Gerard van Honthorst | Adorazione del Bambino, 1619-1620

Adoration of the Christ Child (Italian: Adorazione del Bambino), is a circa 1619-1621 oil on canvas painting of the Nativity by the Dutch Golden Age artist Gerard van Honthorst (1590-1656) in the collection of the Uffizi in Florence.

The Adoration of the Child shows a moonlit scene with Mary laying the Child in swaddling clothes.

Joseph is looking over her shoulder and two angels are leaning over the crib.

Gerard van Honthorst | Adoration of the Christ Child, 1619-1620 | Uffizi Gallery, Florence

Allegory of Poetry

Auger Lucas (French Rococo Era painter, 1685-1765) | An Allegory of Poetry

As a literary device, an allegory is a metaphor in which a character, place or event is used to deliver a broader message about real-world issues and occurrences.

Allegory (in the sense of the practice and use of allegorical devices and works) has occurred widely throughout history in all forms of art, largely because it can readily illustrate or convey complex ideas and concepts in ways that are comprehensible or striking to its viewers, readers, or listeners.

Writers or speakers typically use allegories as literary devices or as rhetorical devices that convey (semi-)hidden or complex meanings through symbolic figures, actions, imagery, or events, which together create the moral, spiritual, or political meaning the author wishes to convey.

Many allegories use personifications of abstract concepts.

Barbara Longhi (1552-1638) | Pittrice Manierista

Barbara Longhi è stata una pittrice Italiana.

Fu una stimata ritrattista, ma solo poche sue opere ci sono pervenute, in parte riconducibili all'attività svolta nella bottega del padre, dove le era affidato il compito di produrre piccole tele su tema religioso, destinate alla devozione privata.

Nacque a Ravenna, dove trascorse l'intera sua esistenza.

Era figlia di Luca (1507-1580), noto pittore manierista🎨 e di Bernardina Baronzelli.

Allegory of Music

Francesco Trevisani (Italian Rococo Era painter, 1656-1746) | An allegory of music

The word Music derives from Greek μουσική (mousike; "art of the Muses").

In Greek mythology, the nine Muses were the goddesses who inspired literature, science, and the arts and who were the source of the knowledge embodied in the poetry, song-lyrics, and myths in the Greek culture.

Allegory of painting

Artemisia Gentileschi🎨 (Italian Baroque Era painter, 1593-1652) | Self Portrait as the Allegory of Painting, 1638 (detail) | Royal Collection

First attested in English in 1382, the word allegory comes from Latin allegoria, the latinisation of the Greek ἀλληγορία (allegoría), "veiled language, figurative", which in turn comes from both ἄλλος (allos), "another, different" and ἀγορεύω (agoreuo), "to harangue, to speak in the assembly", which originates from ἀγορά (agora), "assembly".

Camillo Rusconi | Scultore barocco

Camillo Rusconi (Milano, 14 luglio 1658 - Roma, 8 dicembre 1728) è stato uno scultore Italiano.

Figlio di genitori originari del Cantone Ticino, fu allievo a Milano di Giuseppe Rusnati.

Giunse a Roma nel 1684, data in cui è documentato nella bottega del ticinese Ercole Ferrata, un artista formatosi nella scia di Gian Lorenzo Bernini.

Lavorò inizialmente ad opere minori, per lo più in stucco, poste a decorazione di architetture (a San Silvestro in Capite, San Salvatore in Lauro, Santa Maria in Vallicella).

Gerrit Dou (1613-1675)

As the son of a glass engraver, Gerrit Dou began by learning to engrave and paint glass.

In 1628, he was apprenticed to Rembrandt.

Here Dou learned the art of chiaroscuro, the contrast of light and shade which became his speciality: his candlelit scenes became all the rage.

Dou’s genre paintings also sold for high prices.

Godfried Schalcken | Pittore di genere

Godfried Schalcken o Schalken (1643-1706) è stato un pittore Olandese.

I quadri di Schalcken sono caratterizzati dai giochi di luce: era solito dipingere soggetti in ambienti scuri illuminati da candele.

Studiò pittura sotto la guida di van Hoogstraten a Dordrecht ed in seguito con Gerrit Dou a Leida.

Gabriel Metsu | Baroque painter

Gabriel Metsu (1629-1667), Dutch painter was a Dutch Golden Age painter famous for his genre works of quiet domestic scenes with an open doorway.

He was a contemporary, in the Delft Guild of St. Luke, of Jan Vermeer with whom his work shares themes and style.

De Hooch was born in Rotterdam to Hendrick Hendricksz de Hooch, a bricklayer, and Annetge Pieters, a midwife.

Frans Hals | Baroque Era painter

Frans Hals the Elder (1582-1666) was a Dutch Golden Age painter, normally of portraits, who lived and worked in Haarlem.

He is notable for his loose painterly brushwork, and he helped introduce this lively style of painting into Dutch art.

Hals played an important role in the evolution of 17th-century group portraiture.

Adriaen Brouwer (1605-1638) | Genre painter

Adriaen Brouwer (Oudenaarde, c. 1605 - Antwerp, January 1638) was a Flemish painter🎨 active in Flanders and the Dutch Republic in the first half of the 17th century.

Brouwer was an important innovator of genre painting through his vivid depictions of peasants, soldiers and other 'lower class' individuals engaged in drinking, smoking, card or dice playing, fighting, music making etc. in taverns or rural settings.

