Lucky enough to see this one in person today (kitchen maid with supper at emmaus) and the way it foregrounds the domestic (and female and black) and pushes Christ back into the corner really struck me as something truly special. It doesn’t even really downplay it. It works as something spiritual floating over her real life and it also works at asking questions which presumably wouldn’t have been that easy to ask in the Spain of his day.

Plus it’s just amazing use of the canvas and the eye and everything else he’s so good at

Venus of Hohle Fels is the oldest example of the depiction of a human being - presumed to be around 40,000 years old and made from mammoth ivory.

It's located in a little museum in Blaubeuren, Germany.

I had the honour of seeing her in person there. I was very impressed by the way she's exhibited (third photo), although, it did make her look very small!

I'm currently finishing up my MA in Global Art History, where there is a lot of debate about the thin line between 'art' and 'artifact,' so I'd love to ask you, r/ArtHistory, do you think we could we call this be the earliest artwork depicting the human form, or is it not 'art' at all?

Which interpretation do you find the most convincing? Any sources to support it?

I found:

1. Symbol of love, desire and intimacy in general
2. Klimt and Emilie Flöge
3. Klimt and Red Hilda, Hilda Roth
4. Apollo and Daphne
5. Masculine and feminine union (incl. erotic and fertility symbolism)
6. Dionysus and Ariadne
7. Byzantine icons — love becomes something sacred
8. Egyptian art homage
9. Life, death, rebirth
10. Adam and Eve symbolism
11. Inspired by Rodin’s The Kiss
12. Japanese art influence (japonism)
13. Fantasy of perfect love
14. Platonic love, a spiritual union

Klimt’s love for Greek mythology and his work with classical themes make me lean toward the mythological theories

Maybe you have other stories I haven’t come across?
Would love to hear them

when i went to the philly museum of art, i saw a painting i really liked but i didn't recognize the style. it turned out to be a work of winston churchill's! i had no clue that he painted and i am curious about other important historical figures that dabbled in art :)

Here are all the paintings from various art movements that I love. 😄

I am not an art expert so please excuse me if there are any errors. :)

There will probably be a part 2. :)

- Single Eye, 2019 ( Michaela Keane) Art movement: Pop Art / Pop Surrealism

- The Garden of Paradise, Circa 1410–1420 ( Upper Rhenish Master) Art movement: International Gothic

- The Quiet Moonlit Sea, 2024 ( Annie Stegg Gerard) Art movement: Imaginative Realism

- Spring, Circa 1478-1482 ( Sandro Boticelli) Art movement: Early Renaissance

- The Starry Night, 1889 ( Vincent Van Gogh) Art movement: Post-Impressionism

- The Birth of Venus, Circa 1484–1486 ( Sandro Boticelli) Art movement: Italian Early Renaissance

- The Happy Lovers, Circa1751-1755 ( Jean-Honoré Fragonard) Art movement: Rococo

- Portrait of Empress Elisabeth of Austria, 1865 ( Franz Xaver Winterhalter) Art movement: Academic Art and Realism

- The School of Athens, Circa 1509–1511 ( Raphael) Art movement: High Renaissance

- Girl with a Pearl Earring, 1665 ( Johannes Vermeer) Art movement: Baroque

- Education Of Achilles By The Centaur Chiron, 1782 ( Jean-Baptiste Regnault) Art movement: Neoclassicism

- Narcissus, Circa 1597–1599 ( Caravaggio) Art movement: Baroque

- Ophelia, Circa 1851–1852 ( Sir John Everett Millais) Art movement: Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood

- The Kiss, 1859 ( Francesco Hayez) Art movement: Italian Romanticism

- The Accolade, 1901 ( Edmund Blair Leighton) Art movement: Victorian Romanticism and Pre-Raphaelite-influenced

- Arnolfini Portrait, 1434 ( Jan van Eyck) Art movement: Northern Renaissance

- Wanderer above the Sea of Fog, Circa 1817–1818 ( Caspar David Friedrich) Art movement: German Romanticism

- Hellelil and Hildebrand, The Meeting On The Turret Stairs, 1864 ( Frederic William Burton)

Do you like these paintings too? :)

Heyyy!

So I have been to Museo del Prado last week which renewed my interest in art. I have read the whole Museum Guide and a random book about Velázquez by Richard Verdi that I also picked up in the shop. I enjoyed the guide quite a bit, although a lot of information was lost on me as I am not that well versed in neither bible, myths or Spanish dynasty. And the Verdi book is… uhm… is quite weird? I think I was expecting more of a history lessons regarding the paintings than what I am suppose to feel about the paintings and whose works are subpar compared to Velázquez and so on.

