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A band of indigenous Americans ride horses toward and through a herd of buffalo, which spreads along a river that winds through plains to mountains in the deep distance in this horizontal landscape painting. The scene is lit with golden light that warms the browns and harvest yellow of the landscape. Several dead or injured buffalo lie across the ground close to us, along with the body of one hunter, barely visible between the bodies of two animals. Just beyond the corpses, one hunter rides a rearing white horse as he lifts a spear lined with feathers high over a charging buffalo to our right of center. Facing away from us, the rider has light brown skin and a feather headdress over long dark hair. He wears a pumpkin-orange loincloth and red and orange bands encircle the ankle, thigh, wrist, and upper arm facing us. Sage-green grass grows in tufts on the dirt ground, which is littered with several animal skulls around the charging buffalo and rider. A smaller buffalo looks on from our left, and a prairie dog pokes its head out of hole in the ground in the lower left corner. A little distance away to our right, along the edge of the canvas, seven hunters gallop into the scene, leaning forward over their horses’ necks. The dozen or so buffalo nearby, as well as a fox and two deer, move away from the hunters, headed to our left. Hundreds of buffalo dot the landscape along the banks of the winding river and some wade in the water. A few trees rise on the plain but the land is mostly flat until it reaches the mountains and cliffs along the horizon, which comes halfway up this composition. Forms along the horizon could be a line of clouds or snow-covered moutains in the deep distance. A few wispy white clouds float across the watery blue sky above. The artist signed the work in the lower right corner: “Albert Bierstadt.”

We look across a wide, low clearing at a mountain rising beyond rocky hills, which are mostly covered in pines and blazing red and orange autumn trees, in this horizontal landscape painting. The green grass of the clearing is littered with dead trees and stumps. Beyond a narrow opening between the hills, almost at the center of the composition, a massive mountain towers against the powder-blue sky, nearly reaching the top edge of the painting. The mountain’s jagged face is mottled with warm tones of cinnamon, rust, and caramel brown. The scene is bathed in warm light coming from our right but pewter-gray storm clouds move in from the upper left to encircle the mountain peak. Closest to us, a line of broken tree trunks spans the width of the painting, mixed with scarlet-red, marigold-orange, and green vegetation and reeds. A silvery pond lies just beyond them to our left. Tiny in scale within the landscape, a horse and rider gallop along a wide dirt road emerging from the lower right toward a white house nestled at the foot of the hill to our left. The rider wears a knee-length, denim-blue tunic and red leggings. Upon closer inspection, two children and a white dog become visible, walking toward the rider. A straw-yellow structure sits against the hill to our right. A horse-drawn carriage moves away from the house in the far distance, where the road curves toward the notch. The artist signed and dated the painting as if he wrote directly onto a broken trunk in the lower left corner of the painting: “T. Cole 1839.”

We look across a palm-tree lined river winding into the distance before a monumental, snow-covered mountain at the center of the composition in this horizontal landscape. The spit of land along the riverbank in the lower left corner is filled with lush vegetation, including waving ferns, vines, leafy trees, and palm trees. At the bottom center of the composition, along the shoreline, a boat with a pointed prow is occupied by three people wearing white pants. Two of the men are bare-chested and the third wears a red shirt. The boat is covered with a rounded, hut-like structure and tendrils of white paint, perhaps indicating smoke from a fire, waft up in front of the opening to the structure. The placid river widens beyond the boat and across from us, the distant shore is lined with white buildings with brown thatched roofs and a white church with two spires and a red tile roof. Trees around and beyond the buildings fill in the space before brown hills that eventually lead to the snowy peaks of the central mountain. The earthy moss and sage green and tawny brown of the vegetation and river closer to us fades to pale caramel and pinkish-tan in the hazy distance. A few birds fly across the pale blue sky to our left, and wisps of light gray clouds float in from our right. The artist signed and dated the work in the lower left corner: “Church 1854.”

