint John the Baptist, stands grinning behind the Virgin. The happy, exuberant expressions of the children contrast with the pensive mood of the Virgin. Christ’s right hand is raised in an implied...
A small dark silhouetted figure sits fishing at the edge of a pool. The location is almost certainly near the village of Barbizon in the forest of Fontainebleau. This is an early example of Diaz’s numerous paintings of watery plains with solitary fishermen, dominant trees standing out against dra...
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In this portrait, the recently widowed Catherine-Thérèse, Marquise de Seignelay (1662–1699) and two of her five sons are shown as characters from Greek and Roman mythology. The Marquise is probably meant to be the sea goddess Thetis, but could also be interpreted as Venus, the goddess of love, wi...
The woman’s large white headdress, its calligraphic shape made up of stiff, angular folds, is striking against the dark background. Shading around the folds reinforces the sense of their depth, and the artist seems to want us to think that a fly, deceived by his illusion, has attempted to land on...
On the Greek island of Patmos, Saint John the Evangelist had a vision of the Woman of the Apocalypse, which he recorded in the New Testament Book of Revelation. Here he sits with an oversized book in his lap, his quill pen poised, and looks towards the tiny illuminated female figure hovering in t...
A woman dressed in the white habit of an Augustinian canoness kneels in front of the Virgin Mary and Christ. Mary is seated on a low, L-shaped brick wall topped with turf, with Christ perched on her knee. He holds a string of red beads with a gold tassel on one end and a yellow ring – perhaps a t...
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A young woman sits on a grassy bank spinning wool, distaff tucked under one arm. With a half-smile on her face, she looks with great concentration at her fingers untangling a lump in the wool. The twirling spindle hangs from her other hand. Karel Dujardin sets the animals that the young woman ten...
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This man may be a member of the important Averoldi family from Brescia, who once owned the portrait. He wears a soft red wool tunic and coat or cloak lined with fox fur.It is very unusual for a three-quarter-length portrait at this date to have a background consisting entirely of sky. The man’s p...
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This painting shows Clare, a holy woman who lived in Rimini from the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries. According to her biography she had a vision of Christ enthroned and surrounded by the apostles and John the Baptist. Christ – the largest figure in this scene – showed her the wound...
A towering rain cloud seems to threaten an early close to this game of archery. Perhaps the storm will come as a relief – although the archer takes aim with an eager eye, only one of the three arrows already shot has hit the target. The game seems almost incidental, however: Teniers is here telli...
This magnificent and imposing vision of the Virgin Mary’s body and soul being taken to heaven was the central panel of a large polyptych (a multi-panelled altarpiece). It was made for the monastery of Sant'Agostino in Asciano, in the countryside near the Tuscan town of Siena.The Virgin is shown r...
Not on display
The focus of this large altarpiece is the tiny infant Christ – he lies on the ground, his head supported by a small cushion. His mother, the Virgin Mary, kneels behind him, surrounded by angels. Also gathered in worship are Mary’s husband Joseph and, to the left, four shepherds.The shepherds appe...
Not on display
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...
On the left a rocky hillside leads down to grassy pasture and a river. Cart tracks run through the pasture from the front edge. Cows graze, watched by a dog, and a lone washerwoman kneels on the right bank of the river, her white linen visible in the water. The river is the Cure in the Morvan reg...
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The Christ Child, naked but with a gilded halo, lies on a bed of straw. Golden rays shoot out around him. Kneeling around Christ in adoration are his parents and four saints. God the Father appears above, and more saints stand in the pilasters to the sides of the main scene. On the far left the f...
Constantijn Huygens was a senior diplomat who spoke several languages and had a wide knowledge of the arts and sciences. In this portrait, he’s caught in action, receiving a message from a young clerk. Interrupted in his work, he wears a riding outfit as if ready to be up and off in a moment on s...
The specific subject of this picture has not been identified. Four figures that seem to be dressed in costumes of the era of Henry IV, around 1600, are shown busy in conversation.Although the picture is signed at the bottom left corner and it is the type of painting favoured by Monticelli, its au...
Not on display
Christ kneels on a grassy hillock, hands folded in prayer, and looks up at a floating angel who carries a chalice. At the front, three of the apostles slumber, heads resting on their arms or hands. Soldiers wearing fantastic Renaissance versions of classical armour approach from the sides, led by...
This thoughtful man, probably in his late twenties, is richly dressed in a costume dating from about 1516. He holds a rosary and his hand rests on a book tied with blue ribbons. Round his neck is a type of gold chain worn by the minor nobility.The book and the laurels behind him suggest that he m...
Guardi delighted in capturing the charm of his beloved Venice, and here he has given it a soft, powdery appearance and dreamy atmosphere. Trade is the focus in the foreground – the basin of San Marco and the quayside is a hive of activity. Lively brushstrokes evoke the bustle of the city at work,...
