Peder Mørk Mønsted, Summer day in Aalsgaarde , 1919

 Peder Mørk Mønsted, Summer day in Aalsgaarde , 1919 Oil on

Doni Tondo is the only finished panel painting by Michelangelo. It is so colorful and splendid that you can’t miss it on your tour of the Uffizi Museum.

The free audio tour of the Uffizi in the Amuze app tells you all about it: www.amuzeapp.com

 Doni Tondo is the only finished panel painting by

Look at these incredible brush strokes that Vincent van Gogh used for his self-portrait.

He applied here the revolutionary Pointillist technique (with small dots of paint) introduced by Seurat to create a magical self-portrait in 1887.

 Look at these incredible brush strokes that Vincent van

The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius is brilliant in its simplicity. It got very popular after it prominently featured in Donna Tartt's book with the same name.

It was probably part of a larger painting which may have been damaged during the large gunpowder explosion in Delft which also killed Carel Fabritius.

 The Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius is brilliant in its

What is your favorite type of French art?

You can take a free virtual tour and learn about 11 French art movements and their highlights in the Amuze app: http://amuzeapp.com

This painting is The Bathers by Paul Cezanne.

 What is your favorite type of French art? You can take a

With his use of colors, he can turn every activity into something Romantic.

Woman Sitting by a Window by Frantisek Dvorak (1862-1927) is so colorful and gracious at the same time. It shows some Neo-Romantic influences.

 With his use of colors, he can turn every activity into

Jan Adam Kruseman (1804-1862) was the portrait painter of choice for the Dutch high society in the beginning of the 19th century.

These two portraits are typical works, a person in the latest fashion with a dog.

 Jan Adam Kruseman (1804-1862) was the portrait painter of

Jan van Eyck included a truly incredible amount of details in his paintings!

There is a good reason that his Madonna of Chancellor Rolin is part of the highlights audio tour of the Louvre in the Amuze app: http://amuzeapp.com.

 Jan van Eyck included a truly incredible amount of details

Caravaggio is one of the most copied artists ever! Many copies of The Incredulity of Saint Thomas by Caravaggio exist, but Caravaggio was such a talented artist that the copyists were usually not getting close to the original.

Unlike for some other artists, it is usually not so difficult to separate the original Caravaggio from its copies.

 Caravaggio is one of the most copied artists ever! Many

William Hogarth's Beer Street shows all the good things that beer drinking does to people! Beer leads to happiness, prosperity, and just great people. And the British have never seemed to forget that lesson.

Prints of this engraving from 1751 are owned by several museums across the world, including Tate Britain. Read more about this work at my blog.

 William Hogarth's Beer Street shows all the good things

The dress of the woman in La Promenade by Renoir in the Getty Museum is not stained like an art critic of that time said, but it is the trademark impressionist painting style.

 The dress of the woman in La Promenade by Renoir in the

Vincent van Gogh admired Japanese prints so much that he collected and copied them. Left is Van Gogh's copy of the Plum Garden by Hiroshige (original on the right). Van Gogh appreciated these Japanese prints just as much as the works by Rubens and Veronese, some of the most famous Western artists.

 Vincent van Gogh admired Japanese prints so much that he

The combination of the gaslights and the rain, creates a romantic and mysterious atmosphere.

Paris at Night (1889) by Charles Courtney Curran captured the latest innovation of gaslights, which suddenly made the streets much safer at night.

 The combination of the gaslights and the rain, creates a

Portrait of Countess Mathieu de Noailles (1913) by Ignacio Zuloaga shows the brightly dressed countess staring at us provocatively. And we won't win the stare-down...

 Can you win the staring contest? Portrait of Countess

Johannes Vermeer (first pic) or Pieter de Hooch (second pic)? Which one do you prefer?

Both painted a woman with a scale within a couple of years and where probably inspired by each other.

 Johannes Vermeer (first pic) or Pieter de Hooch (second

Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945) loved to use bright and vivid colors to capture colorful people.

This is a portrait of the decadent and confident French writer and countess Ann de Noailles.

 Ignacio Zuloaga (1870-1945) loved to use bright and vivid

Malevich enjoyed painting peasant subjects in clear colors and cylindrical shapes early in his career. Taking in the Rye in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam is a great example of this colorful style.