By the 19th century, Niagara Falls was already an iconic American landscape, nearly verging on mythical. Thomas Cole visited the landmark in May 1829 and composed this romanticized, autumnal scene the following year. In amplifying the natural grandeur of the American landscape, the artist wilfully ommitted the factories, scenic overlooks, and hotels that populated the area in the early 19th century.

A man stands and a woman sits near a herd of seven cows under a light-drenched sky in this horizontal landscape painting. The herd gathers on a grassy rise just beyond some large boulders and twiggy branches. The cows are caramel or copper brown and ivory white. They stand and lie, legs tucked demurely beneath their hulking bodies, facing different directions, their short horns curling like parentheses against the sky. The man stands on our side of the herd with his back to us to the left of center. He holds a tall shepherd’s staff in one hand as he hunches slightly and points with the other, to our right. He wears a high-crowned, wide-brimmed black hat, a crimson-red jacket, black trousers, and black knee-high boots. A knapsack hangs across one shoulder and rests behind his left hip. The woman sits on the far side of the herd so we see her under the man’s raised arm. She looks at him, her face peachy and round under a wide-brimmed straw-colored hat. She wears a white shirt under a robin’s egg-blue dress, and also holds a tall staff upright with both hands. Two more pale-skinned people sit on the ground or on a donkey in the near distance to our right, near the right edge of the canvas. Both wear hats and earth-toned clothing in black, gray, and blue. The donkey stands facing us, its face low, and a pair of baskets are slung across its back. The people and cattle cast long shadows from the setting sun, out of view to our left. The sunset ignites the undersides of the towering, slate-gray clouds with peach and gold against the ice-blue sky. A body of water stretches from beyond the low hill to a distant shore, where stone ruins are outlined on the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. A flock of six birds and another pair dot the sky.

This painting shows a green landscape from an elevated viewpoint. In the distance, light blue water meets a pale-yellow sky, and the sun casts a golden glow over the landscape. Closest to us is a shore covered in overlapping greenery and several round trees. There is a small hill on the right, with a small gray structure sitting atop it. At the bottom, two indistinct brown animals graze on a dirt mound. Behind them, another gray building is tucked away behind bushes and trees. Golden clouds drift across the sky.

The Windmill

A view across a wide, brightly lit field scattered with broken pieces of stone is framed to the left and right by crumbling stone temples in this horizontal painting. The sunlight is infused with a soft pink glow, which warms the cream-white stone with a pale blush. The temple on our left sits on a low rise, and a row of at least nine columns topped with an entablature faces our right. Several of the columns are broken off, and part of the entablature and the entire roof is missing, from what we can see. Fragments of pediments and wheel-like sections of columns tumble down from its front steps and back along its side, cascading into and across most of the field before us. The rocky terrain is carpeted in celery-green growth speckled with sage green and areas of rust red in the lower left and right corners. Barely visible in the center of the field, are two men, barely taller than the fragments they inspect. One man wears an apricot-orange suit and bowler hat over blond hair. He kneels with his back to us as he writes or sketches on a piece of paper. A second man stands to his right, also with his back to us, dressed in a long pleated, white tunic with a red cap, jacket, and knee-high boots. To our right and farther back than the other temple, a brick-red tower stands next to another columned arcade. A third temple there, or perhaps another part of that building complex, has columns carved into the shape of six identical, robed women, facing our left. Beyond the ruins, the field slopes down to a peach-colored plain that ends at a wide, topaz-blue body of water with mountains in the far distance along the low horizon line. A petal-pink haze rises from the water and mountains and almost fills the blue-gray sky above. The artist has signed and dated the painting in the lower left, “S.R. Gifford 1880.”

