Simon Bening’s January
Books of Hours were popular medieval prayer books designed for lay devotion, structured around daily prayers and richly illustrated calendars marking saints’ days, “red letter days,” and feast days in gold and red for spiritual reflection and timekeeping.
Apolausis the personification of Enjoyment
Ancient Antioch, once a major Hellenistic and early Christian metropolis, yielded remarkable Roman mosaics during 1930s excavations, including the Apolausis “Enjoyment” floor mosaic from a luxurious bath complex.
Santa Maria foris portas at Castelseprio
I have long been fascinated by Castelseprio’s Santa Maria foris portas frescoes, their rare early medieval Byzantine-Hellenistic style, especially the Nativity, which evokes profound awe and a lasting sense of wonder.
David with the Head of Goliath by Andrea del Castagno
Andrea del Castagno’s David with the Head of Goliath (c. 1450–55) presents a Florentine civic hero triumphing over evil, symbolizing republican strength, determination, and Renaissance ideals of virtù.
Five O’Clock Tea with Mary Stevenson Cassatt
Mary Cassatt’s Five O’Clock Tea (1880) depicts an intimate Parisian domestic ritual, capturing refined bourgeois women at leisure in a modern interior, with subtle Impressionist attention to everyday life and atmosphere.
Theseus and Antiope
The Theseus and Antiope pediment sculpture from Eretria (late 6th century BC) captures a pivotal Archaic moment of abduction, blending emerging naturalism with restrained emotional tension in early Greek monumental sculpture.
Pissarro’s Basket of Pears
Camille Pissarro’s Basket of Pears (1872, Pontoise) is a luminous Impressionist still life, evoking rural simplicity and the quiet abundance of fruit through subtle light, color, and balanced composition.
The Labours of the Months: December
Folgore da San Gimignano’s December sonnet, translated by Rossetti, introduces the “Labours of the Months” theme, linking medieval rural work, seasonal cycles, and moral reflection through vivid poetic imagery.
Titian in the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
Titian’s poesie for Philip II reimagined Ovidian myths as sensuous, emotionally charged paintings of gods and mortals, exploring love, desire, violence, and fate through innovative, poetic Renaissance compositions.
The Turkeys by Claude Monet
Claude Monet’s The Turkeys (1876) captures a radiant rural scene in which vibrant light, loose brushwork, and asymmetrical composition reflect the Impressionist search for immediacy and atmospheric vitality in everyday nature.