An unidentified man regards us with a look of affable irony, his eyebrows raised. His chain mail sleeves and tunic would have been worn beneath plate armour, suggesting that he engages in some form of military activity. Similar costume is worn by noblemen in other portraits by Moroni.The sitter’s...
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This is one of 12 small pictures that together show the ‘labours of the months’ – the activities that take place each month throughout the farming year.The young labourer gestures to something in front of him, and turns to look over his shoulder as if talking to someone outside the picture. He is...
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This is an imaginary scene – a caprice – inspired by buildings in Italian cities and the surrounding countryside. It shows ruins from the classical past alongside contemporary architecture. Dwarfed by a crumbling arched portico, a small group of figures – tourists and residents of the small town...
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Saint John the Evangelist holds a chalice from which a serpent escapes. He appears on the inside of the left shutter of a small triptych (a painting in three parts), the central panel and other wing of which are also in the National Gallery’s collection. They were painted for the Welsh nobleman a...
These three oil sketches, or modelli, were made by Rubens in preparation for an altarpiece for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent, which was commissioned by Bishop Maes around 1611. The central panel shows Saint Bavo, a Roman solider who left the military to join the Christian Church, standing on the ste...
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This painting is typical of the views of the Dutch countryside that Jacob Maris produced throughout his career. A single windmill provides the only interruption along the flat horizon in a picture that is dominated by a stormy sky – the painting previously had the title La Tourmente (‘Turmoil’ or...
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A peasant boy leans on a chipped stone block or sill and looks towards something – or someone – that makes him smile. This painting once had a companion picture, A Girl Raising her Veil (private collection), in which a pretty girl exchanges a flirtatious smile with the boy shown here.This is the...
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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Sharp and angular, the Saxon fortress of Königstein, about 25 miles southeast of Dresden, is silhouetted against a pale sky. The artist, Bellotto, was from Venice, and he has applied the traditions of Venetian view painting – a high level of detail, the large scale – to this northern landscape. I...
The soft greys and browns of this painting reflect an effort among artists in early seventeenth-century Haarlem to experiment with how restricted use of colour could intensify the atmosphere and reality of a landscape.Van Ruysdael uses the diagonal spit of land to show distance – it narrows as it...
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This quiet domestic scene shows all the warmth and intimacy of Vuillard’s late paintings. We look into the elegant drawing room of a Parisian home – that of the Wormser family, at 27 rue Scheffer. The decoration reflects the taste of fashionable French society in the 1920s: pictures by Manet, Mon...
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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...
On display elsewhere
A lady dressed in colourful clothes and holding a fishing rod gazes merrily out of the picture. She is accompanied by a woman with a net and a man who picks up a basket of fish. Other men and women gather beside the meandering river, some casting and reeling in their fishing lines. In the distanc...
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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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This painting is a companion piece to Fishermen hauling a Net, which is exactly the same size and depicts a scene with three similarly positioned boats, a low horizon and high billowing clouds. However, the muddy island in the middle of this scene is more substantial and, as the title suggests, s...
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This man is wearing the habit of an order of monks founded to follow the teachings of Saint Francis of Assisi. His pose, eyes cast down and apparently lost in thought, reflects the Franciscan way of life – one of simplicity and prayer. This may be a portrait of an individual friar, or perhaps a t...
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Whatever the purpose of this picture, the subject – a shabby man clutching an ale mug and pipe, his eyes cast to the ceiling as if searching in vain for a thought – is meant to be an object of ridicule. It has been suggested that the image might be a vanitas, an allegory of the fleeting nature of...
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The great ship running before the wind in the centre of Bakhuizen’s picture is the Eendracht, one of the most famous vessels in the Dutch Navy. Built in 1653, the Eendracht was the 76-gun flagship of Lieutenant-Admiral Jacob van Wassenaer van Obdam.Bakhuizen painted the Eendracht several times bu...
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Two couples recline outdoors in a mountainous landscape – one lies gazing into each other’s eyes, the other embraces. Cupid kneels on the grass clutching his bow and looks at us. A lizard scuttles down the dark tree trunk and a goat – almost hidden in the shadows – nibbles some foliage.The painti...
This large panel comes from an altarpiece painted in 1491 by Carlo Crivelli. It was made for the Ottoni family chapel in the Franciscan church at Matelica, in the Italian Marches.The Virgin, to whom the chapel was dedicated, appears crowned as the Queen of Heaven, with the Christ Child on her kne...
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Two young men in fashionable clothing look into the distance as they lean against a plinth. This double portrait has traditionally been considered to be by Anthony van Dyck, but this is now doubted. Though it reflects the style of the artist in the 1630s, it could have been painted by a follower...
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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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In this scene inspired by Ovid’s Metamorphoses, Andromeda, daughter of the Ethiopian queen Cassiope, is about to be sacrificed to placate a monster summoned by Neptune, god of the sea. The hero Perseus appears at top left on his winged horse Pegasus, preparing to kill the monster and rescue the d...
