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Although the crown, sword and serrated wheel identifies this figure as the fourth-century saint, Catherine, it has also been suggested that the sitter is Catherine of Austria (1507-1578), daughter of Philip the Fair and Joan of Castile and Queen of Portugal from 1525. She wears a sumptuous and elaborately painted court dress painted with a markedly decorative intent. Signed on the sword, this is t
Born in 1507 after the death of her father, Felipe el Hermoso, the younger sister of Carlos V married Juan III of Portugal in 1525 and died in 1578. Gifted with an energetic character, she took on the regency of Portugal in the name of her under-aged grandson, Sebastián. Mor painted this more than half-length portrait during his stay in Portugal. It shows the queen standing next to a table,
Dürer made this panel and its companion, Eve (P02178) upon returning from his second trip to Italy in 1505. Both works constitute an effort to synthesize what he had learned there, in search of a balance between Italian and Germanic approaches that would permit the ideal perfection of the human body. Thus, the choice of a biblical subject here is mere pretext. Dürer´s knowledge of the cl
Padilla painted this, his absolute masterpiece, at the age of twenty-nine, and it directly led to his international fame as an artist. It is the most superb visual presentation of a subject with which he was obsessed throughout his life and in its capacity to sum up all of the ingredients of its genre, it may well surpass all other 19th-century history paintings. In effect, the canvas offers the m
This version of the Mona Lisa (Louvre) was painted by one of Leonardo’s pupils. The fact that each pentimento, or change, in Leonardo’s original (to the bust, outline of the veil and position of the fingers) is repeated here suggests that the two works were created simultaneously. There are also differences with respect to the original, in the unfinished landscape and on the face. Overall, the pan
In 1504, after training with Perugino, Raphael moved from Perugia to Florence, where he remained for four years to absorb the work of Leonardo and Michelangelo. His gradual mastery of classicism is visible in a series of Madonne that constitute a delicate series of variations on the subject of motherly love. One of these is the Holy Family of the Lamb, which is based on a preparatory drawing by Le
Like the painting of Adam (P02177), represented on a separate panel, Eve´s unstable posture, her rhythmical movements and her affected gestures are sometimes interpreted as a return to earlier models of Gothic art, instead of what they really are, a foretaste of Mannerism. The solidity of the two bodies, Eve´s slightly Gothic curves -the prototype of a Germanic Venus- and Adam´s fascinated express
On August 29, 1626, King Philip IV’s painter, Vicente Carducho (ca. 1576-1638), signed a contract for the creation of a cycle of paintings to celebrate the founding of the Carthusian Order by Saint Bruno and its leading members. This colossal undertaking sought to visually narrate numerous episodes from the Carthusians’ history and tradition. It was the most complete commission ever dedicated to t
This is a preparatory drawing for Vasari´s fresco of St. Luke Painting the Virgin in the Cappella di San Luca in S. Annunziata, Florence. In 1560 the chapel, formerly the Cappella Benizzi, was granted to the sculptor Fra Giovanni Angelo Montorsoli (c. 1507-1563), who had been inducted into the Servite Order at S. Annunziata some three decades earlier. He presented it to his fellow Florentine artis