Later in his career, his paintings became much more abstract and tried to depict pure feelings and spirituality.

 Malevich enjoyed painting peasant subjects in clear colors

Still lifes of flowers were invented in the 17th-century by Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder. He inspired artists like Manet, Monet, Van Gogh, and Warhol to paint their own flowers later on.

 Still lifes of flowers were invented in the 17th-century by

Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) (c. 1490 - 1576): The Death of Actaeon, c. 1559–1575,  Oil on canvas,  178.4 cm × 198.1 cm (70.2 in × 78.0 in), National Gallery, London

The Death of Actaeon is a late work by Italian Renaissance master Titian. It is probably one of the two paintings the artist states he has started and hopes to finish (one of which he calls "Actaeon mauled by hounds") in a letter to their commissioner Philip II of Spain during June 1559. Titian seems never to have resolved it to his satisfaction, the painting remained in his studio until his death in 1576.

It is a sequel of Titian's work Diana and Actaeon showing the story's tragic conclusion, which approximately follows the Roman poet Ovid's account in the Metamorphoses: after Actaeon surprised the goddess Diana bathing naked in the woods, she transformed him into a stag and he was attacked and killed by his own hounds. Both paintings belong to a group of large-scale mythological paintings inspired by the Metamorphoses and referred to by Titian himself as ‘poesie’, the visual equivalent of poetry.

 Tiziano Vecellio (Titian) (c. 1490 - 1576): The Death of

Caravaggio: Saint Matthew and the Angel, 1602, Oil on canvas, 295 cm × 195 cm (116 in × 77 in), Destroyed

Saint Matthew and the Angel is a painting from Caravaggio, completed for the Contarelli Chapel in the church of San Luigi dei Francesi in Rome. It was destroyed during World War II bombing, while housed in the Kaiser Friedrich Museum in Berlin. This work, as a pillar of the Baroque movement, might have provided new information about the artist and patron. Today it is  known only from black-and-white photographs and enhanced color reproductions.

In the painting the angel stands close to Matthew the Evangelist and engages in what appears more direct intervention than divine inspiration. The angel intertwines with the old man, apparently whispering inspiration into his ear.

Caravaggio was known in his time for realistic paintings, using models instead of standard convention and idealization. He made his figures lifelike and relatable, as opposed to portraying unrealistic or phony poses... And this image showed Saint Matthew as poorly groomed, with dirty feet. Although this was the style of Caravaggio, in this instance the church leaders thought it was too crude and did not want to have what looked like a peasant who looked as if just walked in off the street hanging in their sacred altarpiece. The patrons wanted an idealization of the beloved Saint, someone who its viewers could admire and strain to be like. Therefore it was rejected and replaced with a new version of the same subject matter.

 Caravaggio: Saint Matthew and the Angel, 1602, Oil on

Frida Kahlo: La mesa herida; (The Wounded Table), 1940, Oil on canvas, 122 x 244 cm, Unknown (possibly Moscow, Russia)

Kahlo painted this work during her divorce from Diego Rivera, and her state of mind is reflected throughout this painting. The painting resembles a skewed version of "The Last Supper" with Frida playing the role of Christ at the center of the table. She is surrounded by an eclectic assortment of characters: Cristina's two children, a large papier-mâché Judas, a skeleton, a pre-Columbian sculpture and her pet fawn Granizo. The Judas, the skeleton and the pre-Columbian idol are three of the four characters in her earlier painting "The Four Inhabitants of Mexico City", which has also been shared here.

The oversized Judas on Frida's right, dressed in blue overalls, represents Diego who betrayed her when he had an affair with her younger sister Cristina. The figure has his hands on the table as did the Judas that betrayed Christ. This gesture may be symbolizing Luke's words at the Last Supper: "…but behold the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table (Luke, 22:21). Despite the betrayal, Frida allows the Juda (Diego) to protectively place his arm around her.

