Tag: painting

All the articles with the tag "painting".

• What to See at the Museo del Prado: The Masterpieces That Matter

  Published: 24 Jun, 2026

  • 10 min read

  What to see at the Museo del Prado: the dozen masterpieces, from Bosch and Goya to Titian and Durer, that you should not leave Madrid without standing in front of.

• The Man in the White Shirt: Goya's Third of May 1808

  Published: 22 Jun, 2026

  • 10 min read

  Goya's Third of May 1808 painted a faceless firing squad executing a man in a white shirt with his arms thrown wide, and invented the modern image of war.

• The Painting Nobody Can Explain: Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights

  Published: 21 Jun, 2026

  • 10 min read

  Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights is a painted triptych of paradise, a naked human carnival, and a music-powered hell, and nobody is sure what it means.

• The Man Who Signed His Own Face: Durer's 1498 Self-Portrait

  Published: 20 Jun, 2026

  • 10 min read

  At twenty-six, Albrecht Durer painted himself in Italian silk and fur with his name and a date, the first Western artist to make a self-portrait this self-aware.

• The Striped Posts: Manet's One Trip to Venice

  Published: 28 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  Manet went to Venice once, in 1874, with his brother-in-law. He came back with two paintings of the Grand Canal and a pair of striped mooring posts.

• The Square Format and the Trunk: Klimt's Forest Paintings

  Published: 27 May, 2026

  • 12 min read

  Between 1900 and 1916, Klimt spent every summer on Lake Attersee painting trees from no more than fifteen feet away. The forest paintings are what he made instead of women.

• Bitten in the Eighth Circle: Bouguereau's Dante and Virgil in Hell

  Published: 27 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  A twenty-five-year-old academic painter spent eight months painting two damned souls biting each other in the eighth circle of hell. The Salon hung it on the back wall.

• The Glare That Outlasted the Salon: Cabanel's Fallen Angel

  Published: 27 May, 2026

  • 11 min read

  Cabanel was twenty-three when he painted Lucifer's tears of rage. The painting was rejected from the Salon. A century later it became the most-shared image on Tumblr.

• The Painting That Looks Back: Velazquez's Las Meninas

  Published: 26 May, 2026

  • 13 min read

  Velazquez painted himself painting the king and queen, who are not in the picture except as a reflection, in a Madrid room you can still stand in.

• The Painting He Could Not Stop Repainting: Monet's Woman with a Parasol

  Published: 25 May, 2026

  • 10 min read

  Monet painted his wife Camille standing on a windy hilltop in 1875. Eleven years later, four years after she died, he painted her again from memory.