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This Carrara marble portrait bust of a bearded man wearing neoclassical military costume is chiselled on the reverse: ‘LEONARDUS RINALDIUS/ A. VICTORIA. F/ MDXXXXVI’ (‘Leonardo Rinaldi / A. [presumably Alessandro] Vittoria F/ 1546’). However, the bust is not in the style of Alessandro Vittoria (1...
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This is the oldest picture in our collection. It shows the Virgin Mary, seated on a throne with the Christ Child on her lap, within a mandorla (an almond-shaped enclosure). Around them are eight scenes of the lives of various saints; two show Saint John the Evangelist and two show Saint Nicholas....
These panels once formed the left and right wing of a diptych, a painting made up of two parts joined by a central hinge. Holes on the left edge of the panel depicting the dead Christ match up with those at the right edge of the panel with the Virgin and Child; these once held hinges. Both panels...
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Two saints kneel at the feet of the Virgin Mary, who sits on a marble throne and gazes down at the Christ Child. We're looking at Saint Francis, founder of the Franciscan Order, on the left and the famous Franciscan preacher Bernardino of Siena on the right. The small figure kneeling at the front...
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Leonardo’s mysterious painting shows the Virgin Mary with Saint John the Baptist, Christ’s cousin, and an angel. All kneel to adore the infant Christ, who in turn raises his hand to bless them. They are crowded in a grotto overhung with rocks and dense with vegetation.The painting was part of a l...
This image of a man lit dramatically from one side as he grasps his walking stick and stares rather aloofly at the viewer is probably not a portrait. Rather it is a study of a character type, dressed in an exotic costume intended to evoke an earlier era.Portraying figures in imaginary historical...
The Dutch artist Matthijs Maris studied at the Hague Drawing Academy and at the Antwerp Academy. His brothers, Jacob and Willem, were also artists.In 1869 Matthijs moved to Paris, where Jacob was living. Jacob returned to Holland in 1871, but Matthijs remained another six years, renting a room in...
Not on display
A bright orange curtain is drawn back to reveal a young man standing at a window. He rests the fingers of his right hand on the windowsill, and seems to fasten the stole over his black cloak with his left hand. His head is turned to the side, gazing at something or someone outside the depicted sp...
This elegant young man’s identity is revealed on the strip of paper or parchment curled around the pole. The inscription is now difficult to read, but appears to say: Lodovico Martinengo at the age of _ years. Painted by Bartolomeo Veneto 16 June 1530.When the picture was first acquired by the Na...
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This portrait was made to hang with one of a woman by the same artist (Oscar Reinhart Collection, Winterthur), possibly to commemorate the couple’s engagement or marriage. This seems likely as both are shown with flowers associated with marriage: the carnation or pink held by the man was part of...
Not on display
This and A Saint with a Fortress and Banner, also in the National Gallery’s collection, are panels from an altarpiece. We do not know the church for which they were painted.A Youthful Saint reading has previously been identified as John the Evangelist, who is frequently depicted as a young fair-h...
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This is the central panel of a large altarpiece made for the church of San Pier Maggiore, Florence. Christ crowns the Virgin, after her body and soul have been taken up to heaven. This was an important moment: it established the Virgin’s role as an intercessor to whom believers could address thei...
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Saint Fabian and Saint Sebastian, wounded by arrows, are shown together with two tiny figures wearing black cloaks with hoods and white veils. Medieval Christians prayed to both saints as protectors against the plague.Saint Fabian was pope in the third century and is shown wearing a papal tiara;...
In an elegant interior adorned with a landscape painting on the wall and a classical bust above the door, a man and a woman are making music together. The lady, clad in a luxurious red satin dress with gold embroidery, is standing with her back to us in front of a harpsichord. She looks down at t...
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A fresh breeze, a choppy sea – sails billow, flags fly high and proud. This painting is a piece of patriotic propaganda.The man-of-war (or battleship) at anchor on the left in the Mediterranean harbour flies the Dutch flag at its stern. Only one sail is furled and the gun ports are open with the...
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Two standing women and a seated dog are seen in what may be a park. The picture perfectly summarises the achievements of the new technique that Monticelli had developed by the mid-1870s. He was applying his paint thickly, varying the strokes in both size and direction, and he also enriched his co...
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This is one of a series of five paintings that decorated furniture or wall panelling. The subjects are all military and they may have been painted for the entrance hall of a Venetian palace, where arms and armour were often exhibited.Foot soldiers are gathered before tents, and a soldier in blue...
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A young man – the donor – kneels at the door of a late medieval building, and looks out into a walled garden where the Virgin Mary and Christ Child are seated on a flowering bench. He is Philip the Handsome, Archduke of Austria, King of Castile and ruler of the Low Countries.The painting was, how...