To her left, the skeleton is holding a strand of Frida's hair…perhaps she is flirting with death. The pre-Columbian sculpture is intertwined with Kahlo, sharing the same arm symbolizing her connection to her Mexican roots. The threatening characters seem to be between the painter and the innocent figures of the children and the fawn, making them unreachable. This painting contains a lot of references to Frida's deformed leg and foot. The idol has peglegs, the skeleton and the Judas both have bandaged and bloodied feet and the table has flayed human legs. Perhaps she feels that her deformity in some way contributed to her breakup with Diego.

 Frida Kahlo: La mesa herida; (The Wounded Table), 1940, Oil

Paul Klee: Around the Fish, 1926, Oil and tempera on canvas mounted on cardboard, 46.7 x 63.8 cm (18 3/8 x 25 1/8"), Museum of Modern Art, New York City

A garnished platter fish is surrounded by a constellation of seemingly disparate elements - a cross, full and crescent moons, an exclamation point, a forked red flag - all hovering against a dark abyss.

Some of Klee's iconography grew out of his teaching; the arrow, which he initially used as a teaching tool to indicate force and emotion for his students at the Bauhaus, here points confrontationally towards a stylized head, possibly alluding to human consciousness.

Although they are often enigmatic, Klee believed his personal hieroglyphs and figurative elements had wider connotations: "The object grows beyond its appearance through our knowledge of its inner being, through the knowledge that the thing is more than its outward aspect suggests." (moma.org)

 Paul Klee: Around the Fish, 1926, Oil and tempera on canvas

Konstantin Makovsky (1839 - 1915): The Boyars' Wedding, 1883, Oil on canvas, 236.2 × 391.2 cm (93 × 154 in), Hillwood Estate, Museum & Gardens, St. Petersburg

Konstantin Yegorovich Makovsky was an influential Russian painter, affiliated with the "Peredvizhniki (Wanderers)". Many of his historical paintings, such as The Russian Bride's Attire (1889), showed an idealized view of Russian life of prior centuries. He is often considered a representative of a Salon art.

This large painting depicts one of the most important social and political events of old Russia, a wedding uniting two families of the powerful boyar class that dominated Muscovite politics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The artist has singled out that moment during the wedding feast when the guests toast the bridal couple with the traditional chant of "gor'ko, gor'ko," meaning "bitter, bitter," a reference to the wine, which has supposedly turned bitter. The newlywed couple must kiss to make the wine sweet again. The toast occurs towards the end of the feast when a roasted swan is brought in, the last dish presented before the couple retires.

The wedding takes place in a room very reminiscent of those in an old palace in the Kremlin. Various men and women in elaborate costumes of the period are grouped around a table in the center. The bride and groom stand at the right. In center background is a side board on which rests silver plate and to the left of this a servant brings in a cooked swan on a large platter. At left foreground is an ivory chest on which stands an enameled silver bowl. Various pieces of silver are on the table. The guests raise their glasses in a toast, while the matchmaker stands behind the bride and encourages her. (hillwoodmuseum.org)

 Konstantin Makovsky (1839 - 1915): The Boyars' Wedding

El Greco: Portrait of a Man (presumed self-portrait of El Greco), c. 1595 – 1600, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York City

El Greco, born Doménikos Theotokópoulos (1541 –1614; painter, sculptor and architect of the Spanish Renaissance. "El Greco" ("The Greek") was a nickname

El Greco was born in Crete, which was at that time part of the Republic of Venice, and the center of Post-Byzantine art. He trained and became a master within that tradition before traveling at age 26 to Venice, as other Greek artists had done. In 1570 he moved to Rome, where he opened a workshop and executed a series of works. During his stay in Italy, El Greco enriched his style with elements of Mannerism and of the Venetian Renaissance. In 1577, he moved to Toledo, Spain, where he lived and worked until his death. In Toledo, El Greco received several major commissions and produced his best-known paintings.

El Greco's dramatic and expressionistic style was met with puzzlement by his contemporaries but found appreciation in the 20th century. El Greco is regarded as a precursor of both Expressionism and Cubism, while his personality and works were a source of inspiration for poets and writers such as Rainer Maria Rilke and Nikos Kazantzakis. El Greco has been characterized by modern scholars as an artist so individual that he belongs to no conventional school. He is best known for tortuously elongated figures and often fantastic or phantasmagorical pigmentation, marrying Byzantine traditions with those of Western painting.

