Jan Jozef Horemans, The Younger Art

This commanding mid-17th-century Spanish Baroque painting depicts Saint Elijah wrapped in a coarse Carmelite habit and raising a flaming sword. Towering within the vertical composit...

This important oil painting on canvas, although it is not signed as is almost always the case with this artist's paintings, is attributed to the great Genoese painter Luciano Borzone...

A very important painting by the great artist of the Florentine school, Onorio Marinari. Dr. Silvia Benassai has confirmed Marinari’s authorship of the Saint Margaret of Antioch; ava...

On offer is an 18th- or 19th-century copy of Sir Anthony van Dyck's 1630 painting, “The Rest of the Holy Family during the Flight into Egypt.” The original painting hangs in Munich’s...

This exceptional Circa 1700 Spanish Colonial oil on canvas is a quintessential masterpiece of the Cuzco School (Escuela Cuzqueña), capturing the distinct syncretic artistry of vicere...

Provenance: Marquis of Leganés, Diego Mexía de Guzmán y Dávila (1580–1655), inventory number 464, listed as “Portrait of the Maestre de Campo Juan de Castro dressed in a red garment,...

In the foreground, we see two conquistadors and three natives accompanying them landing on the shore, presumably on a reconnaissance mission in an unfamiliar bay. Perhaps they are in...

This expressive genre scene, an oil on canvas, presents a magnificent example of Baroque-era painting. The dramatic narrative of the "dice game" subject - where the emotions of an ea...

The painting Juno and King Aeolus at the Cave of Winds by Randa depicts a dramatic scene from Greco-Roman mythology. It portrays Juno, the queen of the gods, visiting Aeolus, the rul...

This early 18th-century oil painting by an artist active in the workshop of Francesco Solimena (1657-1747) depicts the Virgin Mary holding the sleeping Christ Child, with Saint Josep...

A beautiful, fascinating painting depicting one of the figures from Frans Hals’s famous painting *The Banquet of the Officers of the St George’s Militia* The reverse bears the artist...

Attentive observer, may I challenge you to find some unusual elements in this panel painting? One detail has to do with the symbolic use of color, the other with a later adjustment of the image. Indeed! The Blessed Virgin is not dressed in her usual sky blue cloak, which refers to her purity, but in a red robe. During the Late Middle Ages and early Renaissance, the Virgin often wore such a red garment to refer to the Passion of Christ. After all, the blessing Christ child with his orb would shed his blood for the redemption of mankind. The second strange element catches the eye when one looks closer at the little Jesus. It appears that he was originally depicted completely naked, but got on a transparent loincloth over time. In the past there were several times when nudity in art was subject to some form of censorship. For example, the supervision of Christian art was strongly encouraged by the Council of Trent (1545-1563). This assembly was dealing with the inner-ecclesiastical reform of the Roman Catholic Church. One of the important theologians who followed the council’s guidelines was Joannes Molanus (1533-1585). He did not consider the nakedness of the Christ Child to be edifying and pointed out that children could be endangered in this way. He may have been referring to the dangers of paedophilia. During the 19th century, puritanism emerged. A famous example of a moral preacher was Pope Pius IX...