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Cezanne spent several months over the summer of 1888 working in and around Chantilly, some 24 miles north of Paris. This is one of three similar oil paintings of the park surrounding the chateau that he produced during his stay. The symmetry and spatial depth of this view may have appealed to him...
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Titian painted this picture when he was in his early twenties, at a time when private portraits of individual women were still rare. We don‘t know the identity of the sitter, if indeed this is a portrait in the traditional sense, rather than a general picture of a woman designed to encourage such...
On display elsewhere
This is a study for a larger picture by Meindert Hobbema in the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and by comparing the two we can get an insight into how he worked. Instead of painting accurate, identifiable views based on a real scene, Hobbema – and many other landscape specialists of th...
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The young man staring into the pool in the foreground is Narcissus. According to the Roman poet Ovid, he was a man of extraordinary beauty but was also so proud that he spurned each of his suitors in turn. As a punishment, the goddess Nemesis led him to a pool where he fell so in love with his ow...
Not on display
We don‘t know who painted this picture, nor do we know who the sitter is, but his upright stance and direct gaze and the immaculate points of his handsome moustache suggest a man used to authority. The commander’s baton in his right hand confirms his likely rank in the Dutch army.The picture has...
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The glowing sky is set between dark hills and threatening storm clouds, the strip of dense grey clouds at the top echoing the blue silhouette of land at the bottom. Distinctive jigsaw-shaped clouds are depicted in layers white hovering over grey, blue sky beyond fading to rose and peach at the ho...
Helen or Helena was mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine. She dreamed that an angel revealed to her the location of the cross on which Christ was crucified and urged her to travel to the Holy Land to find it. She dug up three crosses and, by testing their healing power, was able to...
The panels in this triptych (painting in three parts) show a garden with fruit trees, cypresses and other, unidentifiable trees planted in careful rows. Daisies, buttercups, violets and lilies of the valley carpet the foreground.In the centre panel, we see an elaborate building filled with dazzli...
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Beneath a sky of swirling cloud and warm sunlight, we take in a view of the Doge’s Palace, one of the best-known buildings in Venice. It overlooks a promenade known as the Riva degli Schiavoni and the basin of San Marco.Canaletto has given the scene a sense of tranquillity and calm. In the foregr...
This little panel, which is also decorated on the reverse, shows Saint Dorothy with Jesus, a toddler, carrying a basket of roses. She caries a stem of roses in bloom and bud and gazes tenderly at the boy. Saint Dorothy was martyred for her faith in the city of Caesarea (in modern-day Turkey), in...
Not on display
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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This panel is one of three that come from the lower tier of an altarpiece made for the Duke of Milan (the other two are also in our collection). The Archangel Michael stands triumphant after his cosmic battle with the devil (Revelation 12: 16). A pair of scales, hanging on the tree stump to the l...
The low horizon gives a vast sky – very much how a sailor in a small boat at sea experiences the world. But the men working on the vessels seem unconcerned with the view: these are inshore working craft.In the centre is a smalschip, a transport vessel carrying a Dutch ensign. Beached on the spit...
Not on display
This man is unnamed, but his pilgrim’s staff and the tiny vision of Christ’s triumph over death seem to make it clear that he has been or is about to go on a pilgrimage. He focuses on a distant goal, the figure of Christ looking down as if watching over him. His clothes are plain – those of a pil...
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A happy young couple make music in an elegant panelled room with costly furniture. An open door, marble columns on either side, reveals a glimpse of a room beyond, where a fine gauze curtain hangs at a window. The young man sits at his ease, his long fingers plucking the strings of the theorbo –...
In the middle distance, a solitary figure fishes from a flat-bottomed boat or punt moored in an inlet of water, which may be part of a river estuary. Although there are trees, the landscape is flat and marshy with small rivulets running through it. The thin strip of grey-blue on the horizon sugge...
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Willem Maris trained at the Hague Drawing Academy, as did his two older brothers, Jacob and Matthijs, who were also artists. His paintings are of traditional Dutch subjects – particularly animals and landscapes – but painted in a lyrical manner that, in his later work, comes close to French Impre...
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Late in his career, Nicolaes Maes painted several small portraits in this style, often in an oval format. The background is dark, with a brown brocade curtain pushed to one side behind the sitter. A stylish young man confronts us with a direct gaze and half smile.We don’t know who this young man...
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This is the main panel of the S. Gerolamo Altarpiece, one of the most important works of the Florentine painter Francesco Botticini. It is named after Saint Jerome (Gerolamo or Girolamo in Italian), the figure prominently depicted at its centre, and the church dedicated to him where it originally...
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A man stoops over a fireplace, using bellows to stoke the fire that heats the contents of a pot standing in the flames. He is an alchemist in the process of trying to turn base metals into silver or gold. His shabby and chaotic surroundings suggest that he is so obsessed with his work that he has...