View of Schroon Mountain, Essex County, New York, After a Storm

The Burning of the Houses of Lords and Commons, 16 October 1834

We look slightly down onto a rocky, natural stone arch next to a cave opening, both perched on a high, grassy cliff in front of a shimmering, aquamarine-blue body of water in this horizontal landscape painting. The arch is situated to our left of center, and the cave beyond the gaping opening extends off the left side of the canvas. In tones of ash and caramel brown, the jagged arch and outcroppings are lit from our left so deep shadows are cast along crevasses to our right. Shadow also sweeps across the emerald-green grass at the base of the arch and cave. A few more serrated rocks poke out of the water like teeth far below, to our right, presumably at the base of the cliff on which we are situated. To our left, the rocky shoreline juts into the water in the distance in front of mauve-purple mountains in the deep distance along the horizon, which comes about halfway up this composition. Tiny in scale, minuscule, triangular white sails dot the waterway. Similarly tiny white birds fly high above the water. Pale, petal-pink and white clouds line the horizon beneath a sky that deepens from light turquoise over the clouds to the same aquamarine blue of the water below.

This is a landscape painting depicting a body of water surrounded by greenery, with tall green and purple mountains in the background under a sky full of dark pink clouds and a strip of bright blue-green. To the right of center, a person stands in the water, submerged up to their thighs. The person faces away from us. Their skin is painted in shades of light orange and tan, and they have an orange cloth wrapped around their waist. They hold a long, thin spear, and look down at the water. Behind them, on the opposite shore, another indistinct person looks on, standing on the grassy green ground. At the edge of the tall mountains is a line of green trees. The wide water reflects the green and purple of the mountains, as well as the pink of the sky.

Twilight in the Wilderness

From a low vantage point, we look up a steep, rocky mountainside at a towering mountain peak in the distance in this nearly square landscape painting. Painted with tones of cobalt and topaz blue, caramel and clay brown, mauve pink, lavender purple, ivory, and cream white, the rocks and mountain nearly fill this composition against a deep, crystal-blue sky dotted with a few white puffy clouds. Water trickles along the rocky ground into a white waterfall near the lower left corner. Vibrant green moss grows on some of the smaller rocks that form a diagonal line down to the lower right corner. Larger boulders are painted with denim blue and harvest yellow beyond the smaller rocks. The rocky landscape slopes dramatically up into the distance, where it meets the sheer cliff face of a back-lit monolith that nearly touches the top edge of the canvas. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially along the center for the middle distance. Light pours over the scene from the left, but some of the middle ground is cast into shadow, perhaps by unseen ridges.

This painting depicts a coastal scene with a perspective from the water. There are dark, billowing gray clouds above the horizon, and the sky is pale orange. Below, large sailboats are on the dark water, as well as some smaller rowboats and a few pieces of driftwood. The water reflects the ships and the colors of the sky. On the left is a low stone building on a bit of green land, and there is a green hill in the distance on the right, covered with houses and small buildings.

Low Tide at Pourville, near Dieppe, 1882

A flatboat with eight light-skinned men floats toward us down a wide river in this horizontal painting. The boat nearly spans the width of the composition and has low sides and a shallowly arched, low cabin upon which the men gather. At the center, a man with dark hair and wearing light blue trousers and a pink shirt dances with one foot and both arms raised. To our right a seated musician plays a fiddle, and to our left a smiling man holds up a metal pot and strikes the flat bottom with the back of his fingers. The remaining men sit or recline around the musicians and dancing man, some looking toward the dancer and two looking out at us. Bedrolls and animal skins are stored in the cabin below. The olive-green surface of the river is streaked with pale blue. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition. The trees and riverbanks in the distance are hazy beneath a watery blue sky.

