Portrait of Lady Sarah Ingestre, ca. 1827-1828
Thomas Lawrence
English, 1769-1830
Oil on canvas
- This portrait was likely painted in 1828, the year Sarah Elizabeth Beresford married Henry John Chetwynd-Talbot, Viscount Ingestre. She holds a rose to her breast, an attribute that traditionally conveys virtue and purity. The balustrade and terrace place the young bride in a handsome setting befitting her aristocratic union. The frame, with its white-washed garlands and fruit, is consistent with the interior decoration of Ingestre Hall, the manor house owned by the Chetwynd family.
- No. 60.039
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Hagar and Ishmael, ca. 1640
Francisco Collantes
Spanish, 1599-1656
Oil on canvas
- In this brooding scene from the Old Testament, Hagar and her son Ishmael, banished from the home of Abraham, are confronted by an angel as they rest below a blasted tree on the bank of a raging river. The artist, Francisco Collantes, was unusual among Spanish landscape painters, as he subjected religious narratives to the drama of the natural world, literally bringing them down to earth. He places the encounter of the figures at the center of this composition, allowing the tumultuous landscape to magnify the story's emotional content.
- No. 18.096
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Portrait of Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour and His Family, 1806
Jacques-Luc Barbier-Walbonne
French, 1769-1860
Oil on canvas
- Portraiture and history painting come together in this tribute to family devotion. Tenderly instructing his daughter and son, Antoine-Georges-François de Chabaud-Latour gestures toward a monument to his own father, a distinguished military man and engineer. The carved epitaph-he lived and died without reproach-provides a lesson in virtue for the following generations. Chabaud-Latour's wife, Juliette, stands beside him, nursing their infant son, demonstrating the importance of maternal strength to the future of family and nation. The portrait is situated in the landscape of Nimes in southern France, home to both the artist and the Chabaud-Latour family.
- No. 2003.105
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Allegorical Portrait of a Lady as Fortune, 1660s
Attributed to Henri Gascard
French, 1634-1701
Oil on canvas
- This ideal of aristocratic female beauty was celebrated in England under the reign of King Charles Il, and shared in dozens of portraits of his numerous mistresses. The identity of this woman is not known, but her oval face, long nose, languid gaze, and sumptuous costume proclaim her resemblance to the Windsor Beauties, the countesses and duchesses whom the king commissioned Peter Lely to paint in the late 1660s. Crowned by a garland, she is portrayed with the attributes of Fortune. The globe signifies chance, and the movement of her floating drapery represents fate's constant shifts.
- No. 55.152
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The Angel of Fame, ca. 1750
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo
Italian, 1696-1770
Fresco, mounted on canvas
- In the 1740s, Tiepolo received a private commission to decorate the last great private home to be built on Venice's Grand Canal. Owned by relative newcomers to Venetian nobility, the Palazzo Labia featured elaborate formal spaces and a spectacular ballroom. Tiepolo collaborated with a specialist in illusionistic painting to create wall paintings in fresco, a technique in which pigments are applied directly to wet plaster. This foreshortened angel, whose trumpet announces the family's fame, appeared on a ceiling in a formal room, set into a gilded framework. Removed from its original location and mounted on canvas, the painting is seen here without its original architectural context.
- No. 32.246
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The Resurrection of Christ, ca. 1640 Benjamin Gerritsz. Cuyp
Dutch, 1612-1652
Oil on panel
- This scene portrays an episode from the New Testament. As an angel removes the stone from Christ's tomb, Christ is presented symbolically in the burst of divine light that blinds the Roman guards who scatter, fall, and lift their swords in defense. Cuyp dramatized the event by using a nearly monochromatic contrast of light and shadow and sketchy brushstrokes that enhance the frenetic atmosphere. Like the contemporary Dutch painter Rembrandt, he focused on the humble aspects of religious narrative, espousing a central belief of the Protestant Reformation, that individual worshippers may seek a personal relationship with God.
- No. 62.019
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The Virgin and Child Appearing to Saint Francis of Assisi, 1599
Francesco Vanni
Italian, 1563-1610
Oil on canvas
- This painting by Francesco Vanni, a leading Sienese artist in the late 1500s, depicts the Virgin Mary's miraculous appearance to Saint Francis of Assisi. As he embraces the infant Jesus, his older companion has fallen asleep while meditating on a skull, a symbol of mortality. Commissioned by the Italian Cardinal Buonviso Buonvisi, the canvas was offered to the monastery of the Cordeliers de l'Observance in Lyon, France, where it hung in the Chapelle des Lucquois, reputedly designed by Michelangelo. The church was endowed by merchant bankers from the Italian city of Lucca who had contributed to Lyon's eminence as a center of trade.
- No. 57.227
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A View of Paris from the Louvre, 1835 Louise Joséphine Sarazin de Belmont
French, 1790-1871
Oil on canvas
- This luminous panorama of Paris and the river Seine was painted from a window in the Gallery of Apollo in the Louvre Palace. Looking east, it represents an idealized view of the city's architecture, bridges, and riverside activity, bathing them in soft morning light.
- Acclaimed by her peers, Sarazin de Belmont sought inspiration in native forests and heroic landscapes. Although landscape painting had long been perceived as lacking the cultural significance of portraits and narrative paintings, she promoted the early 19th-century concept that nature, as embodied in landscape, was the historic, generative foundation on which human achievement was built.
No. 87.056
Helen M. Danforth Acquisition Fund
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The Ferry Boat, 1645
Salomon van Ruysdael
Dutch, ca. 1600-1670
Oil on canvas
- Salomon van Ruysdael's landscape paintings often feature low horizon lines, clouds towering across a blue sky, clusters of trees, and placid waters. Using thin washes of paint on a light ground, he recorded the landscape and waterways around the Dutch city of Haarlem, where he lived. Here the body of water leads to the horizon, while the ferryboat balances the composition and offers a glimpse of everyday life in Holland. Collected by successful merchants and the Dutch nobility alike, scenes like this one represented a trend in Holland at that time toward landscapes depicting the virtues of the homeland and the poetics of the local.
- No. 33.204
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Wisdom and Strength, ca. 1565-1580
Studio of Paolo Verones
Italian, 1528-1588
Oil on canvas
- Moralizing themes from ancient Greek and Roman mythology became popular subject matter in Venetian painting in the 1500s. Here Wisdom is personified as a woman draped in lustrous silks, assuming a noble stance and projecting divine enlightenment. Strength, in the form of Hercules, slouches behind her and contemplates the vanity of worldly riches scattered at her feet. Commissioned by wealthy patrons for aristocratic households, this genre of history painting is distinct from the religious subjects painted for churches. Artists in the workshop of Paolo Veronese served both markets, and often produced copies of their most appealing allegorical canvases, including this one.
- No. 56.096
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