A unknown Venetian artist’s September — a man pressing grapes beneath a vine — forms part of a vivid Renaissance painted door series depicting the traditional twelve Labours of the Months.
Maiolica Credenza
Eleonora Gonzaga’s magnificent gift to her mother Isabella d’Este — twenty-three maiolica dishes by Nicola da Urbino, the “Raphael of Maiolica” — united mythology, Renaissance patronage, and extraordinary ceramic artistry.
Off the harbor by Ioannis Altamouras
Altamouras’s moody seascape Off the Harbor — boats dissolving into a blue-white sky with no clear horizon — reflects his Impressionist awakening at Denmark’s celebrated Skagen Colony, tragically cut short by tuberculosis.
The Labours of the Months: August
Twelve tiny Venetian panels — vivid with ultramarine skies, vermilion clothing, and lush landscapes — capture the peasant Labours of the Months with charming decorative simplicity, once adorning a Renaissance palazzo’s doors.
Teaching with the Kritios Boy
The Kritios Boy — a masterpiece of the Severe Style — revolutionized Greek sculpture with its subtle weight shift and solemn naturalism, possibly portraying a Panathenaic athlete or the hero Theseus himself.
Mosaics from the Ilissos Basilica in Athens
The Ilissos Basilica, a 5th-century Early Christian monument in Athens, once richly adorned, now lies largely forgotten; its exquisite mosaics survive in the Byzantine and Christian Museum.
The Tennis Court Oath by Jacques-Louis David
The The Tennis Court Oath captures a defining revolutionary moment in 1789, where Jacques-Louis David transforms contemporary political history into a staged yet urgent vision of collective resolve and constitutional promise.
Lansdowne Portrait of George Washington
Grand and imposing, the Lansdowne Portrait presents George Washington as a dignified symbol of the new American democracy, inviting viewers to explore its meaning through symbolic, biographic, and artistic lenses.
The Labours of the Months: July
Introducing The Labours of the Months: July, inspired by Sir Charles George Douglas Roberts’s sunlit verse, celebrating seasonal rhythms, rural toil, and the harmony between nature, labour, and human life.
White Ships by John Singer Sargent
John Singer Sargent, master of Gilded Age portraiture, pursued artistic freedom through luminous watercolours, capturing Mediterranean light, movement, and the vitality of summer.