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This was one of Cima da Conegliano’s most popular designs, and he and his workshop produced a number of versions of it. The Virgin Mary sits on a marble bench in front of a sunlit Italian landscape, her body forming a solid mass which we can almost feel pressing down on the cool stone. There is h...
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This balletic battle scene shows Chastity, the graceful woman in a billowing dress, defending herself against the golden arrows of Love, the athletic naked youth. The combat takes place on a summer day, and the only sign of commotion in nature is a swan, wings outstretched, in pursuit of its comp...
This beach may be at Scheveningen, close to The Hague, where Jacob Maris settled in the 1870s. A lone fisherman appears to be hauling nets alongside two beached flat-bottomed fishing boats. A few birds are the only sign of wildlife.Maris painted the scene, particularly the sky, with broad visible...
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The two little girls in this unfinished portrait are Mary and Margaret, Gainsborough’s daughters by his wife, Margaret Burr, and their only children to survive infancy. Mary was baptised on 3 February 1750 and Margaret on 22 August 1751. Mary was given the name of the couple’s first daughter, who...
A young woman crouches in the bottom right-hand corner, trying to cover her nakedness with her cloak, while two bearded men leer at her and pull at her clothes. This is Susannah, an Old Testament heroine. Bathing one hot day in her husband’s garden, she was seen by two elders – senior members of...
This is a copy by an anonymous artist of Salvator Rosa’s original work, which is now in the Hospital de Tavera in Toledo, Spain. The picture’s subject is taken from the Old Testament Book of Genesis, which tells how the young Ishmael and his mother Hagar were banished into the desert of Beersheba...
Not on display
William Boxall (1800–1879) painted this self-portrait when he was around 19 and about to enter the Royal Academy Schools to train as a painter. He gave it to his sister Anne. The head is rather less than three-quarters life-size. The picture may have been made as a preparatory study for the life-...
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This is the fifth scene of Hogarth’s series of six paintings titled Marriage A-la-Mode. After the masquerade, the Countess and her lover Silvertongue have taken a room above the Turk’s Head – a Turkish baths, or Bagnio. The scene is set at night by firelight; the Countess’s hooped underskirt, wha...
In the seventeenth century, several Dutch artists went to Rome and brought back paintings and sketches. They, and others like van Ludick, used these works as a basis for imaginary paintings of the Italian landscape with a mountainous background and a softly lit Mediterranean sky. They proved very...
Not on display
A young woman sits, one delicate hand outstretched and holding an almond to feed to a parrot. On one finger she has a thimble – she has stopped sewing to feed the bird, an African Grey that hunches over, assessing her gift with a beady eye. The model used for the young woman is thought to be Cune...
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The artist of this panel has sculpted the drops of blood which fall from Christ’s side and hands and then painted over them to emphasise their gore. The circular wounds in Christ’s hands were caused by the nails of the Crucifixion and the wound in his ribcage by a Roman soldier’s spear. Christ’s...
A bearded saint stands in a stone niche. He holds a book and a pen: he is one of the Four Evangelists, the authors of the Gospels – possibly Saint Mark. Although a saint, he has no halo or attribute; he looks more like a Roman philosopher. The quiet stone, the saint’s abstracted and unfocused gaz...
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This picture – a combination of interior scene and still-life painting – shows Vuillard’s room at Château-Rouge in Amfreville, Normandy. His friends Jos and Lucy Hessel rented the house for the summers of 1905, 1906 and 1907.A posy of wild flowers on the marble mantelpiece sits alongside a number...
On display elsewhere
A boy has paused from the thirsty work of herding sheep at noon to lie flat on the bank of a pool and drink its cool water. This vision of a Suffolk lane in high summer was painted in January to March 1826 in Constable’s studio in London. The lane winding into the cornfield is based on Fen Lane,...
The dark red curtain in the background gives a warm, luxurious atmosphere to this portrait and complements the sitter’s auburn hair and sparkling brown eyes. Her half smile and the rose tucked over her ear suggest an agreeable, perhaps even mischievous, character. Unfortunately, the identity of t...
Various foods and containers compete for space on a bare wooden shelf or table. A plate is piled high with walnuts, with chestnuts and oranges scattered nearby and a colossal melon behind. There are earthenware jugs, probably containing oil or wine, and a small barrel. The round boxes were normal...
A quiet river meanders through thinly wooded countryside towards a distant, misty horizon, almost shielded from view by a low hill. The clear water catches the cool evening light, and the gnarled trunks of the trees give a sense of age and permanence. But overhead, the leaves are turning brown as...
Not on display
Wouwerman’s small painting of the Dutch landscape is full of incident: everywhere are little stories to tell, details to pick out. The landscape in the distance seems empty but nearer to us people enliven the scene. Two horsemen studiously ignore the beggars who approach them. They‘re followed by...
