Gallery C
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Paintings in this room
Two elegantly dressed couples have been making music on the banks of a small stream. The young man in the foreground pauses from playing his fiddle to watch the amorous couple on the other bank. The lady reclines beside her lover, and a lute and music lie abandoned on the grass. Music and playing...
A young woman in armour, her horse tied to a tree behind her, has wandered into a kind of rustic concert. A shepherd and his family are sitting outside their cottage; the elderly father weaves baskets out of reeds and his sons hold musical instruments.This pastoral idyll is a scene from an epic p...
Cows often feature in pastoral landscapes, but it is rare for them to be given quite such heroic status as the four monumental brown beasts which dominate the foreground of this large canvas. They relegate the shepherd to the hill and the milkmaid, who funnels the results of her labour into a bra...
Aelbert Cuyp is best known for landscapes which evoke a strong sense of peace, plenty and prosperity. This picture, which is probably an early work, is very different. It is defined by the lightning which flashes across the sky above Cuyp’s home town of Dordrecht. It captures an instant – the mom...
Elegant and full of self-confidence, the young Prince Rupert stands every inch a member of the royal Stuart dynasty. Known as Rupert of the Rhine, he bears a striking resemblance to his cousin the Prince of Wales, later Charles II. The portrait is designed to place us at his feet, and yet he look...
A maze or rocky grotto looks out over a cloudy mountainous landscape and meandering river. A turbaned man plays a lute by torchlight as three others embrace bizarre hybrid women. One has a serpent for a tail, another has the face of a pig, a third has the head of a reptile. Two turbaned figures,...
As punishment for revealing the future to mankind, King Phineas of Thrace was blinded and had his food continually stolen by the harpies, who were half human and half bird. The story is told in the Argonautica, an epic romance written by Apollonius Rhodius during the third century BC.A naked woma...
At the end of their long journey, three magnificently dressed kings offer gifts to the Christ Child, who is seated on the Virgin’s lap. Behind them, their retinue winds its way through the hilly landscape from Jerusalem, visible on a distant hilltop. This is the Adoration of the Kings (Matthew 2:...
The title of this painting originates from the idea that it portrays Diego Velázquez at the Spanish court, surrounded by royal personages and prominent humanists. The main figures in Velázquez’s Las Meninas (Prado Museum, Madrid) – including Velázquez himself and the young Spanish princess Margar...
Filippo Fasanini, who died in 1531, instructed the executors of his will to commission this altarpiece for his chapel dedicated to Saint Philip and Saint James in S. Domenico, Bologna. It is signed on the throne’s plinth: IERONIMVS. TREVISIVS. P.[INXIT] (‘Girolamo of Treviso painted this’).Filipp...
This altarpiece commemorates one of the most important events of the papacy of Pope Gregory XV (born Alessandro Ludovisi). It shows the Jesuits Ignatius Loyola and Francis Xavier being canonised (officially declared saints in the Roman Catholic Church). This occurred on 12 March 1622, the feast d...
Three young ladies are making music in a landscape of meadows and lakes. They are dressed in expensive clothes made from voluminous quantities of sumptuous silk, damask, brocade and velvet. The costumes, with their particularly extravagant sleeves, and the ornamentally plaited hair of the lady on...
The Virgin and Child are seated on a throne in front of a cloth of honour in this large and highly decorative altarpiece. They are surrounded by saints, in a composition known as a sacra conversazione (‘holy conversation’). On the Virgin’s right are Saints John the Baptist and Gall, the patron of...
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...
Moses stands on the left, his hand raised as he beckons people to gaze upon the bronze serpent coiled around the pole held by Eleazar, a priest. The scene is taken from the Old Testament: God had sent a plague of ‘fiery serpents’ to punish the Israelites for their sinfulness and lack of faith (Nu...
Within a sprawling rural landscape, the Virgin Mary is seated with the Christ Child in front of a classical building. She holds her sleeping son tenderly while three figures – an unidentified female saint and Saint George with the princess he rescued – gaze at him in awe. The infant Saint John th...
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...
Following his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig on 19 October 1813, Napoleon was forced to withdraw west of the Rhine and retreat to France. As the French withdrew, they met a force of Austro-Bavarian troops, under the command of Karl Philipp von Wrede, on 30 October at the town of Hanau, near Fran...
This was the first of four battle scenes painted by Vernet for the Duke of Orléans. It shows the Battle at Jemappes, which took place on 6 November 1792 near the Walloon town of Jemappes. At that time Jemappes was in the Austrian Netherlands but is now part of the city of Mons in south-western Be...
Following his defeat at the Battle of Leipzig of 1813, Napoleon and his army were forced to retreat to France. This picture shows one of Napoleon’s last military successes on French soil before his initial fall from power. On 11 February 1814 he defeated two allied forces – the Russians and the P...
The Battle of Valmy was the French army’s first major victory during the wars that followed the French Revolution of 1789. It was both a strategic and a psychological victory for the new French government and helped ensure the survival of the Revolution, which was to transform Europe. The battle...
Christ knew Lazarus and his sisters, Martha and Mary, who sent for him when Lazarus became sick. He didn‘t go at once: Lazarus lived in Bethany, where Christ had been stoned for his radical preaching and his disciples were reluctant for him to return. On hearing that Lazarus was dead they set off...