The Museum Without Walls

As an avid sailor and designer of boats, Caillebotte often drew upon his personal experiences in his paintings. The flat-bottomed skiff, whose name stems from the French verb périr (to perish), was considered somewhat dangerous owing to its design. The sense of precariousness is heightened by the viewpoint Caillebotte chose, which may have been inspired by Japanese prints. While such images had an impact on all the impressionists, Caillebotte went further than any of them—here he placed viewers high above the scene, presumably looking down from midair.

Goya was one of the greatest portraitists to ever wield a brush, with a keen eye for discerning the character of the sitter and conveying it on canvas. Alongside the well-known dramatic and historical paintings, he, like every Spanish artist before him, produced many religious works, all of which evinced a depth of feeling for the sacred not expected from a professed free-thinker. And, above all, throughout his career, he did hundreds of genre paintings, "scenes from Spanish life," most of which, like this one of a group of boys "playing at giants," are keenly observed vignettes infused with an appreciation of the lighter side of human life.

It is thought that the Sumerians believed both gods and humans were physically present in their statues. Votive figures (like this one from the "Square Temple" at Eshunna/Tell Asmar) were placed in temples to pray perpetually on behalf of the (usually powereful) persons they represented. They were sometimes inscribed with the names of rulers and their families. Deities literally inhabited their cult statues after they had been animated by the proper rituals, and fragments of worn statues were preserved within the walls of the temple.

In this painting Lily Furedi boldly took the viewpoint of a seated rider gazing down the car at her fellow passengers. The Hungarian-born artist knew of the subway riders' customary avoidance of staring at one’s fellow riders; most people in her painting keep to themselves by hiding behind a magazine or newspaper, or by sleeping. Those who violate the unwritten rule do so furtively. Only two women in the foreground, who obviously know each other, dare to look directly at each other as they talk companionably.

Bruegel painted this picture when he was still living in Antwerp and supplying drawings to the engraver Hieronymus Cock. Turning his back on the then-dominant Italian models, he plunges into the then old-fashioned tradition of Hieronymus Bosch's world, canvases filled with a bewildering and apparently inextricable mixture of persons and shapes. Emerging from distant depths in a halo of light, monsters are thrown to earth as from a breaking wave. Angels combat them, led by St. Michael, thin as a rake in his golden armour, striking with his sword at the dragon with the seven crowned heads on which he has his foothold.

Dürer prepared the painting of St. Jerome (Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga, Lisbon) in several sketches. His model was a 93 year-old man from Antwerp. In this naturalistic brush drawing, the old man is already leaning his head on his hand, but in contrast with the painting is engrossed in his studies. In a handwritten note above the picture Dürer informs us that: "The man was 93 years old and still healthy."

Sandino stands at the center of the present painting, flanked by five of his generals and tightly framed by an archaizing, architectural backdrop bathed in prismatic light and shadow. Morales describes the group’s well-worn field uniforms in dim, variegated tones of ocher and brown; the flecked patina of their khaki garments, no less of the sidewalk and walls around them, is meticulously rendered with the fine, cross-hatched scrapes of a razor blade drawn across the canvas.

As a feat of perspective, the picture is remarkable, for out of the apparently concave surface of the shield -- in fact convex -- the Gorgon's head seems to project into space, so that the blood round her neck appears to fall on the floor. In terms of its psychology, however, it is less successful. The boy who modelled the face (in preference to a girl) is more embarrassed than terrifying. For once Caravaggio cannot achieve an effect of horror; he was to find in the legends of the martyrs a more powerful stimulus to the dark side of his imagination than classical myth.

Here Turner brings the great force of his romantic genius to a common scene of working–class men at hard labor hauling the coal that would fuel Britain's drive toward world empire. An almost palpable flood of moonlight breaks through the clouds in a great vault that spans the banks of the channel and illuminates the sky and the water. The heavy impasto of the moon's reflection on the unbroken expanse of water rivals the radiance of the sky, where gradations of light create a powerful, swirling vortex. Through the shadowy atmosphere ships' riggings, keels and keelmen, fiery torches, and reflections on the water merge into a richly textured surface pattern.

