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Paintings on art route B
30 of 411 paintings
A man travelling from Jerusalem to Jericho was attacked by thieves who stole his clothes and left him for dead. A priest and a Levite saw the injured man but both passed him by. A Samaritan bound the man’s wounds, put him on his own mule, and carried him to an inn, where he left money for the man...
While carrying his cross, Christ stumbles and falls. One of Christ’s executioners raises a fist to strike him and another pulls him by a rope around his waist. In the distance is Calvary, the barren hill with two crosses where Christ will be crucified. The Virgin follows her son and wipes her tea...
Christ arrives at the temple to find it full of money-changers and traders. Christ says, ‘My house shall be called a house of prayer, but you have made it a den of thieves. And the blind and the lame came to him in the temple; and he healed them’ (Matthew 21: 12–15).Jacopo Bassano has depicted bo...
A young couple sit on the grass in a shady glade. The woman’s hair is unbound, and her dress disturbed. In one hand she holds reed pipes, with the other she either restrains her lover or encourages him to move the crimson cloak over her lap. A naked, winged cupid crowns them with a wreath. A wood...
Christ’s hand is raised with his index finger pointing upwards, perhaps towards heaven, represented by the sunlit sky through the window. He holds a scroll inscribed: EGO. SVM. LVX. MŪD. meaning ‘I am the Light of the World’ (John 8: 12). Christ goes on to promise that ‘he who follows me will not...
A young woman, wearing a crimson robe and pearl necklace from which a gold cross is suspended, stands in an imaginary architectural setting. An opening into what appears to be a brightly lit courtyard reveals a precarious, twisting flight of stairs. A man in a dark costume stands at the top, appa...
A black eagle soars into the clouds with a naked youth clutched in its talons. In Greek mythology, Jupiter was infatuated with the handsome youth Ganymede, whom he abducted in the guise of an eagle and carried away to the home of the gods, Mount Olympus, where he was made their cupbearer.The sole...
The story of Eurydice and Aristaeus is told by the Roman poet Virgil. In the far distance Orpheus, Eurydice’s husband, charms wild animals with his music. Three nymphs gather flowers, unaware that the shepherd Aristaeus is pursuing Eurydice. She is bitten by a snake as she runs away. Identifiable...
Saint Jerome kneels against a rocky ledge in the wilderness contemplating the crucified Christ. Savoldo was particularly admired for his depictions of dawn and dusk and the dramatic lighting effects they produced. The painting is signed on the rock below the open book: ‘Giovanni Girolamo of Bresc...
After supper with his disciples, Christ rose and began to wash their feet (John 13:2–17). When Peter refused to allow this, Christ replied that if Peter would not allow him to wash his feet then he had no place with him. Peter then asked Christ to wash his hands and head as well, but Christ said...
Vincenzo Morosini (1511–1588) was a powerful Venetian official from one of the oldest, proudest and richest families of Venice. He was a Knight of the Golden Stole, a Venetian order of knighthood represented by the embroidered stole he wears over his shoulder.He observes us with a shrewd and slig...
Saint George plunges his lance into the jaws of the dragon which, according to legend, inhabited the lake outside the city of Lydda in the Holy Land. He has arrived just in time to save the princess, who had been presented as a sacrifice to the creature. The dead body of one of the dragon’s earli...
The Three Kings have come to visit the infant Christ in the stable where he was born. They bring gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh, and have journeyed from the East (Matthew 2: 10–12). The stable at Bethlehem is attached to the ruins of a great classical building with a triumphal arch in the...
Saint Nicholas lived in the fourth century and was a bishop of Myra, on the southern coast of modern Turkey. His relics were taken from Myra to Bari in Italy in 1087 and remain there today, which is why he is known as Saint Nicholas of Bari. He is the model of our ‘Santa Claus’ because of a lege...
This is one of Veronese’s earliest works, painted when he was about 18, probably for a noble patron in Verona. The lighting from the right suggests that it was made for a specific location, perhaps the side wall of a chapel.The painting’s subject has been the matter of much debate but it is now b...
