#royal portraits

Masterpiece Stories

Masterpiece Story: Queen Mother Idia of Benin

Africa is a beautiful continent filled with sweeping landscapes and mighty rivers. Its history is filled with great kingdoms and large empires. Its...

James W Singer 11 May 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 8 May 2025

Painting

Habemus Papam! The Most Famous Portraits of Popes in Art History

For ages, the Catholic Church has been a hugely important patron of the arts. As the Papal States (which predated Vatican City) were enormously...

Zuzanna Stańska 8 May 2025

Fashion

Fashion Icons in Art

Art and fashion are often intertwined, and isn’t fashion a form of art after all? Not only can visual arts represent the fashion icons that marked...

Vithória Konzen Dill 5 May 2025

Medieval Art

Ravenna’s Byzantine Treasures: Mosaics in San Vitale

The early medieval church of San Vitale in Ravenna, Italy, is most famous for its spectacular mosaics. In a city full of rich, Byzantine-style...

Alexandra Kiely 2 May 2025

British royal portraits European Art

Power and Propaganda—The British Royal Portraits

Royal portraiture is a centuries-old tradition, but it might be called the forerunner of the posed selfie—an artfully curated image that is meant...

Candy Bedworth 29 April 2025

Fashion

Crowning Glory—The World’s 12 Most Beautiful Tiaras

We all have family treasures, those mementos that matter to us so much because of their sentimental value and memories associated with them. Now,...

Joanna Kaszubowska 3 April 2025

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard, Self-Portrait with Two Pupils, Marie Gabrielle Capet (1761–1818) and Marie Marguerite Carreaux de Rosemond (died 1788), 1785, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY, USA. Detail. Women Artists

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard: Female Icon of 18th-Century Paris

Adélaïde Labille-Guiard was one of the most prominent women artists of the end of the 18th century in Paris. Despite misogynistic policies for...

Jimena Escoto 26 March 2025

Women Artists

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and Amazing Women in Her Portraits

Élisabeth Vigée Le Brun and women in her portraits should be a reference for every art-lover. The French painter – also known as Madame Le Brun...

Pola Otterstein 26 March 2025

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 24 March 2025

The Rainbow Portrait Renaissance

Masterpiece Story: The Rainbow Portrait

Queen Elizabeth I is known throughout history as one of the most famous British Queens. Even without a husband, she successfully ruled England for 45...

Anna Ingram 24 March 2025

Fashion

Dressed in Power: Portrait of Eleanor of Toledo by Agnolo Bronzino

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

Vithória Konzen Dill 24 March 2025