Mona Lisa Gioconda

Leonardo da Vinci worked for four years from 1502 on this inimitable portrait, now in the Louvre. Boldness of drawing is combined with the most subtle modeling and variation of light and shade.

Doge Leonardo Loredano

Nothing could be farther removed from the high spirits of the Laughing Cavalier than the gravity and sobriety of this portrait by Giovanni Bellini in the National Gallery. Gravity is as much a keynote of Bellini's art as Jollity is of Hals. Gentile and Giovanni were the sons of Jacopo Bellini: all three were noted painters, Giovanni being the most celebrated. Leonardo Loredano became Doge of Venice in 1502 and died in 1521.

Laughing Calvalier

Frans Hals observed the smile and laugh in all phases. Despite its robust joviality this familiar portrait from the Wallace collection is a penetrating and realistic study of character treated in a bold and broad manner. Frans Hals, the elder, is regarded as the founder of the Dutch school of genre-painting, that is of paintings from everybody life. Both his brother, Dirk and his sons, of whom Frans Hals, the younger, became best known were painters of considerable ability.

Pageantry Of Veronese

The art of decoration and pageantry which had been practiced iv Venice from the time of Gentile Bellini and Carpaccio, reached a culminating point in the magnificent compositions of Paulo Veronese, the greatest of all pageant painters. He has treated the Marriage at Cana (Louvre), the scene of the miracle preformed by Christ of turning water into wine, not as a religious theme, but like a sumptuous Venetian festival with all the display of brocades, silks and satins customary on such occation. The picture painted for the refectory of San Giorgio was begun in 1562 and 972 ducats, furnished with canvas and colors and was provided with food and a cask of wine. Most of the figures in the design are portraits. On the left are Suleiman the Sultan; Charles V; Francis I; Vittoria Colonna and Eleanor of Austria. Grouped round the table in the foreground are Veronese himself playing the viol, Tintoretto accompanying him, and Bassano seated by them. It was on account of this picture, where the figure of Christ is relegated to a minor position in the middle distance, that Veronese was summoned before the Inquisition. He made out a good case and was permitted to resume his work.

Titian And Classical Mythology

Classical mythology was of more vital interest to the Renaissance painters than to Rubens for it had all the glamor of a new discovery, moreover Titian was painting in Venice. Bacchus and Ariadne was painted about 1520 for Alfonso I of Ferraro and is now in the National gallery.

Rubens And Classical Mythology

In the seventeenth century it was customary for the subject of a large composition to be taken either from the Bible or from classical mythology. Rubens liked to paint mythology subjects;this and his passion for paintin flesh can be discerned in The Judgment of Paris which is in the National Gallary. Like many other works of Rubens, this picture, Which was painted in the years 1635-36 is on wood.

Painting The Supernatural

The great altar-piece of the Adoration of the Lamb, at Ghent, was painted by the brothers van Eyck probably between the years 1415 and 1432. One of the eleven paintings, that on the central panel shown here, depicts the minutely detailed landscape in the background which are as precise as a photograph and there is realism in the individual portraits of the ecclesiastics and citizens who, with saints and angels, reverently worship the Lamb. The van Eyck s painted the supernatural with conviction and feeling.

Fifteenth-Century Scene By an Italian Master

Little is known of the life of Vittore Carpaccio, even the date of his birth being uncertain. First mention of him is in 1472 in the will of his uncle. His series of mine pictures for the School of St. Ursula in Venice are his best known as well as his earliest dated works. They were painted between The years 1490 and 1495 and are now housed is a single room in the Venice gallery. The Dream of St. Ursula (above), most celebrated painting of the series, affords a delightful glimpse into a Venetian bedroom of the fifteenth century. The picture is painted with thick, rich color an a rather rough canvas, a method which was to become one of the outstanding features of the works of the later Venetian school of painters.