Old world masters in new world collections

It is noteworthy that the first book to be published in any country and in any language treating of Old Masters in private Collections should be devoted exclusively to treasures...

There are no beginnings of art in Italy. The old civilizations of Etruria, Rome, and Byzantium never perished entirely; and upon their surviving traditions “Christian Art” was b...

Daddi painted the fresco over the San Giorgio Gate of Florence about 1330 and he also painted the frescoes of the Martyrdom of St. Stephen and St. Lawrence in Santa Croce. Daddi...

“Masolino,” Vasari wrote, “was a man of rare intelligence and his paintings are executed with great love and diligence. I have often examined his works and find his style to be...

Lippi’s drunkenness and his unscrupulous behavior brought him many times before the magistrates and on one occasion he was flogged for embezzlement. However, the Medici family a...

“And so Botticelli depicts for us a scene of light-hearted, youthful joy, representing the return of spring, and by his great talent contrives that the entire picture shall spea...

Gentile da Fabriano’s full name was Gentile di Nicola di Giovanni di Masso and he was born at Fabriano about 1370. He was a pupil of Allegretto Nuzi and possibly of Ottaviano Ne...

The towns of Northern Italy were more or less influenced by Florentine artists who worked in various towns and who naturally attracted pupils and local assistants. Painters trav...

Andrea Mantegna was born in Vicenza in 1431. He was inscribed in the Guild at Padua as pupil and adopted son of Squarcione (see page 97) in 1441 and made the most extraordinary...

“The more we consider the ideal figures of Venetian Art, the more we feel the breath of an heroic age behind us. Those great, toga-draped, old men with the bald foreheads are th...

The _Villa Ludovisi_, frequently called the Piombino Palace, is situated on the site of the ancient gardens of Sallust. This palace was erected in 1622 by Cardinal Ludovico Ludo...

Artistic designs of all kinds were needed for tapestry-workers, for the goldsmiths and silversmiths, for the furniture-makers, and for craftsmen busy in making articles for hous...

The Virgin in a blue robe and red mantle is seated on a canopied throne, behind which is an embroidered hanging. Her eyes are looking downward upon a missal which she holds in h...

“When nature made her chief work, Stella’s eyes, In color black, why wrapt she beams so bright? Would she in beauty black, like painter wise, Fame daintiest lustre, mixt of shad...

Of fruits and flowers--important subjects in Holland--come the two de Heems, father and son, Jan Davidsz de Heem (1606–1684), the first Dutchman to excel with fruit; Rachel Ruys...

“It is interesting to note that Allart van Everdingen was a well-known painter of the time of Rembrandt and that he was born in 1612. He excelled in painting rocky landscapes. H...

In the picturesque town of Nuremberg, with its peaked gables, overhanging balconies, and quaint façades, town of wood-carvers, goldsmiths, and toy-makers, town of Hans Sachs and...

Lucas Cranach the Elder was born in Kronach in Franconia in 1472 and died in Weimar in 1553. Cranach was the first painter of importance of the Saxon School and took his name fr...

In the reaction from the heavy solemnity and gloom of the last years of Louis XIV, when the Sun-King was setting under the dark clouds of the bigoted and severe Madame de Mainte...

_Dès le matin, dans la rosée, au fond du parc, La Marquise s’en fut, pour saluer l’Aurore, Et les cerfs inquiets qui sommeillaient encore, Pour Diane la prenant, des yeux cherch...

One is often asked to define the _style Louis XV_. Could there possibly be a better definition than is expressed in this exquisite portrait of an exquisite lady,--La Marquise de...

There should be no partisans. The more we love and admire Keats, the better we are able to admire and love Shelley; the more we appreciate and delight in Dickens, the more we ar...

Fanny Burney, in a description of a reception at Sir Joshua Reynolds’s house in Leicester Square, refers to young Gwatkin, the Cornish Squire, “making sheep’s eyes at Offy, whos...

In 1741 Gainsborough went to London and, after studying under Hubert Gravelot and Francis Hayman, took a studio in Hatton Garden and tried to start as a portrait and landscape-p...

As this portrait of the Duchess was the first “star” that ever rose in an auction-sale, it is worth while putting forward here the contemporary account of an event which has pas...

Buttall and Gainsborough continued their relations. Buttall was one of the “few friends Gainsborough respected and whom he desired should attend his funeral at Kew. Buttall outl...

A charming picture of Lady Elizabeth Hamilton, or “Lady Betty Hamilton,” as a child of five years, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, now hangs in the Widener Collection at _Lynnew...

“Your mandate I got, You may all go to pot, Had your senses been right You’d have sent before night; As I hope to be saved, I put off being shaved; For I could not make bold Whi...

[1] “The early Byzantine masters represented the Madonna’s garments enriched with lines of gold. Giotto and the early Florentine painters as a rule preferred to suggest a plain...