#history painting

Women Artists

Elisabetta Sirani: Pioneer, Teacher and Artist

Elisabetta Sirani (1638-1665) was born in Bologna, a progressive city with a liberal attitude towards educating women. She was a pioneering female...

Gokce Dyson 6 October 2025

Women Artists

5 Things You Should Know About Michaelina Wautier

Michaelina Wautier was born in Mons in 1604. This Flemish painter has been absent in art history for many years, but her life and work are slowly...

Vithória Konzen Dill 6 October 2025

Romanticism

Eugène Delacroix in 10 Paintings: Poetry, Passion, and Power

Early 19th-century French art was a battle between cool, crisp, precisely observed Neoclassicism and Romanticism’s passion for emotion, drama,...

Catriona Miller 26 September 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Portrait of Jean-Baptiste Belley by Girodet

Although representations of Black people were overlooked in European art for a long time, current social and political movements participate to...

Amélie Pascutto 26 September 2025

Atala. Luis Monroy Josué, Last Moments of Atala, 1871,Museo Nacional de Arte, Mexico City, Mexico. Literature

Atala: The Tragedy That Transcended Pages

In the 19th century, Europeans went crazy for one story: Atala, or the Story of Two Lovers in the Desert. It is a novel by René de Chateaubriand...

Jimena Escoto, Guest Author 12 September 2025

Renaissance

The Lost Portrait of Henry VIII: Art in Service of Power

Posing proudly in front of the fascinated spectator, a monarch fixes us with his majestic gaze. Perhaps you recognized the best-known portrait of...

Montaine Dumont 4 August 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Roses of Heliogabalus by Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema

Lust, Gluttony, and Sloth. Three of the Seven Deadly Sins are depicted in Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema’s The Roses of Heliogabalus. Many other sins are...

James W Singer 13 July 2025

JMW Turner, Fighting Temeraire, 1839, National Gallery, London, UK. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Fighting Temeraire by J. M. W. Turner

Fighting Temeraire by British Romantic painter J. M. W. Turner is a seascape that expresses poetic and patriotic...

James W Singer 22 April 2025

Rococo

François Boucher in 10 Paintings

François Boucher (1703–1770) was one of the major exponents of the Rococo style in the 18th century. His paintings showed the ostentation and...

Jimena Escoto 10 April 2025

Alexandre Cabanel, Cleopatra, 1887, Royal Museum of Fine Arts, Antwerp, Belgium. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Cleopatra by Alexandre Cabanel

Queen Cleopatra is a popular subject today – as she was in the late 19th century. Alexandre Cabanel’s Cleopatra explores a single moment of her...

James W Singer 11 March 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat by John Weguelin

Here is a Masterpiece Story to honor our beloved cats. The Obsequies of an Egyptian Cat by John Weguelin presents an imaginative interpretation of an...

Alexandra Kiely 23 February 2025

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: The African King Caspar by Hendrik Heerschop

White subjects have dominated the Western art tradition for millennia, while people of color have been vastly underrepresented and misrepresented.

James W Singer 16 February 2025