Der Auszug der Römer aus Vicenza

Mount Asama, byobu by Aodo Denzen, Tokyo National Museum, Japan

Fishing Boats with Hucksters Bargaining for Fish

A Woodland Fête

Große Praterlandschaft

The Battle of Waterloo

Sonniges Felsental

Sand Dunes, Carson Desert, Nevada

Washington Crossing the Delaware

The Bathers, Souvenir of the Banks of the Anio River at Tivoli

Estérel Village

Crémieu, Seen from Chaillonnette

Approximately two dozen people gather around a man standing with his mouth wide open and holding up two objects in a scarlet-red structure on a horse-drawn cart in this horizontal painting. The people appear to all have pale skin and most are men. Near the center of the composition, the man in the cart wears a white robe over a black, high-collared garment and a tall charcoal-gray hat. A hatch on the red structure appears to be open, and he holds up what might be books or pamphlets. A ginger-brown horse stands behind him with its head bowed. In the crowd, the men wear black, brown, gray, dark blue, or olive-green clothing and hats. Two women are to the left. One wears a green gown with a pumpkin-orange shawl and a wide-brimmed bonnet. She faces away from us. She and two men talk near a stand where another man and woman sell food and drink. More people gather around a second stand or structure beyond this, and, in the lower left corner of the painting, a man with white hair and a hooked nose and chin sits by an open cart with a sign reading, “Bear O! Pi Aiggs.” A few men dance and others mill about to the right of the cart. Closer to us, one boy runs toward another as a soldier lies belly-down on the ground, holding a bayoneted rifle out toward a brown dog. The dog crouches with its mouth open. Beyond the dancers and onlookers, a field stretches back to wooded hills. In the field, more than a hundred people stand or march in lines. Lavender-tinged clouds pile up in the blue sky over the horizon, which comes about halfway up this composition.

The Sunlight

Italienische Landschaft

The Pyrenees, the Peak of the Midi de Bigorre

Allegory of Sacred Music

The painting depicts a wintry scene from an elevated point of view, showing people skating and playing games on a frozen river. On the left, leafless trees line the frozen bank. On the right, there are brown buildings with snow on their roofs and smoke rising from their chimneys. A woman stands on one of the porches, holding a small child. On the snowy ground outside the buildings, a sled is being pulled by two horses. In the center of the painting is the wide frozen river. The people on it wear colorful clothes in shades of red, yellow, green, blue, and brown. Some of them slip and fall on the ice, and others lace skates on their feet. Four men in the center hold long curved sticks and look towards a small round ball on the surface of the ice. In the distance, the horizon is marked by blue-tinged mountains under a cloudy gray sky.

Ungarischer Bauernhof

A Farm in Brittany

This painting shows two women walking towards the left on a gray-brown shore, dressed in white blouses and blue skirts, one wearing red stockings. They both have pale skin, and their faces are turned away from us. Their skirts are blowing in the wind, and strands of dark hair have come out of their low buns. The sea behind them is turbulent with crashing white and blue waves, under a dark gray overcast sky. The shore is dotted with small areas of green, white, and rusty red. The scene is painted in soft and fluid strokes.

Indian Camp, Roberval, P.Q.

Sloop, Nassau

The Pigeon Tower at Bellevue

This painting shows a landscape with a village seen from above. The view includes red rooftops and a white church with dome-shaped structures. In the background, there are distant mountains in shades of purple, blue, and red. There are dark green trees on the left, in front of what looks like a pale body of water. Closest to us is a strip of green that suggests a hilltop. The sky above is cloudy, with shades of gray and cream. The brushstrokes in the painting are thick and fluid.

Marshland

This painting shows a village nestled in hills and trees with a cloudy blue sky at the top. Closest to us are simple white buildings, some with white spires and others with red and brown roofs, surrounded by tall trees. In the distance there are hills, smaller trees, and sailboats on a body of water on the right. The artwork has visible brushstrokes, and the buildings are simple and flat. The color palette is earthy, with soft greens, warm tans, and light whites and yellows.

Ivy Lane

Combat for the Colors

Hebe

Hunting Scene

Orpheus

Sahurs Meadows in Morning Sun

A buck jerks to the right as it leaps toward us, over a boulder and away from a rolling river in this horizontal watercolor painting. The buck is just right of center, and his body scissors, presumably as a gunshot lands. His curling horns nearly meet in an oval overhead, and one front leg is pulled up. The river is painted with tones of spruce green and sapphire, topaz, and celestial blue. The black silhouettes of two animals, either more deer or dogs, are in the distance to the right, and a white puff is along the far bank to the left. The forested background is painted broadly with tones of earthy green, tan, and smoky blue. The artist signed and dated the watercolor in the lower left corner, “Oct 12 1892 Homer.”