 El Greco: Portrait of a Man (presumed self-portrait of El

Caravaggio: David with the head of Goliath (self-portrait as Goliath), 1605–10, Galleria Borghese, Rome

 Caravaggio: David with the head of Goliath (self-portrait

Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617 – 1682): Three Boys, c. 1670, oil on canvas, 168.3 x 109.8 cm (66.26 x 43.23 in), Dulwich Picture Gallery, London

In the 19th century the painting's title, 'The Poor Black Boy,' implied that the black boy was begging for charity; that is, he asks for some pie from a white boy, who refuses, while another turns to the viewer and grins. However, his earthenware jug, clothes and shoes clearly indicate he is a servant or errand boy whose position is probably better than that of the white boys, who may have resorted to stealing the pie. The servant boy could even be a portrait of the son of Murillo's household slave girl, Juana de Santiago, who is thought to have been born in 1658 and whom Murillo freed in 1676. Indeed, it has been suggested that the two white boys are Murillo's own sons, Gabriel (b.1657) and Gaspar (b.1661).

This painting is unique in Murillo's works in that he appears to have changed his mind as he painted, a rare occurrence for an artist who is thought to have carefully planned and drawn out most of his compositions. Close examination of x-ray images reveals an earlier composition where Murillo depicted the seated boy with a smirking expression on his face, his teeth bared mockingly. In this version, instead of groping in the standing boy’s pocket, he defiantly pulls the black boy’s hand away from the pie. The subsequent changes to the composition shed light not only on Murillo’s working methods but also on the kind of poverty he wished to portray; he may have found the expression and gesture of the boy too physical and decided to subtly tone down the dynamics of the narrative. Although Murillo takes the reality of poverty as his cue, his artistic eye and sense of composition act as filters - this painting is by no means a realistic portrayal of vagrant life in 17th-century Seville. (Dulwich Picture Gallery)

 Bartolomé Estéban Murillo (1617 – 1682): Three Boys, c

René Magritte: La condition humaine; (The Human Condition )1933, Oil on canvas, 100 cm × 81 cm (39 in × 32 in), National Gallery, Washington DC

The Human Condition generally refers to two similar oil on canvas paintings by Magritte. The one, here was completed in 1933 and is in the collection of the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. The other was completed in 1935. It will be our next post.

La Condition Humaine, 1933 version, depicts a painting that exactly covers a 'real' landscape outside a window – thus raising questions about the 'location' of perception and thought. But Magritte's uncanny use of perspective, and his depictions of spaces that have ambiguous depth.

It exemplifies how, by both negating and affirming the opacity of the picture plane, perspective transforms the painting into a transitional object that is both 'there' and 'not there' simultaneously. Many of the painter's works, his 'window' series in particular, suggest approaching Albertian perspective itself as a question of object-relating, the simultaneous search for autonomy and ontological security through play. An understanding of how Magritte's ambiguous spaces suggest both security as well as open-ended possibility can help to link his work not only with the traditions of Renaissance perspective and its modernist critics, but also with the aesthetic of the sublime and its iconography of colossal, indifferent nature. Sublimity may be interpreted psychoanalytically as nostalgia for the scale of childhood experience – for the world viewed as an enormous room in which small objects assume monumental physical and symbolic proportions. (Eric Wargo)

 René Magritte: La condition humaine; (The Human Condition

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1868-69, oil on canvas, 252 x 305 cm., Kunsthalle Mannheim, Germany

The Execution of Emperor Maximilian is a series of paintings by Édouard Manet from 1867 to 1869, depicting the execution by firing squad of Emperor Maximilian I of the short-lived Second Mexican Empire. Manet produced three large oil paintings, a smaller oil sketch and a lithograph of the same subject.

Manet supported the Republican cause, but nonetheless was inspired to start work on a painting heavily influenced by Goya's The Third of May 1808. The final work, painted in 1868-69 is now held by the Kunsthalle Mannheim. The painting is signed by Manet in the lower left corner but bears the date of Maximilian's execution in 1867 despite being painted in 1868-9.