Not on display
This mysterious landscape of a wood bounded by the sweeping curve of a river was, for its time, highly innovative. Instead of using trees to create a frame for an attractive view, which was the traditional approach, Cornelis Vroom has made the wood itself the focus.Yet he has still managed to cre...
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Christ, bound and crowned with thorns, is condemned to be crucified by Pontius Pilate. ‘Ecce Homo’ (‘Behold the man’) were the words used by Pilate when he presented Christ to the people before the Crucifixion (John 19: 2–5). Pilate, wearing a turban, raises his hand to indicate that he is speaki...
A bearded saint stands on a marble parapet against a shimmering gold background. This is Saint Bartholomew, one of the Twelve Apostles, the first disciples of Christ. He was skinned alive – the flaying knife is his attribute, the symbol associated with him. He was once part of a triptych (a paint...
Not on display
This semicircular painting forms the upper part of the altarpiece painted for the Buonvisi family chapel in the church of S. Frediano in Lucca.The Virgin Mary grieves over the body of her son Christ, laid across her lap, her eyelids red and puffy from weeping. An angel holds Christ’s head; anothe...
Not on display
A burst of brilliant light shines on the newborn Christ, who is watched over by Mary, Joseph and a gathering of worshippers and onlookers. The source of the light is hidden, so it seems to radiate directly from the sleeping child, illuminating the faces of all around him.The scene represents the...
Not on display
These panels were once the wings of a small triptych (a painting in three parts), the centre panel of which – The Virgin and Child with Two Angels – is now in the Uffizi, Florence. The altarpiece was demonstrably in Florence by the end of the fifteenth century, as its landscape backgrounds were f...
Not on display
The identity of this brown-eyed woman who sits for what may be an engagement or marriage portrait remains a mystery. She is probably aristocratic and is clearly wealthy – the many pearls strung around her neck and over her shoulders, and the two large tear-drop pearls of her earrings, are showily...
Not on display
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...
Not on display
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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Winged Father Time unveils Truth, who is dressed in white and rests her foot on a globe, symbolising the Earth from which she has sprung. With her left hand, Truth unmasks Deceit, while with her right she gestures to the four cardinal virtues: Prudence, holding a snake; Temperance, carrying a wat...
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This picture, together with its companion piece Dancing Girl with Tambourine (also in the National Gallery’s collection), was made to decorate the dining room of the Paris apartment of one of Renoir’s most important clients, Maurice Gangnat. Of the two dancers, this figure has the more animated p...
Not on display
This is a fragment from an altarpiece made for the high altar of the Benedictine abbey at Liesborn, and is one of three in our collection from the altarpiece’s central Crucifixion scene. The fluttering drapery at the top right is part of Christ’s loincloth, which situates this fragment to the rig...
Not on display
In this slender painting, three musicians play their instruments – a large triangle with rings, a recorder and a lyre. None of them look out at the viewer, and two actually turn away, a pose for which Crespi was well known. A turbaned man pulling his horse by the bridle looms over the trio. To th...
Not on display
These two small paintings are part of a group of four scenes, which are painted on two wooden panels. They would once have decorated a piece of furniture, perhaps the case of a musical instrument. They illustrate key scenes from Tebaldeo’s popular Second Eclogue, first printed in Modena in 1498....
Not on display
At first glance, this dark room might seem bare and forbidding but the deep brown of the walls encloses the two figures in warmth and serenity. There’s just enough light to reveal them, but Maes doesn‘t show the window, so the comfortable atmosphere isn’t disturbed. The concentration of woman and...
Not on display
Although this panel has been cut down on the left-hand side, its original size and shape suggests that it was probably made to decorate a piece of furniture, perhaps for a bedchamber. It is in the style of Palma Vecchio, although it has suffered much damage.The painting depicts an episode from th...
Not on display
General George Augustus Eliott, later Lord Heathfield (1770–90) defended the British territory of Gibraltar against a long siege by the Spanish and their French allies, which ended on 13 September 1782.Reynolds captures the moment of danger before the General’s triumph at Gibraltar. He holds a gi...
Not on display
This was the central panel of a large altarpiece made for the church of Santa Maria del Carmine in Pisa. The Virgin’s sturdy form, which looks similar to contemporary Florentine sculpture, casts a shadow against the carved throne. Christ’s body seems fleshy and three-dimensional; Masaccio has don...
Alfred Stevens found success with his paintings of elegant young women in imaginary situations, posed against highly decorative backgrounds. In 1880 he became ill with a lung condition and was advised to make regular trips to Normandy for his health, where he made a series of small paintings of t...
Not on display
This is a portrait of Cosimo I de‘ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany, at the age of 40. It is based on Bronzino’s official portrait of the Duke of 1559, but is unlikely to have been painted by Bronzino or his assistants.Prior to Medici rule, Florence had been a republic. Cosimo was Duke of Florence f...