On the Sands

Summer Night

We look across a coral-pink beach that curves around a royal-blue bay, under a glimmering, pale blue sky in this horizontal watercolor landscape. The area of the beach closest to us is cast under a pale, plum-purple shadow. The beach curves away from us and to the right, like a backward C. At the curve, a short distance from us, a bank of emerald-green vegetation and a scrubby, dark green tree leads back to a low, grassy hill. A pair of two-story buildings with oyster-white walls and bright white roofs perch on the spit of land opposite us, across the water. Pale pink boats are pulled up onto the beach in front of and to our left of the buildings. The buildings and the green hill reflect in the water, which laps against the sand closest to us with bands of azure blue. More loosely painted buildings line the horizon, which comes about a third of the way up the composition. Two brick-red smudges to our left could be people standing at the water’s edge in the distance. The sky above has puffy white clouds against a brilliant blue sky. The artist signed the painting in the lower left, “HOMER.” In the lower right, the location and date are written in dark gray, “Salt Kettle Dec 1899.”

Rectangular plots of flowers, each in a single color, stretch toward us below a sky nearly filled with cream-white clouds in this horizontal landscape painting. Together, the monochromatic plots create the impression of a patchwork quilt, with large areas of pale pink, butter yellow, bright white, and baby blue. A person walks across the plots to our right. The horizon line comes almost halfway up the painting and is lined with dark brown houses with tall, pitched roofs. Two barren trees twist into the cloudy sky. The loose, short, parallel brushstrokes and touches of paint create a soft, hazy effect.

View on the Columbia, Cascades

Figures in the Woods

Amitabha Triad, Tokyo National Museum

This painting depicts a green field of cotton plants with white blossoms. Three individuals are seen harvesting the cotton. They appear to be wearing skirts and bonnets and have dark skin, although their faces aren’t detailed. The background includes buildings on the left and green trees against a pale blue sky with hints of grey. The painting utilizes loose, visible brushstrokes. The color scheme is warm and natural, featuring shades of green, brown, and muted tones.

The Trojan Women Setting Fire to Their Fleet

Well at the Side of a Road

Maharana Bhim Singh in Procession

Path Near the Pond of Vipers, Fontainebleau Forest

The image shows an elevated view of a landscape with hills and a river or lake in the distance. Several buildings, including a church, are scattered across the land. Soldiers in red and white uniforms are lined up near a stone wall and gravestones in the foreground. The sky is blue with a few scattered clouds. The painting style uses precise brushstrokes, featuring a color palette of soft blues, greens, reds, and muted tones.

The Town on the Hill, New Almaden

We look across a stream and through a loose screen of shadowy trees at a sunlit farm under a powder-blue sky with towering, puffy clouds in this vertical landscape painting. The ground and stream closest to us are painted in tones of olive green, sepia and earth brown, black, and slate gray. Nearly lost in shadow, a group of six people gathers at the water’s edge in the lower left. Small in scale within the composition, they wear brick-red, gray, or caramel-brown garments. Beyond them, a low picket fence winds through and between a loose band of shadowy trees, which are painted with gnarled, dark gray trunks and camel-brown, sage, and pine-green leaves. The trees to our left are closer and taller, while those to our right are a little farther away. The sun pours from the upper left into the field beyond. The farm buildings there have tan walls and sloping, peach-colored roofs. A few animals and people, smaller than the group in front, stand among the buildings, and more cottages can be glimpsed through a stand of trees on our right. The horizon line comes about a third of the way up the composition, and a church and steeple are silhouetted against the sky in the deep distance. A few birds fly in front of gray and white clouds that rise from the right side and spread across the top of the canvas.

This painting depicts two nude women standing, facing the left. The women have pale skin, and the woman on the left has red-blond hair while the woman on the right has dark brown hair. They are both reaching upward, and behind them is a tall tree with green leaves. Behind the tree is a green landscape with distant blue mountains under a cloudy blue sky.

