Untitled

Raphael

Medium: Oil on canvas

The monumental scale and complex composition of this painting have something in common with other forms of popular entertainments of the period - dioramas and panoramas. Such spectacular works used to travel from city to city in Europe and America, where they were displayed to receptive crowds in galleries and lecture halls. The English novelist Jane Austen was particularly impressed by West’s contribution to the genre: “I have seen West’s famous Painting, and prefer it to anything of the kind I ever saw before…[it] is the first representation of our Savior which ever at all contented me.” When the painting was featured in a special exhibition at the Museum in 1862, viewers received a three-page pamphlet explaining the scene.

Simon Bening

Christ Driving the Moneychangers from the Temple (1626) by Rembrandt

Holy Family with Elizabeth and Child John the Baptist (1615) by Jacob Jordaens

This biblical scene shows the Virgin Mary in the centre, radiant and with her right hand on her belly, greeted by her older cousin Elisabeth on a step of a classical building. Joseph is behind Mary on the left carrying a bundle of clothes and Zacharias stands in a doorway with another figure behind Anne, up some steps, on the right. The visit is recounted in the New Testament (Luke 1:36-56) of the Bible . It is similar in composition to an altarpiece attributed to Frère André now in the Musée de Toulon from the chapel of the Hospice Civil du Saint Esprit at Toulon.

The painting illustrates John 1:29-34. John sees Jesus approaching and cries out, “Behold the Lamb of God, behold him who taketh away the sin of the world.” The text then continues with John’s account of his vision of the dove when he baptizes of Jesus and his conclusion “that this is the Son of God” (John 1:34).

Blake devoted much of the year 1799–1800 to fifty biblical scenes drawn, a commission he received from his principal patron, the government clerk Thomas Butts. About thirty of these works have been identified; it is thought that some have not survived owing to the fragility of the materials. This scene illustrates verses from Luke I:11–13, in which the archangel Gabriel appears to the righteous Zacharias, a high priest of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, to announce that Zacharias’s elderly and barren wife will give birth to a son, Saint John the Baptist.

Death of Abel. second half 17th.century. Italian. oil/canvas. http://hadrian6.tumblr.com

Sandro Botticelli - The Man of Sorrows. 1500

This painting illustrates the plight of Ishmael after he and his mother have been turned out of Abraham’s household (Genesis 21). West exhibited the picture at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 1776. In 1803 he changed both the figures and the background, repainted the angel, added draperies, and submitted the painting for a second exhibition. The Royal Academy ruled that no artist could show a work twice. West, who was the academy’s president from 1792 to 1820, was outraged. The controversy continued until 1806, when West was finally allowed to exhibit the picture.

This painting tells a dramatic biblical story from the 6th century BCE. Babylonian king Belshazzar, in blue robes, committed an act of sacrilege by using sacred Jewish vessels during a lavish feast. When mysterious writing appeared on the wall, the prophet Daniel, clad in brownish-red robes, interpreted the message to foretell the downfall of the king’s empire. Within hours, Belshazzar was dead.

-King David Playing the Harp-

-Descent from the Cross-

-Lamentation-

-Beheading of St. John the Baptist-