European Art

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Laocoön and His Sons

Laocoön and His Sons was one of the most influential sculptures during the Renaissance. The contorted bodies of the figures, their faces full of...

Anastasia Manioudaki 11 June 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Woman with a Parrot by Gustave Courbet

Gustave Courbet, the enfant terrible of French 19th-century art, did everything he could to save himself in the memory of the contemporary art...

Zuzanna Stańska 10 June 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: A Burial at Ornans by Gustave Courbet

Who nowadays doesn’t appreciate Gustave Courbet‘s striking realism? We all do, but as happens with many geniuses, Courbet was not appreciated by...

Magda Michalska 10 June 2025

Titian, Bacchus and Ariadne, 1520-23, National Gallery, London, UK. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Bacchus and Ariadne by Titian

Titian’s Bacchus and Ariadne captures the vibrancy of a Greco-Roman myth through the lens of an Italian Renaissance painter. Learn about the...

James W Singer 9 June 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées and One of Her Sisters

To a 21st-century viewer, the portrait of Gabrielle d’Estrées might seem homo-erotic. However, pictured with her sister, the Duchess of Villars,...

Anna Ingram 9 June 2025

Fashion

Elsa Schiaparelli: Surrealism, Art and Revolutionary Fashion

Italian female fashion designer and couturier, the greatest rival of Coco Chanel, and a friend of Surrealists such as Salvador Dalì and Man Ray,...

Caroline Galambosova 9 June 2025

Art State of Mind

Boys with Plants in Art (Hotties Alert!)

Boys and men posing with plants and flowers is a popular theme in art. The concept was revisited on Instagram, a social media platform on the account...

Anuradha Sroha 9 June 2025

Baroque

5 Best Works by Diego Velázquez

Diego Velázquez is the most important figure of the Spanish Baroque period and one of Europe’s most significant old masters. He was born in...

Anna Ingram 6 June 2025

Art History 101

Everything You Must Know About Las Meninas

This is one of Velázquez’s largest paintings in which he worked very hard to create a complex and credible composition that would convey a...

Zuzanna Stańska, Nicole Ganbold 6 June 2025

Painting

Diego Velázquez in 10 Paintings

Diego Velázquez was one of the greatest painters of the Spanish Golden Age. Born in 1599 in Seville, he began with religious commissions but soon...

Jimena Aullet 6 June 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Rokeby Venus by Diego Velázquez

Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (1599–1660) was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV and one of the most important painters of...

Joanna Kaszubowska 5 June 2025

Painting

Paintings Within Paintings: Time to Go Meta in the Art World

A few years ago, the art world celebrated the complete restoration of Johannes Vermeer’s Girl Reading a Letter at an Open Window. One of the...

Jimena Escoto 5 June 2025