The work of Carl Blechen, a pivotal ﬁgure in 19th-century German painting, marks a transition from Romanticism to a more realistic view of nature. Inspired in part by his encounter with the Italian landscape and light during a trip he made around 1828 or 1829, Blechen developed a ﬂuid technique that enabled him to capture ﬂeeting atmospheric effects. He often used his landscapes as settings for mysterious ﬁgures, reﬂecting his early contact with Romantic painting and theater.

The Blue Boat

Gazing at a Waterfall

Prince and Princess Hunting Blackbuck

Gibbons in a Landscape

Hunting near Hartenfels Castle

Edward Sheriff Curtis Self-Portrait

Thomas Jonathan Jackson

Mount Sainte-Victoire

Natural Bridge, Bermuda

A rutted, dirt road curves from the bottom center of the canvas toward and behind a grove of tall trees to our left, beneath a pale blue sky with fluffy white clouds that fills the top two-thirds of this horizontal landscape painting. The broad, green canopies of the trees to our left create deep shade over twisting trunks, shrubs, and grasses. A narrow stream meandering alongside the road to our left reflects the moss, pine, and sage greens of the leaves. The land rises in a sloping bank to our right, and leads back to open fields with hedgerows that stretch to the horizon. Shorter, more spindly trees cluster along the bank in the distance. Tiny in scale, people are sprinkled throughout the landscape, either singly or in small groups. In the shade of the grove to our left, a man with dark pantaloons, a brown hat and coat, and a walking stick strolls along the road with a woman wearing a red skirt, a dark shirt, and a white apron and cap. Just off the curve of the road to our right, another man with a walking stick, tan hat, and dark gray pantaloons talks to a woman also wearing red, black, and white. Another person, slightly smaller in stature, stands between them. At a pond farther back from this trio, a man with a broad-brimmed hat sits fishing at the edge of the water. Barely visible, a house with a pitched roof, a tall, brick-red chimney, and a white picket fence peeks out from behind the trees beyond the pond. Finally, a man wearing a rust-orange coat, gray pantaloons with white stockings, and a tall hat, carrying a pole propped on his shoulder, walks toward us on a footpath running alongside the fields. Tall, cream-white clouds dot the pale blue sky above, and tiny dots of dark paint suggest flying birds. Soft sunlight pours across the countryside. The artist signed and dated the painting in small script in the lower right corner: “meijndert Hobbema F 1663.”

On the River

Howling Wolf in a Deep Mountain Valley

Youth Playing a Pipe for a Satyr

screen by Fukae Roshu "Narrow ivy road". Six-fold screen, color on gold leafed paper, Important Cultural Property

The Pond at the Entrance of the Woods

Two Poplars in the Alpilles near Saint-Rémy

Vase of Flowers

A Procession Scene with Musicians, from a copy of the Padshanama

A three-storied, white manor house with a rust-red roof and wings extending off both sides sits across an emerald-green lawn lined with tall, sage and dark green trees in this horizontal painting. Straw-brown paths lead to the house from either side of the lawn, where they meet an oval-shaped path directly in front of the house. The grassy area inside the oval is cordoned off with posts and weighted chains. Closer to us, three men, two women, and a gray dog stand on the lawn. Two of the men wear uniforms with navy-blue, button-lined jackets with golden yellow epaulets and collars, dark, tricorn hats, and butter-yellow britches over black, knee-high boots. The third man wears a brown suit with a white collar. Both the women wear white dresses. One has a sky-blue sash around her waist and the other has a black shawl wrapped across her torso, and wears a white bonnet. Two light-skinned people, perhaps a man and a child, walk along the path to our left, wearing gray suits. Four people closer to the house have brown skin. One of them, a woman, stands at the front center of the oval path and other three men approach a door in the wing to our left. One of that trio carries a shovel over his shoulder, one a rake, and the other a staff. A carriage guided by a seated horseman and pulled by four horses enters the scene from our right. To our left and right, covered walkways connect the main house to the side wings. The wing to our right is mostly hidden by trees and cut off by the right edge of the painting. The wing to our left has a teal-blue roof, red brick chimneys, and the same white walls as the manor. The main house has a triangular pediment over the front door and chimneys to each side of the red roof. A spire-like lantern is at the center of the roofline, over the pediment. Faint, wispy white clouds billow against the azure-blue sky above. Centered at the bottom of the scene across a white margin are the words, “A VIEW OF MOUNT.VERNON THE SEAT OF GENERAL WASHINGTON.”