Michelangelo, in this Pietà, did not portray any precise historical moment . Nicodemus has taken the place of the Madonna and she, with Mary Magdalen now does what the angels did, supports the body. There is no longer only the mother, but three people are now surrounding the body, and Christ's deadness is expressed more effectively by the falling movement in which he is caught halfway. The figures are not isolated from the emaciated dead body: they are blended, in their fear, desperation and pain, into a single setting. The bodies are denied any independent power and there is nothing to point to a higher meaning of this suffering, such as redemption.

"Liberty Leading the People" is a sort of epic narrative of the woman who quits her hearth to espouse a great cause. There is a carpet of bodies beneath her feet as she leads the ravening crowd. Her naked breasts have come to embody the social virtues of Republicanism, a point officially acknowledged by the generous diffusion of the image in the form of French stamps. It is also the first modern political composition. It marks the moment at which Romanticism abandoned its classical sources of inspiration to take up an emphatic role in contemporary life.

With this picture Georges Seurat recast Impressionism, using as his guides both optical theory and idealist aesthetics. The hieratic figures, shown mostly in profile or straight-on, recall ancient Egyptian reliefs, and the deliberate compositional rhythms amount to a pointed critique of Impressionist ephemerality. As if to dispel any lingering doubts on this point, Seurat also rejected free, sketchy handling, choosing instead to render the entire scene with meticulous, dotlike touches of paint, which, viewed from a certain distance, resemble nothing so much as tapestry stitching.

The title of the picture is questionable. It shows a scholar at the moment when a supernatural appearance (with definite Christian symbols in it) attracts his attention and causes him to interrupt his work and rise from his desk. One realizes at once that Rembrandt's conception of a scholar contains supernatural elements, and we are made aware of the mysteries inherent in the spiritual world. The light is arbitrary, expressive of a spiritual content beyond the power of man; the space is subordinated to the chiaroscuro device, and its rational construction is less essential than the expression of some deeper emotional content.

One of Hokusai's most dramatic prints liberates the strong emotion compressed into this single stanza by Gochunagon Teika (Fujiwara Sadaie, 1162–1241): Waiting/for one who does not come/my passion burns/as the unceasing fires/beneath the salt-pans around/ Matsuho Bay. Teika, one of Japan's greatest poets and critics compiled the first collection of one hundred poems by one hundred poets.

Despite the gay setting and almost tangible refreshments on the bar, this is, upon close examination, a "dark" picture. The barmaid, exquisitely adorned in black velvet, looks worn and tired, staring blankly at the viewer. We see what she sees before her through its reflection in the bar's mirror -- a sea of men in tophats making their moves on the brightly dressed jeune filles in attendance, the entire ensemble seemingly oblivious to the high-wire act of the trapeze artist whose legs we see dangling from left corner of the canvas.

More than any other Friedrich painting this one seems to beg for a symbolic interpretation. Given that she's stepping towards the light like an early Christian in prayer, some like to interpret it in terms of a communion with nature. On the other hand, the atmosphere evoked in Friedrich's painting is ambiguous -- it might be dusk rather than dawn (note the alternative titles) -- which naturally prompts others to interpret the abruptly-terminating path as an announcement of death, and the boulders scattered alongside the path as symbols of faith. To each her own. It's a fine image nonetheless.

July: More of the harvest; the sheep are being shorn and the hay is being reaped. In the background is the Château du Clain near Poitiers. The Limbourg brothers, or in Dutch Gebroeders van Limburg (Herman, Paul, and Johan), were famous Dutch miniature painters from the city of Nijmegen. They were active in the early 15th century in France and Burgundy, working in the style known as International Gothic.