#Propaganda

European Art

Queen Elizabeth I – Portraits of the Last Tudor

Queen Elizabeth I (1533-1603) was the only surviving child of King Henry VIII of England and his second wife Anne Boleyn. Being a girl was hard...

Sarah Mills 20 March 2024

North American Art

Eyewitness to Space: The NASA Art Program

Did you know that NASA has quite a unique art collection and that they used to commission artists to document their missions and projects? Let us...

Marta Wiktoria Bryll 14 March 2024

Design

Soviet Space Art: Posters of Propaganda and Progress

Here is a small selection of our favorite Soviet space posters together with some tidbits about the beginnings of the Russian space...

Marta Wiktoria Bryll 14 March 2024

Mannerism

The Mannerist Splendor: Meet Four Powerful Women of Bronzino

Agnolo di Cosimo (1503–1572), known as Bronzino, was an Italian Mannerist painter. He lived and worked in Florence and became the court painter of...

Joanna Kaszubowska 2 January 2024

François Clouet (School), Portrait of Louise de Lorraine, ca. 1575, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, TX, USA. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Louise de Lorraine by François Clouet (School)

Portrait of Louise de Lorraine is a French Renaissance painting that exudes the artistic ideas of its time and captures the queen’s personal and...

James W Singer 17 December 2023

Attributed to the Workshop of Nicholas Hilliard, Elizabeth I Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Portrait of Elizabeth I

The portrait of Elizabeth I is attributed to the workshop of Nicholas Hilliard and showcases the queen in her sixties. Similar to other images of...

Anna Ingram 7 December 2023

Jacques-Louis David, Napoleon Crossing the Alps, 1802, Château de Versailles, France. Detail. Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Napoleon Crossing the Alps by Jacques-Louis David

Jacques-Louis David’s Napoleon Crossing the Alps is one of the most famous and politically iconic images of European art history. However, it is a...

James W Singer 4 December 2023

Pieter van Aelst, Christ's Charge to Peter, from the Acts of the Apostles Renaissance

Renaissance Tapestries 101: Religious, Political, and Magical

Renaissance tapestries are the most underestimated subject in art history. As expensive and enormously large works of art, tapestries attributed to...

Anna Ingram 2 December 2023

God Appears to Abraham, Pieter Coecke van Aelst Renaissance

Henry VIII’s Story of Abraham Tapestries

Everyone knows King Henry VIII for having six wives and an infamous divorce that shook England’s religious core. He is renowned due to art...

Anna Ingram 2 December 2023

Renaissance

The Medici Dynasty. Rich Sinners or Saintly Rulers?

The Medici family was definitely one of the richest dynasties in Renaissance Italy and perhaps they were the most influential patrons of the arts in...

James Wray 2 October 2023

Ancient Rome

How to Identify a Roman Emperor by His Beard

How many times have you walked into a museum full of statues or busts and not been able to tell one ancient sculpture from another? It can be...

Lauren Dorsey 18 September 2023

Fashion

Most Beautiful Dresses: Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo by Agnolo Bronzino

The best-known image of Eleanor of Toledo is also one of the most beautiful dresses in art history. Don’t be too distracted by the beauty of the...

Vithória Konzen Dill 17 August 2023