Rembrandt | Old Woman Cutting Her Nails,1655-60

Once well known as a Rembrandt🎨, this large canvas has also been attributed to the master's pupil, Nicolaes Maes (1643-1693), and to Abraham van Dijck (ca. 1635?-1680?).

The two artists were closely associated in Dordrecht, the southern Dutch city from which several Rembrandt🎨 followers came.

Whatever its authorship, the painting must date from about 1655-60.

Othello and Desdemona's painting

Desdemona (The Song of the Willow) is based on a print, part of a suite of etchings by Chassériau illustrating Shakespeare’s Othello, which was published in Paris in 1844.

It depicts act 4, scene 3 of the play, a final moment of calm preceding Desdemona’s murder by her husband, Othello.

Desdemona’s maid, Emilia, who was complicit in orchestrating the crime, shrinks away, cringing at the knowledge of what is about to occur.

The lyre Desdemona holds was not described by Shakespeare; Chassériau observed it in an 1836 production in which the role was performed by the celebrated singer Maria Malibran Garcia (1808–1836), called La Malibran. | © The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Théodore Chassériau | Desdemona (The Song of the Willow) 1849 | The Metropolitan Museum of Art

Adam de Coster (1586-1643) | Card players by candlelight

In the absence of signed and documented works by Flemish painter🎨 Adam De Coster (1586-1643), all attributions have been based on Lucas Vorsterman's engraving after a lost original entitled "The Trick-trak player".

The present painting, which was also engraved by Vorsterman, shares a number of similarities with this key, lost work.

Both compositions are multi-figural and lit by candlelight, with a figure in the foreground partially shading the light source.

The artist adopts a low viewpoint in both paintings which means that the table-tops are hardly visible.

Werner van den Valckert | A girl holding pancakes in a feigned stone window, 1624

Werner van den Valckert (1580/85-1627) was a Dutch🎨 Golden Age painter and engraver.

Though he was born in Amsterdam, he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in the Hague between 1600-1605.

By 1614 he had moved to Amsterdam, because his daughter was baptized there. His earliest dated etchings are from 1612.

His surviving paintings are historical allegories and portraits.

He also made a prestigious schuttersstuk, which features the Amsterdam burgermeester Albert Burgh.

Abraham Brueghel (1631-1690)

Abraham Brueghel è stato un pittore Fiammingo.

Appartenente alla celebre dinastia dei Brueghel - era figlio di Jan il Giovane e nipote di Jan Brueghel dei Velluti; il suo bisnonno era il celebre Pieter Bruegel il Vecchio, Abraham Brueghel trascorse, al contrario dei suoi famigliari, quasi tutta la vita in Italia, dove giunse nel 1649.

Abraham dipinse quasi solo composizioni di fiori; la sua prima commissione importante fu quella per il nobile messinese Antonio Ruffo, un raffinatissimo collezionista che fu il primo italiano a richiedere un'opera di Rembrandt.

Auguste Rodin / Shakespeare | Romeo and Juliet, 1905

Silenzio! Quale luce irrompe da quella finestra lassù?

È l'oriente, e Giulietta è il sole.

Sorgi, vivido sole, e uccidi l'invidiosa luna,

malata già e pallida di pena

perché tu, sua ancella, di tanto la superi in bellezza.

Non essere la sua ancella, poiché la luna è invidiosa.

Il suo manto di vestale è già di un verde smorto,

e soltanto i pazzi lo indossano. Gettalo via.

È la mia donna; oh, è il mio amore! se soltanto sapesse di esserlo.

Rubens | Portrait of Susanna Lunden, 1622

This painting is one of the most famous by Peter Paul Rubens🎨 (Flemish Baroque Era painter, 1577-1640) in the Collection of the National Gallery, London.

The title 'Le Chapeau de Paille' (meaning The Straw Hat) was first used in the 18th century. In fact the hat is not straw; 'paille' may be an error for 'poil', which is the French word for felt.

The hat, which shades the face of the sitter, is the most prominent feature of the painting.

The portrait is probably of Susanna Lunden, born Susanna Fourment, third daughter of Daniel Fourment, an Antwerp tapestry and silk merchant. Her younger sister Helena became Rubens's second wife in 1630.

Rembrandt e l'ispirazione Indiana

Alla fine della sua carriera, Rembrandt Harmensz van Rijn (1606-1669) creò una serie di disegni insolitamente meticolosi raffiguranti imperatori e cortigiani di Mughal India.

Questa mostra esplora gli studi accurati del maestro olandese sulla ritrattistica imperiale di Mughal e li colloca all'interno di un più ampio circuito di scambi interculturali.

Accostando i disegni di Rembrandt con dipinti indiani di composizioni simili e abbinando opere d'arte di Mughal a stampe europee che li hanno ispirati, affascinanti storie si sviluppano sul flusso di arte e idee attraverso il tempo e gli oceani.

El Greco | The Adoration of the Name of Jesus, 1579

The larger version of this picture is in the Escorial in Madrid, and was probably intended for King Philip II.

El Greco made small copies of several of his own pictures to keep in his studio, of which this is probably one.

The subject is thought to be an allegory of the Holy League, a military alliance between Spain, the Papacy and the Venetian Republic, which was formed to combat the rise of Islam and the Turks.

The Pope, the Doge of Venice and Philip II are shown kneeling in adoration of the name of Jesus, shown in the heavens as IHS, these being the first letters of Jesus in Greek (IHSOUS).