Diego Velázquez Las Meninas, 1656, Madrid, Museo Nacional del Prado Las Meninas is Velázquez’ most famous and enigmatic work and one of the great masterpieces of western art We are observing a large room, perhaps the main chamber, the Cuarto del Príncipe, in the Alcazar in Madrid. Due to a description by Antonio Palomino published […]
Claude Loraine Landscape with the Ponte Molle, 1645, Birmingham, Museum and Art Gallery This is one of Claude’s most sublime paintings of the Roman campagna. The scene is suffused with the glorious golden light of the setting sun prompting a delicious yearning to experience such a view on such an evening. This is at the […]
Johannes Vermeer View of Delft, 1660-61, Mauritshuis, The Hague On entering Room 15 at the Mauritshuis Picture Gallery in The Hague, the visitor’s eye is immediately drawn to perhaps the most famous townscape in all of western art. Johannes Vermeer’s great work is one of only two paintings to have survived that are devoted to […]
Pieter Bruegel at the Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna Vienna has the most extensive collection of works by Pieter Bruegel in the world. How did so many paintings by the Flemish master come to be in Vienna? Owing to the complexities of late medieval dynastic inheritance the Low Countries became part of the sprawling Habsburg Empire in […]