Jean-Antoine Watteau (1684–1721) was the most influential French painter of the 18th century. His painting Pilgrimage to the Isle of Cythera...
James W Singer 17 November 2024
The Frick Collection has an amazing ensemble of European masters. For example, works by Vermeer, Fragonard, and Goya grace its walls. Every room has...
James W Singer 10 November 2024
Mainland Italy is a perfect country for fresco production since it is dominated by a dry climate that preserves frescoes very well. Even though...
Magda Michalska 5 March 2024
While we can no longer personally experience the splendor of 18th-century fashion, thankfully many painters of the time left us the answer to the...
Pola Otterstein 10 August 2023
Francisco Goya’s work is well-known as dark and pessimistic. This reaction to his work is not uncommon, mostly due to the circumstances of his...
Anna Ingram 17 June 2023
The Russian empress Catherine the Great aspired to Enlightenment ideas that propagate human intellectual power. Numerous tracts, essays, and books of...
Guest Author 8 February 2021
Elisabeth of Russia (1709-1761) was the most beautiful empress from the Romanov dynasty. Contemporaries called her “the sparkle of Peter the...
Guest Author 12 August 2020
Ivan VI of Russia (Ivan Antonovich) was the youngest Russian tsar in history. He was proclaimed emperor when only two months old, and his 22-year-old...
Guest Author 3 June 2020
The Wallace Collection displays a collection, which came together in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, collected by the first four Marquesses...
Isla Phillips-Ewen 9 December 2019
When we hear Casanova we think of Giacomo the famous adventurer, who in his autobiography, Histoire de ma vie (Story of My Life) described often...
Zuzanna Stańska 13 September 2017
Jean-Honoré Fragonard, Wallace Collection, 1767 Rococo seemed to be a fun period for the aristocracy. They are always depicted at leisure:...
Magda Michalska 26 July 2016