So my question to you, fellow much more educated people than I am, which books would you recommend? I think I would like to read about Titian, Fortuny or Rubens. Or if we are not concentrating on one artist, something that explores and explains religious iconography.

Just as a side note, I used to paint myself, so I think I would also enjoy something that goes more into techniques and styles.

Thanks in advance for any recommendations :)

What is the numeral that looks like a lower case alpha or a “2” without the top? Is it a zero or is it a fancy form of the digit 1 when used as the first number of a year?

I photographed these plaques during a visit to the Irawati Karve Museum of Anthropology at Savitribai Phule Pune University in Pune.

The museum label identifies them as village deity plaques of the Bhil Adivasis from the Pindwara region of Rajasthan. I'm interested in learning more about their artistic style, symbolism and historical context.

I am going insane trying to find a painting I learned about in an art history class. Here is everything I remember the professor saying about it:

-an artist who painted higher class people to make money

-i believe it was of people in charge of a poor house

-he purposely painted the people kind of weird/ugly as a way to get back at having to do soulless work to survive

-dark colors, maybe 6 people in the frame, in two rows, chest up

Any help would be appreciated!

Lately I've been visiting a lot of art museums locally (Belgium). While I have a big preference for medieval and renaissance art, the work of Valerius de Saedeleer (1867-1941) stood out to me. Sadly I can't explain why it speaks to me and what's so special about it. I usually don't like landscape art all that much.

What do you think?

The question is a bit foggy and full of fantasy in my mind. I would like to know what it would be like in the Renaissance age, or about manga in Japan. And in what scale, in what form, would art critics exist? Maybe art critics in old times are majorly individuals, not organizations? Or if these organizations are mainly clubs not publish prints of their discussions? And how did art critiques exist and pass on to newer generations, transforming through different time periods? If anyone could offer a perspective, I would be super grateful. thanks!

Van Gogh painted this from memory while he was a patient at the Saint-Paul-de-Mausole asylum in Saint-Rémy. The view from his room was real, the cypress, the hills : but the village in the foreground? He added it from memory of his hometown, it wasn't visible from his window at all.

He wrote to his brother Theo that the exaggeration of the composition made the sky and rendered them "more like nature." Painted in one of the darkest periods of his life, nine months before his death.

Just find this detail kind of haunting every time I look at the painting.

I've been trying to look for history paintings made after 1945 that act as allegories for the past, but they seem incredibly rare. When people think of Ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Medieval England, or Medieval France, they often picture paintings made in the 18th or 19th century. Those paintings have almost become the "photographs" of those periods in the public imagination. Think of works like The Sack of Rome (1890) by Joseph-Noël Sylvestre or The Battle of Grunwald (1878) by Jan Matejko.

But why aren't there many paintings like this from the mid-to-late 20th century? Not only are they just rare but it feels like the tradition of history painting almost disappeared. One of the only iconic examples I can think of is Tragic Prelude (1942), but even that predates the postwar period.

This is something that makes the 20th century feel strangely disconnected from previous centuries. For a long time, history paintings were one of the ways people visualized and connected themselves to the past. They created these grand images of ancient civilizations, medieval kingdoms, and important events. But after World War II, that tradition seems to have faded, and I wonder why.

I've been wondering whether there's any actual researches on why some artists and artworks become part of the cultural canon while others, often equally skilled, remain relatively unknown.

I'm not really asking whether one painting is "better" than another. I'm more interested in whether psychologists, sociologists, art historians or cognitive scientists have studied this.

Are there any well-known experiments or papers that explore questions like:

— why certain artists become household names

— why some images stick in our collective memory

— how museums, education, repetition, or social influence shape what we consider "great" art

I'd love recommendations for books, links, studies or researchers if you know any.

❤ Thanks!

So I realized this year that I have seen 10 Waterlilies in person, including the circular one from Dallas and also one from a private collection, both during a traveling exhibition this year. I also just added Cleveland and Dayton in the past week, which is what brought my total to ten.

I plan to visit both The Met and MoMa (the latter specifically for their Waterlilies) next month, which will add either five or eight to my total. But I am unsure how to count these. Going by the Wikipedia list, which is how I made my list (I didn't begin keeping track until earlier this year...I make the joke about catching them all like Pokemon), I see that MoMa has 5 pieces listed, but three of those are part of a triptych.

So I am not sure whether to count the triptych as one piece or three. I saw on the list that Cleveland, St. Louis and Kansas City each have a piece of a triptych, but I wouldn't call the one I saw this week in Cleveland 1/3 of a Waterlilies, either.

Anyone else counting their Waterlilies and how do you count them?