Not on display
The legend of the abduction of the Sabine women by the Romans is described by several classical writers. While accounts vary, key details are consistent: Romulus, founder and then king of Rome, had built an impressive city, but there was a shortage of women. He invited the Sabines, who lived in t...
A man stares out of the painting as if deep in thought, one finger inserted between the pages of a book. His arm rests on a celestial globe, suggesting that he is an astronomer. Globes like this were often decorated with constellations and zodiac signs relating to ancient Greek gods and goddesses...
Not on display
A sandy path meanders through a landscape of dunes towards distant hills and mountains. An old man in blue with his back towards us occupies the foreground, a sack and water bottle lying beside him on the ground. He seems to be watching a younger man who bends to scoop water from a pool with a po...
Not on display
Jan Both was one of a group of Dutch artists that made the long and often dangerous journey across the Alps to Italy, said at the time to be the heart of great painting. He stayed for ten years, becoming a leader in the development of Dutch Italianate landscape showing hardy peasants against soft...
Abandoned by her lover, the Trojan hero Aeneas, the devastated Dido, Queen of Carthage, stands on a pyre composed of his armour and his gifts to her. She is about to plunge a knife into her breast, watched from the arcades and balconies around the square by her subjects.This panel’s dimensions su...
Not on display
A maze or rocky grotto looks out over a cloudy mountainous landscape and meandering river. A turbaned man plays a lute by torchlight as three others embrace bizarre hybrid women. One has a serpent for a tail, another has the face of a pig, a third has the head of a reptile. Two turbaned figures,...
Not on display
This scene of two men and a woman making music is not a representation of everyday life. Positioned on a wide terrace overlooking an impressive formal garden, the figures don’t quite seem to belong in their surroundings. The men sit on either side of the singing woman, one holding a glass of wine...
Not on display
A meandering river leads our eye from a working watermill on the right and folk washing clothes at the shoreline towards a jumble of buildings, one with its chimney gently smoking, and the crew of a boat unloading their cargo. As the river curves out of view we come to a peaceful landscape, with...
Not on display
This painting is in extremely poor condition, making it very difficult to identify the artist; it is now thought to be by the Munich painter Hans Mielich. The woman’s name is not known but her headdress is typical of those worn in southern Germany in the sixteenth century.
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This is Saint Peter, recognisable by the colour of his robes – he is traditionally shown wearing yellow and blue – and by the large golden key he holds. It is the key to the kingdom of heaven, which was promised to him by Christ (Matthew 16: 19).The saint’s bare feet express his simplicity and hu...
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This portrait is probably by Gentile Bellini, though we can‘t be sure. It’s unusual among his portraits – we don’t know the identity of the sitter and most of Gentile’s surviving portraits are of well-known figures. It was once thought to be the mathematician Girolamo Malatini because he holds a...
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This painting – an evocation of light, space, soaring architecture and ordered elegance – shows the inside of the Buurkerk in Utrecht. Several Dutch artists of the time specialised in painting church interiors, but Saenredam was particularly innovative. He exaggerated for effect: here he has stre...
The Virgin Mary gazes at the infant Christ who feeds from her breast. The naked child is encircled in his mother’s arms and twists away from us. Our eye is drawn from the Virgin’s delicate fingers, up the line of Christ’s back and to the expression of devotion on her face.Titian appears to be cit...
A walled medieval garden is the setting for a scene from Christian legend. The Virgin Mary has the Christ Child on her knee. Beside her on the grass are two elegantly dressed women, Saints Catherine and Mary Magdalene.It is a cultured gathering. Catherine and Mary Magdalene hold books and the Vir...
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This is one of a pair of portraits of a husband and wife, one of the richest couples in the Netherlands. Margaretha de Geer had been married to Jacob Trip for nearly 60 years, and the two portraits, both in the National Gallery, were made to hang together, almost certainly in one of the grand rec...
Something – or someone – has interrupted the Virgin Mary’s reading. This panel was probably part of a large image which included the angel Gabriel, the cause of her surprise. Gabriel brought her the news that she would conceive a child by the Holy Ghost, and that he would be the son of God (Luke...
A rare example of a night scene by Corot, this is the last in a series of four panels illustrating the different times of day that he painted for his friend, fellow artist Alexandre-Gabriel Decamps. As in Morning, we see a single figure, probably a man, accompanied by a dog. There is a sense of a...
Claude illustrates the Old Testament story of Hagar, setting it in a tranquil landscape bathed in hazy sunlight. Hagar is an Egyptian servant girl who gives birth to Abraham’s child and runs away after quarrelling with Abraham’s childless wife, Sarah. Claude captures Hagar’s suffering and despair...
Not on display
Dated 1836, this is a replica of the marble bust of Charles Long, 1st Baron Farnborough (1760–1838), commissioned in 1819 by the sitter’s father-in-law, Sir Abraham Hume. The original was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1820 and is now in the National Portrait Gallery, London. Who commissioned...