 The Execution of Emperor Maximilian, 1868-69, oil on

Henri Rousseau (1844–1910): Le Douanier (The Snake Charmer), 1907,  oil on canvas, 169 × 189.5 cm (66.5 × 74.6 in), Musée d'Orsay

Rousseau, who was self-taught and began painting late in life, travelled very little. Most of his jungles were painted in the Natural History Museum and in the big greenhouse in the botanical gardens in Paris. Like Roussel in his Impressions d'Afrique, Rousseau nourished his exotic dreams in Paris.

The Snake Charmer was inspired by the artist’s dreams and frequent trips to the botanical gardens in Paris. Rousseau once spoke of his love for the botanical gardens in Paris to the art critic Arsene Alaxendre, “When I go into the glass houses and I see the strange plants of exotic lands, it seems to me that I enter a dream.” Everything about the Snake Charmer is new: the subject first of all, a black Eve in a disquieting Garden of Eden, charming a snake as terrifying as the serpent in Genesis was seductive. Then the style: the bright, dense colours, backlit, anticipating the colours of a painter like Magritte, drawing that is both precise and naïve, and a vertical composition innovative in its asymmetry.

The human figure, the animals, and the weird vegetation have all been painted with the same painstaking care. This woman charms wild nature, or rather she transfixes it still in a strange silence. The fantastic world of this canvas heralds Surrealism

 Henri Rousseau (1844–1910): Le Douanier (The Snake

Paul Klee: Senecio (Head of Man Going Senile), 1922, Oil on gauze, 40.5 x 38 cm, (15.9 x 15 in), Kunstmuseum Basel, Switzerland

Head of Man was painted during what is called Klee's Bauhaus period. In 1919, Klee was invited to teach at the Bauhaus, in Weimar, then the capital of Germany; he taught there from 1920-1931, in which time he consistently produced excellent art. It was during this period that he began to experiment more with color, eventually obtaining a virtually complete mastery of it. Indeed, the most interesting aspect of Head of Man is the color. The variations of color in the head itself form interesting contrasts to each other, and as a whole they contrast subtly with the orange background. The red of the eyes, despite not being a dissimilar hue to parts of the head or the background, still jump out at the viewer with a remarkable intensity.

Senecio is a manifestation of Klee’s sense of humor and African culture. The simple colors and shapes, Paul makes use of various shades of orange, red, and yellow to reveal portrait of an old man. Artistic use of shapes gives the false impression that one eye browse is raised. His left eye brow is represented by a triangle while the other one is made of a simple curved line. The portrait is also called Head of a Man Going Senile and intentionally mimics children’s artwork by using ambiguous shapes and forms with minimal facial details. The simple, flat construction reflects this child-like expression that fascinated Klee for years. He routinely incorporated childlike influences into his art. He felt that human development is most universal across cultures in childhood; therefore, the self-expression of a child is more pure, closer to the essence of the idea.

 Paul Klee: Senecio (Head of Man Going Senile), 1922, Oil on

Rembrandt: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 1633, (Whereabouts unknown since the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum robbery in 1990!!!) On the morning of March 18, 1990, thieves disguised as police officers broke into the museum and stole The Storm on the Sea of Galilee and 12 other works. It is considered the biggest art theft in US history and remains unsolved. The museum still displays the paintings' empty frames in their original locations.

 Rembrandt: The Storm on the Sea of Galilee, 1633

El Greco (1541 –1614): The Disrobing of Christ (El Espolio) (close up), 1577–1579, oil on canvas, 285 × 173 cm (112 in × 68 in), Sacristy of the Cathedral, Toledo, Spain

The painting shows Christ looking up to Heaven with an expression of serenity; his idealized figure seems segregated from the other people and the violence surrounding him. A figure dressed in black in the background points at Christ accusingly, while two others argue over who will have his garments. A man in green to Christ's left holds him firmly with a rope and is about to rip off his robe in preparation for his crucifixion. At the lower right, a man in yellow bends over the cross and drills a hole to facilitate the insertion of a nail to be driven through Christ's feet.

Christ is clad in a bright red robe; it is on this red tunic that El Greco concentrated the full expressive force of his art. The purple garment (a metonymic symbol of the divine passion) is spread out in a light fold; only the chromatic couple of yellow and blue in the foreground raises a separate note which approaches, in power, the glorifying hymn of the red. (Wikipedia.org)