Helen or Helena was mother of the first Christian emperor, Constantine. She dreamed that an angel revealed to her the location of the cross on which Christ was crucified and urged her to travel to the Holy Land to find it. She dug up three crosses and, by testing their healing power, was able to...
Alexander the Great, the Macedonian emperor, visits the distraught family of King Darius III of Persia, who he has defeated in battle. Darius’s mother Sisigambis mistakes Alexander’s friend Hephaestion, who wears plate armour and an orange cloak, for the victor. Alexander comforts Sisigambis, who...
In Roman mythology, the princess Europa was abducted from the coast of Tyre by the god Jupiter, who had transformed himself into a bull. We see her mounting the beast in the foreground and being carried away towards the sea at the lower left. Baby cupids throw fruit from the trees while the amoro...
In this painting, Saint Ambrose (about 340–398), Bishop of Milan, stops the Emperor Theodosius (about 346–395) and his retinue from entering the city’s cathedral. This was a punishment for Theodosius‘ massacre of the people of Thessalonica, who had murdered his general, Butheric.This story was re...
This uproarious crowd of mythical characters is noisy and ill-behaved, but meant to make you smile. The old man who has lost his clothes in the revels is Silenus – in Roman myth, the teacher and mentor of Bacchus, the god of wine. In the seventeenth century, the Roman myths were popular as subjec...
A group of men out on a lion hunt are now being hunted themselves. In this brown monochrome sketch, Rubens – famously an accomplished painter of horses – has masterfully captured the movement of the rearing horses and thrusting spears, and the terrified faces of the men as they struggle to fend o...
A crowd of people relax on a grass bank, enjoying the spectacle of a flamboyant procession celebrating the return of a great general and his army. The columns and alcoves of classical Roman buildings tower over them. Below, trumpeters and pipers blow their instruments and animals are led to the s...
In this lively oil sketch, Rubens experiments with ideas for the design and composition of one of a series of paintings on a hunting theme commissioned by Philip IV of Spain to decorate his hunting lodge, Torre de la Parade, just outside Madrid. Rubens’s assistants would have used the sketch as a...
Rubens made this oil sketch, along with two others, in preparation for an altarpiece commissioned for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent. The central panel depicts Saint Bavo, a Roman soldier who left the military for the Christian Church, being received as a monk. This scene, in which King Clothar and h...
This picture was made for King Charles I of England and given to him by Rubens, who was acting as an envoy of Philip IV of Spain, in 1630. The two countries had been at war for five years and both sides were keen for a peace deal. The painting is an allegory, the figures representing different vi...
Thomas Howard (1585–1646), 2nd Earl of Arundel and Surrey, was a prominent political figure and a distinguished patron and connoisseur of the arts. Rubens met him on his visit to England in 1629/30, when Arundel was 44 or 45 years old. This portrait isn’t dated, but may well have been made during...
This scene makes up the central panel of an altarpiece Rubens made for St Bavo’s Cathedral, Ghent; this painting is a preliminary sketch for the work. Saints Amand and Floribert receive Saint Bavo, a former Roman soldier, on the steps of St Peter’s Church, also in Ghent.A cleric holds the black h...
Peter Paul Rubens’s Samson and Delilah portrays a tragedy of love and betrayal. Delilah, Samson’s lover, has been bribed to discover the secret of Samson’s supernatural strength. Rubens shows the moment when Delilah tells an accomplice to cut his hair, leaving him powerless. Outside, soldiers wai...
In this exuberant picture, Rubens seems to suggest that apotheosis – a person being elevated to divine status – is not a wholly majestic and dignified affair, as it is presented in many other contemporary paintings. Here, it seems that any great man taken to heaven and granted immortality by the...
This design for a silver basin depicts a number of episodes from classical myth. Venus, the goddess of love, steps out of the giant shell from which, according to Hesiod’s Theogony and the Homeric Hymns, she was born. The birth of Venus from the sea is a playful subject for a basin design: as the...