A young man is shown in half length, his body turned slightly but with his gaze fixed firmly on us. His features are quite particular – a wide mouth, long and prominent nose, dark wavy hair and brown eyes – but his identity remains a mystery. He is clearly a painter: he holds a brush in one hand,...
Not on display
This saintly friar comes from a large polyptych (a many-panelled altarpiece) which Crivelli painted in 1476 for the high altar of church of San Domenico at Ascoli Piceno in the Italian Marche. This is Saint Dominic himself, holding a white lily to symbolise his chastity and the book of his Rule –...
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Adam, wearing an apron of leaves, and Eve, still naked, stand between the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil and the Tree of Life. Adam has just tasted the apple that Eve holds, while the serpent watches from above. In the background is the Garden of Eden with the richly decorated Fountain of Lif...
Francesco Botticini’s S. Gerolamo Altarpiece is named after Saint Jerome (who appears at its centre) and the church dedicated to him where it originally stood. This is its predella – a horizontal board which is positioned below the main panel of an altarpiece, and typically shows scenes from the...
Not on display
This composition of Christ as the Salvator Mundi (‘Saviour of the World’) adored by his mother, the Virgin Mary, was very popular in the early sixteenth century. These are workshop copies of originals painted by Quinten Massys towards the beginning of his career. His workshop then continued to pr...
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The rich colours of this large painting were designed to make maximum impact. Commissioned by a confraternity dedicated to Saint Thomas, it shows the moment that the doubting saint was convinced of Christ’s resurrection. We see him place his fingers in Christ’s wound, checking that Christ had ind...
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Murillo has painted himself inside a fictive frame, his right hand emerging from the stone surround as if he were coming alive and entering our space.This self portrait was probably painted in about 1670, when Murillo was in his early fifties – his hairline is receding and his moustache turning g...
The Archangel Gabriel announces to the Virgin Mary that she will conceive the Son of God; she holds a Bible open at words from the prophet Isaiah which echo Gabriel’s: ‘Behold a Virgin shall conceive and bear a son...’The conception takes place at the moment she hears the words, which is why a ti...
Not on display
This view is of the Delaware River, which flows between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, two of the original 13 states of what was to become the United States of America. We are positioned on the Pennsylvania side of the river, below the Delaware Water Gap, an area where the river has carved a large...
Not on display
A mountain top shrouded in mist, a bubbling torrent of water tumbling headlong down a rocky hillside, a lone tree piercing the clouds – this was one of the favourite themes of the great Dutch landscape artist Jacob van Ruisdael during the middle of the seventeenth century. Inspired by drawings ma...
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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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Christ hangs from a T-shaped cross. Sorrowing angels circle above him in a stormy sky, while the Virgin Mary and Saint John the Evangelist stand on either side, wringing their hands. The skull – seen from beneath and minus its jaw bone – is probably that of Adam, the first man, but it’s also a r...
Not on display
The Dominican Blessed, both friars and nuns, dressed in the distinctive black and white habits of the Dominican Order, are neatly lined up in rows. The Blessed were holy figures belonging to the Order (founded by Saint Dominic in 1215) who were venerated locally after death. Some, like Vincent Fe...
The scene shows the Annunciation, when the Archangel Gabriel told the Virgin Mary that she would conceive a son, Jesus Christ, through the Holy Ghost. Gabriel holds a lily, a traditional symbol of the Virgin’s purity, and points upwards to the golden rays which are directed towards Mary. These ra...
Not on display
The Archangel Michael led an army of angels to battle against the devil and cast him down from heaven (Revelation 12: 9). Piero shows him as a beautiful, youthful soldier. He clutches the severed head of the devil, represented as a snake with pointy ears.The panel was part of a polyptych (multi-p...
This angel comes from a pala (an altarpiece with a single, unified surface) which was sawn into pieces in the eighteenth century, but reassembled by the National Gallery in the 1930s. In a particular light you can see the joins where the parts have been stuck together.The altarpiece was made for...
Willem Claesz. Heda uses muted colours to show us the ingredients of a meal – with a focus on quality, not quantity. Everything on the table is expensive: this is the meal of a rich man. The white table cloth is made of damask, a luxurious silk fabric. Lemons were brought in from the Mediterranea...
This panel – a pinnacle panel – comes from the uppermost part of a large multi-panelled altarpiece painted for the church of Santa Croce, Florence. There were originally six of these, and four survive. Two others are in our collection (they show King David and Moses), as well as panels from other...
Not on display
This portrait was once thought to be of Elisa Bonaparte (1777–1820), a younger sister of Napoleon Bonaparte. However, the young woman has not yet been identified. At one time attributed to Jacques-Louis David, the portrait has been claimed to be both French and Italian – the hills in the backgrou...
Not on display
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