Sunset at Gloucester

Copy of The Night Watch

The Pink Cloud

Three men with crowns and wearing gold-trimmed robes stand and kneel before a woman sitting on a wooden, box-like seat holding a baby to our right, in front of a rocky cave and landscape, in this horizontal painting. A balding man with a gray beard and hair, Joseph, and two younger people with blond hair stand around the woman, Mary, to our right, while a group of five young men or boys and three horses gather near the left edge. All the people have pale skin. Mary, the baby Jesus, Joseph, and the three men closest to them all have shimmering gold halos. One balding man with a long white beard kneels and kisses the baby’s feet. He wears a gold and crimson-red brocade-like robe over a burgundy-red garment, and he holds a pointed gold crown in his right hand, which rests on the ground. Behind him and to our left, a younger man with curly blond hair and goatee, wearing a wine-red tunic belted with gold and a gold crown on his head, holds his hands in prayer as he kneels down on one knee. The third stands to our left, cleanshaven with long blond hair. He wears a fur-lined, thigh-length scarlet-red robe and a gold crown, and he holds up a gold vessel in one hand. To our right, Mary wears a lapis-blue robe that covers her head and falls to her feet. The baby is covered only by a white cloth across his hips, and he has short blond hair. He touches the kneeling man’s head with one hand. His body is pudgy but his face has more adult-like, delicate features. Joseph stands at the woman’s far shoulder, wearing a butter-yellow robe over a rose-pink garment. His hands are gathered on a walking stick in front of his chest and his brows are furrowed with deep lines. One of the two younger people behind Mary, to our right, holds a lidded gold vessel. The group of five attendants to our left gather around cream-white, gray, or chestnut-brown horses. These blond people wear garments of dark olive-green, coral-red, royal-blue, or rose-pink tunics over black stockings. The rocky, brown cave behind Mary and Jesus, to our right of center, is occupied by a donkey and an ox behind a wooden trough. The landscape beyond is segmented into quilt-like squares of stylized crops. The horizon line comes almost to the top edge of the panel beneath a narrow strip of vivid, cobalt-blue sky. A gold star like a sunburst with rays of light hovers over the woman and child.

The Orange Christ

A Calling

This painting shows a person in a small boat on a body of water. The person is all the way on one end of the boat, leaning towards the right and reaching out over the side of the boat, holding a rope that appears to be tied to the white antlers of a large brown deer that is almost completely submerged in the water. A black-and-white dog swims in the water behind the deer. The person has pale skin and short brown hair, and they are wearing a black hat and a gray coat. The boat is gray-brown, and the water below is painted with lines of blue, white, green, and teal. The background is a mix of dark gray and olive green.

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo’s work epitomizes the brilliant exuberance of the Late Baroque style. Internationally renowned, Tiepolo was often commissioned to transform palaces and monasteries in Venice and elsewhere in Italy, as well as in Germany and Spain. This painting and three others at the Art Institute once graced the cabinet of mirrors, a richly decorated room in the Venetian palace of the powerful Cornaro family.

The Mower

The Fishermen (Fantastic Scene)

Heron on a Willow Branch

This painting shows a view of a calm body of water with greenery surrounding it. Across the water appears to be a hill or shore that slopes upward to the top of the painting, painted in gray and cream tones and covered in palm-like plants in shades of green, brown, and rusty red. A similar plant is visible near the bottom right corner in a dark shade of yellow. The water in the center is painted in shades of blue with some ripples across the top. The brushstrokes are fluid.